Women, Science and Fiction Revisited is an analysis of selected science fiction novels and short stories written by women over the past hundred years from the point of view of their engagement with how science writes the world. Beginning with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1918) and ending with N K Jemisin's The City We Became (2020), Debra Benita Shaw explores the re-imagination of gender and race that characterises women's literary crafting of new worlds. Along the way, she introduces new readings of classics like Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, examining the original novels in the context of their adaptation to new media formats in the twenty-first century. What this reveals is a consistent preoccupation with how scientific ideas can be employed to challenge existing social structures and argue for change.
New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini returns with The Women’s March, an enthralling historical novel of the women’s suffrage movement inspired by three courageous women who bravely risked their lives and liberty in the fight to win the vote. Twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul returns to her native New Jersey after several years on the front lines of the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Weakened from imprisonment and hunger strikes, she is nevertheless determined to invigorate the stagnant suffrage movement in her homeland. Nine states have already granted women voting rights, but only a constitutional amendment will secure the vote for all. To inspire support for the campaign, Alice organizes a magnificent procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, the day before the inauguration of President-elect Woodrow Wilson, a firm antisuffragist. Joining the march is thirty-nine-year-old New Yorker Maud Malone, librarian and advocate for women’s and workers’ rights. The daughter of Irish immigrants, Maud has acquired a reputation—and a criminal record—for interrupting politicians’ speeches with pointed questions they’d rather ignore. Civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett resolves that women of color must also be included in the march—and the proposed amendment. Born into slavery in Mississippi, Ida worries that white suffragists may exclude Black women if it serves their own interests. On March 3, 1913, the glorious march commences, but negligent police allow vast crowds of belligerent men to block the parade route—jeering, shouting threats, assaulting the marchers—endangering not only the success of the demonstration but the women’s very lives. Inspired by actual events, The Women’s March offers a fascinating account of a crucial but little-remembered moment in American history, a turning point in the struggle for women’s rights.
Drawn from the Science Fiction Research Association conference held in Lawrence, Kansas, in 2008, the essays in this volume address intersections among the reading, writing, and teaching of science fiction. Part 1 studies the teaching of SF, placing analytical and pedagogical research next to each other to reveal how SF can be both an object of study as well as a teaching tool for other disciplines. Part 2 examines SF as a genre of mediation between the sciences and the humanities, using close readings and analyses of the literary-scientific nexus. Part 3 examines SF in the media, using specific television programs, graphic novels, and films as examples of how SF successfully transcends the medium of transmission. Finally, Part 4 features close readings of SF texts by women, including Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Octavia E. Butler.
This book examines how contemporary women novelists have successfully transformed and rewritten the conventions of post-apocalyptic fiction. Since the dawn of the new millennium, there has been an outpouring of writing that depicts the end of the world as we know it, and women writers are no exception to this trend. However, the book argues that their fiction is distinctive. Contemporary women’s work in this genre avoids conservatism, a nostalgic mourning for the past, and the focus on restoring what has been lost, aspects key to much male authored apocalyptic fiction. Instead, contemporary women writers show readers the ways in which patriarchy and neo-colonialism are intrinsically implicated in the disasters they envision, and offer qualified hope for a new beginning for society, culture and literature after an imagined apocalyptic event. Exploring science, nature and matter, the posthuman body, the maternal imaginary, time, narrative and history, literature and the word, and the post-secular, the book covers a wide variety of writers and addresses issues of nationality, race and ethnicity, as well as gender and sexuality.
Since Mary Shelley drew inspiration for Frankenstein from the scientific speculations to which she attended as a 'nearly silent listener' at the now famous chateau in Switzerland, many other women have been similarly motivated to produce works informed by scientific theory. Successive chapters trace the history of women's science fiction writing from the turn of the century to the early 1990s, analysing how women writers have utilised the genre to critique the ideology that informs what counts as scientific knowledge.
This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.
A marvelous collection of wide-ranging essays from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, exploring her lifelong relationship to science fiction—as a reader and as a writer The ebook edition of this title contains over thirty additional, illuminating ebook-exclusive illustrations by the author At a time when the borders between genres are increasingly porous, she maps the fertile crosscurrents of speculative and science fiction, utopias, dystopias, slipstream, and fantasy, musing on the age-old human impulse to imagine new worlds. She shares the evolution of her personal fascination with SF, from her childhood invention of a race of flying superhero rabbits to her graduate study of its Victorian antecedents to the creation of her own acclaimed novels. Studded with appreciations of such influential writers as Marge Piercy, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro, H. Rider Haggard, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells, and Jonathan Swift, In Other Worlds is as humorous and charming as it is insightful and provocative.
Originally published and edited by Jeffrey D. Smith in 1975, Khatru 3&4's symposium on women in science fiction was a detailed conversation among some of the most well-known authors of 70s feminist science fiction, including Suzy McKee Charnas, Samuel R. Delany, Vonda N. McIntyre, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr. (before her true identity of Alice B. Sheldon was known), Kate Wilhelm, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and others, The opinions expressed by participants are still radical today. This 1993 update of the symposium includes new material by some of the original participants and commentary by others, including Pat Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, Gwyneth Jones, and Jeanne Gomoll. Cover by Judith M Weiss, illustrations by Georgie Schnobrich.
“I could easily say, what a timely book, but the truth is that Kohlberg is for the ages, which means any time is worthwhile to revisit his work. So, in that sense, let us ask, what aspects of his work in Moral Development and Moral Education are timely today? One answer can be found in the Kohlberg Lounge on the sixth floor of Larsen Hall, which I have the privilege to visit every day. Placed there in 1987, a plaque in his honor states: In memory of Lawrence Kohlberg: In this room where ideas are born through discussion and tested through debate Let us listen and speak with the same respect that he gave to all In 2015, the emphasis on discussion and debate has reached beyond moral development to all aspects of pedagogy, from literacy to history education and beyond. And, in an era of fast and slow thinking, this book reminds us that ethical reflection, self-awareness, and a social conscience are the three malleable developmental skills that allow us all to be truly human. Kohlberg then, Kohlberg now, Kohlberg forever.” – Robert L. Selman, Harvard University (Roy Edward Larsen Professor of Education and Human Development, Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry) “This book about one of the giants of psychology is very timely. There is a whole generation of students and scholars that is growing up with a knowledge about moral development without learning about the roots of the field. This is not a matter of nostalgia or ‘attributional justice,’ but one of missing out on a fountain of knowledge and insight that has not been surpassed in its depth and breadth. This book should become required reading for students in the social sciences that should begin to ask the questions that would require their teachers to ‘read up.’” – Gil Noam, Harvard Medical School (Founder and Director of the Program in Education, Afterschool & Resiliency (PEAR)) “Kohlberg’s theory of moral developmental might be more relevant today than ever, given increasing worries about the fragmentation and declining solidarity in modern Western society. But does the theory hold up in light of old criticisms and new questions and methods? The chapters, by leading scholars in the field of moral development, introduce new generations of moral psychologists, philosophers, and educators to Kohlberg’s work, by addressing strengths and weaknesses and suggesting ways to move forward. A must read for anyone interested in moral education.” – Jan Boom, Utrecht University (Chair of the Kuhmerker Dissertation Award Committee)
