Gender Adventures in Stories of James Tiptree, Jr. Award Shortlists (original) (raw)
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Talking about men: conversations about masculinities in recent'gender-bending'science fiction
2009
Science fiction is often called the literature/genre of ideas, while SF writers and readers are also seen to function as a highly engaged and conversant community. Within this community, ideas can generate an ongoing conversation between science fiction texts and authors, as well as among readers, convention attendees, academics and, of late, web communities. Often the conversation concerns gender or, more specifically, how science fiction texts represent gender, including masculinities. Yet critical discussion of fictional constructions of masculinities in science fiction has been limited. This thesis addresses this gap through in-depth literary analysis of ten science fiction short stories and novels which participate in an ongoing conversation about ideas of masculinity. The selected texts have either won or been shortlisted for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. One primary reason for choosing these texts is that, since 1991, the Tiptree Award has been presented annually to a science fiction or fantasy short story or novel that, “expands or explores our understanding of gender” (Tiptree). This thesis applies both feminist and masculinities theory to the chosen texts, as well as some postcolonial and queer perspectives, to show that although science fiction has been at the cutting edge of fictional explorations of gender as concerning women, it currently lags behind contemporary theorists in its exploration of masculinities. On the one hand, the majority of the selected Tiptree Award texts offer convincing and thoughtful critiques of certain hegemonic masculine identities, including the warrior and the scientist. Hegemonic masculinity is likewise a central concern for leading masculinities theorists, such as R.W. Connell, Lynne Segal and Michael S. Kimmel, but along with Carole Pateman, Ellen Jordan and Angela Cowan, these theorists identify the civil narrative of masculinity as the currently dominant construction in most Western societies. The majority of the selected Tiptree Award science fiction texts avoid close engagement with this narrative, in favour of critiquing older versions of masculinity. Another key concern for contemporary masculinities theorists is the notion of “multiple masculinities.” Although the male characters portrayed in the chosen science fiction texts are mostly white, straight and middle-to-upper class, some of the writers do add to the conversation about masculinities by also exploring masculinities that vary from the hegemonic norm in terms of class, race and sexual orientation/performance. Thus, despite some limitations, the Tiptree Award texts indicate an ongoing attempt to engage with and build on earlier science fiction that used the same tropes, and to question, modify and expand upon their depictions of men and masculinities.
Genderfuck in Fiction: Representations of Woman, Man & Human
This dissertation proposes to explore the ways in which the literary device of genderfuck is used to deconstruct gender and associated concepts. Particularly focusing on the limiting effects of gender on persons, real and not, who happen to be female and on destabilizing genderfuck mechanisms and its alternative identities found in literature. Genderfuck questions the gender divide by unearthing both its arbitrariness and its instability. It originates from a number of theoretical fields, such as feminism and queer theory, itself inspired by structuralism and post-structuralism. In this case it refers to the transformation of a character into a different sex or gender or even both, providing the reader with a person who experiences both sides of the divide and offering the writer an opportunity to show (and question) the effects of both society and biology on the constitution of subjectivity.
Balirano, G. / Palusci, O. (eds) 2020. Re-Configuring Gender in Science Fiction Narratives
Balirano, G. / Palusci, O. (eds) 2020. Re-Configuring Gender in Science Fiction Narratives. ContactZone 2 [Special Issue]. ISSN: 2723-8881., 2020
The current issue of ContactZone deals with the way in which the very notion of binary subjectivity, slowly gives way to inclusive narratives, giving life to new characters that naturally inhabit the scenarios of contemporary science fiction through unstable roles and completely ‘de-generated’ narrations of identity. An important contribution to the cultural turn in sexual inclusiveness through the staging of ‘non-binary’ characters in the genre was first given by the special issue On Science Fiction and Queer Theory (Science-Fiction Studies, March 1999) and later by the collected essays Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon in 2008, both opening and tracing an innovative and stimulating critical discourse. As the editors state in their introduction (Pearson et al. 2008: 5): "If we then take as the central task of queer theory the work of imagining a world in which all lives are liveable we understand queer theory as being both utopian and science fictional, in the sense of imagining a future which opens out, rather than forecloses possibilities for becoming real, for mattering in the world". As the papers included in this issue explore the discursive and linguistic dimensions of the representation of sexualities in science fiction narratives, understanding the construction of such discourses necessarily requires an interdisciplinary approach, which ranges from literary criticism, critical discourse analysis, gender studies, corpus linguistics to sociolinguistics. In order to develop a comprehensive perspective on the topic investigated, four essays are devoted to fiction (both novels and short stories), one to plays, and one to a canonical TV series such as Star Trek. While ContactZone is aimed at an international community of scholars and well-informed readers, we do not want to forget our being rooted in the Italian academic context; at least three full-length volumes devoted to Anglo-American science fiction by women should be mentioned: Oriana Palusci, Terra di lei. L’immaginario femminile tra utopia e fantascienza (1990), Eleonora Federici, Quando la fantascienza è donna. Dalle utopie femminili del secolo XIX all’età contemporanea (2015) and Anna Pasolini and Nicoletta Vallorani, Corpi magici: Scritture incarnate dal fantastico alla fantascienza (2020). This is the reason why all six papers are written by Italian scholars, who are willing to measure their competence against a vast and expanding international critical body.
MANUSYA, 2006
Laura Esquivel, Mexican, Joanne Harris, British, Fannie Flagg, American, and Isak Dinesen, Danish, are women writers who have written contemporary world popular fiction: Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, and the short story 'Babette's Feast'. Out of their desire to reflect their female identity, these women writers of four different nationalities have concertedly rejected the long-running male literary tradition, in which male characters rule and dominate and, in turn, have created a female literary tradition in which their female characters not only assert a solid and secure place in the world but also are allowed to display their female strength, resourcefulness and dominance. These contemporary women writers have brought about significant changes in contemporary fiction in which they terminate literary stereotypes and discard traditional female roles and 'untrue ' images imposed on women. These women authors red...
Annex 3 Gender tip sheet and stories
2017
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original work is properly credited. Cette œuvre est mise à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), qui permet l’utilisation, la distribution et la reproduction sans restriction, pourvu que le mérite de la création originale soit adéquatement reconnu.
Contemporary Feminism and Women’s Short Stories
Contemporary Women's Writing, 2020
This book review of Emma Young's important monograph calls for more inclusivity in short story theory. Article also accessible here: https://academic.oup.com/cww/article/14/1/144/5316465 Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 14, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 144–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpy028