At 10:36 AM 9/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
>-- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] --
>
>
>Does this book's subtitle, "Women's Fantasy & SF" signify something
>about the material other than the fact that it's written by women (as
>"women's music" seems to)? Are books by Crossing Press and others (Naiad
>?) getting respect in the SF field? I'm also wondering how these small
>feminist presses are faring in the current publishing upheavals, if
>anybody has any inside info.
>--
>David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com
>
I am new to the list, as of last week, and have been waiting for a break
on the size thread to introduce myself. perhaps the most important thing
to know is that my mail reader does not do spell check, so I apologize for
my awful typing. I'm Rudy Leon, and I am a grad student in religion,
American religion and New Religious Movements, at Syracuse U., and this
semester I am teaching a course on Religion in Feminist Utopian Fantasy
Novels. We just finished Herland, and this next couple of weeks are doing
Wanderground (Gearhart) and Suzie Charnas' Walk to the End of the World and
Motherlines. We'll also be reading Dispossessed; Woman on the Edge of
Time; Marraiges Between Zones 3, 4, 5; Fifth Sacred Thing; Handmaid's Tale;
and Gate to Women's Country. I am actually really curious if this seems
like a cliched list to people 'in the know'. The students also have to do
a comparative study with an 'outside' book, most likely one of the ones I
ended up deciding not to use for the class, or any sugegestions that I hear
here.
To respond to David's questions, in doing research for this class I found a
good many articles in Extrapolation and SFS on Women's SF, but in books
these authors were barely and rarely mentioned. Except, of course, in
books focusing on Feminist SF. So my guess is that the SF 'experts' do not
concede that this is either an important or genuine movement.
However, I am also on the Utopia-L listserv, and the discussion there has
led me to believe even more strongly that this genre is really where the
cutting edge is--the questions being debated there seem old and tired and
one sided, lacking the complexity and texture shown in some of these books.
I think that to the degree that feminism has to engage humanism it is
changing the way people look at the future and its possibilities, and it
may idealistic of me, but isn't that what SF is about? And a really good
SF story gives a through and convincing look at all the details which hold
life together? Traditional SF has largely been responding to LeGuin (and
others) when it even looks at social structure and gender roles...
I'll stop there, since I'm still trying to get a feel for the list (and the
genre), but I ma really looking forward to this list...
peace
Rudy
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