From Frankenstein to futuristic feminist utopias, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction examines the ways science fiction writers have incorporated, explored, and revised conventional notions of sexual difference. Attebery traces a fascinating history of men's and women's writing that covertly or overtly investigates conceptions of gender, suggesting new perspectives on the genre.
A collection of sixty-seven contemporary American science fiction stories includes contributions by Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, and Philip K. Dick
Applying recent European and Anglo-American feminist scholarship to the problems of gender representation, Charnon-Deutsch challenges the prevailing idea that the 19th-century Spanish novel is woman centered. The author's examination of novels by Valera, Pereda, Alas, and Galdos demonstrates that these works are instead a complex exploration of male identity. Decoding the gender ideology of women's roles, discourse, and representations, Charnon-Deutsch uncovers in the novels multiple configurations of androcentricity as well as voyeuristic tendencies, which she interprets as a means of mastering what is threatening to the male psyche.
Literature and Gender combines an introduction to and an anthology of literary texts which powerfully demonstrate the relevance of gender issues to the study of literature. The volume covers all three major literary genres - poetry, fiction and drama - and closely examines a wide range of themes, including: feminity versus creativity in women's lives and writing the construction of female characters autobiography and fiction the gendering of language the interaction of race, class and gender within writing, reading and interpretation. Literature and Gender is also a superb resource of primary texts, and includes writing by: Sappho Emily Dickinson Sylvia Plath Tennyson Elizabeth Bishop Louisa May Alcott Virginia Woolf Jamaica Kincaid Charlotte Perkins Gilman Susan Glaspell Also reproduced are essential essays by, amoung others, Maya Angelou, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Toni Morrison, Elaine Showalter, and Alice Walker. No other book on this subject provides an anthology, introduction and critical reader in one volume. Literature and Gender is the ideal guide for any student new to this field.
The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.
Contributions by Marleen S. Barr, Shiloh Carroll, Sarah Gray, Elyce Rae Helford, Michael R. Howard II, Ewan Kirkland, Nicola Mann, Megan McDonough, Alex Naylor, Rhonda Nicol, Joan Ormrod, J. Richard Stevens, Tosha Taylor, Katherine A. Wagner, and Rhonda V. Wilcox Although the last three decades have offered a growing body of scholarship on images of fantastic women in popular culture, these studies either tend to focus on one particular variety of fantastic female (the action or sci-fi heroine), or on her role in a specific genre (villain, hero, temptress). This edited collection strives to define the "Woman Fantastic" more fully. The Woman Fantastic may appear in speculative or realist settings, but her presence is always recognizable. Through futuristic contexts, fantasy worlds, alternate histories, or the display of superpowers, these insuperable women challenge the laws of physics, chemistry, and/or biology. In chapters devoted to certain television programs, adult and young adult literature, and comics, contributors discuss feminist negotiation of today's economic and social realities. Senior scholars and rising academic stars offer compelling analyses of fantastic women from Wonder Woman and She-Hulk to Talia Al Ghul and Martha Washington; from Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series to Cinda Williams Chima's The Seven Realms series; and from Battlestar Gallactica's female Starbuck to Game of Thrones's Sansa and even Elaine Barrish Hammond of USA's Political Animals. This volume furnishes an important contribution to ongoing discussions of gender and feminism in popular culture.
Is literature androgynous? Can a language used by men effectively express women's perceptions? This book debates the presence of a distinctive female style, voice, or content in the literature written by women from the middle ages to the twentieth century. Mary Wollstonecraft and Fanny Bur-ney wrote on the linguistic difficulties of women's prose; Virginia Woolf expressed hopes for an androgynous literary future. The authors of Gender and Literary Voice consider thematic and stylistic differences and then range themselves on both sides of this debate. The role of female experi-ence; the passive mode; female appropriation of traditionally male forms of literature such as the bildtingsroman: semantic idiosyncrasies -- these are the elusive topics raised by contemporary critics of women's literature. Among the contributors to this important volume of feminist criticism are Joyce Carol Oates, Judith Wilt, Marilyn Butler, and Mary Ann Caws.
Annotation Responding to a fundamental challenge from feminism, a primary objective of this book is to propose that all narrative and its reading are intrinsically inflected by sexual politics. Various approaches represented here demonstrate problems of confronting the gendered pleasures of reading.
