This message about fundraising to support future conferences comes from Gwendolyn Beetham as she prepares for the 2015 National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) conference later this year. Femspec will be in attendance at the conference as well, and hopes to see many of you there too!

From Gwen:

Hi everyone, 

Just a quick update - we've raised an additional $1000 in the past week (!!), and we're now at $2025 with 9 days to go!  Keep on getting the word out! And remember, any money over our goal will go to NWSA to start a fund for contingent faculty in the future. 

And, just a reminder to send along your description of what you'll be addressing at the conference if you haven't already. I wanted to also ask for suggestions for a "what can you do as a (feminist) student" for my piece at Feministing (you can send them to me and not the entire group). I think that something from a student perspective would be very useful and there's not a ton out there. 

That's it for now. Big thanks to you all - so looking forward to November.

Announcing a new title from the Femspec press

Femspec is pleased to announce the upcoming release of a new title from Femspec Books and Publications!

Naomi Mercer’s Toward Utopia will offer readers a critical examination of the way in which feminist authors recognize the dangers of fundamentalism and its infusion into American politics in the 1980s and began to address those dangers through genre writing. Specifically, Mercer addresses how feminist authors critique religious fundamentalism, linked to the rise of the Religious Right in the United States, in four canonical texts that interrogate fundamentalist manifestations of Abrahamic religions: Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan, Piercy’s He, She and It, and Tepper’s Raising the Stones.

In tracing the non-chronological thematic arc among these texts, Mercer argues that feminist dystopian writing transgresses not only genre but also the “master narratives” of Western culture through its examination of and warnings against religious fundamentalism and theocratic governance. She notes that such writers interrogate this fundamentalism to expose its inherent misogyny and oppression, activities that are frequently played out on women’s bodies, and further argues that these writings challenge the legitimacy of the very underpinnings of Western thought and culture in myriad ways.

When asked what prompted her to develop this text, Mercer told us that "While deployed to Iraq for a year, I read Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan as a way to combine my love of science fiction and think more about the challenges facing the Muslim women with whom I came into contact."

The full press release can be viewed below. 

Congratulations in Order. . .

Editor Batya Weinbaum has had a poem accepted for publication in the upcoming issue 98 of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian journal of art and literary work.

Consider subscribing, donating, volunteering, or submitting to support a sister journal!

Free Access to Journal of Gender Studies Special Issue

Femspec is pleased to provide its readers with limited free access to a special issue from the Journal of Gender Studies in honor of Gina Wisker, a Femspec board member whose paper appears in the issue entitled "All in this together? Feminisms, academia, austerity." The issue can be read for free here for a limited time.

The introduction and six papers of "Feminisms, academia, austerity" address the impact that economic austerity policies have had on the academy, and more specifically on its feminist scholars, researches, and programs. One question the introduction raises in particular asks readers to consider "What is the future for women in higher education and feminist scholarship if the current age of austerity threatens to further hamper academic feminism?"

Wisker's paper, which provides a strong bookend to the discussion, discusses how teaching and learning can be used to resist the intellectual inadequacies perpetuated by this new system.

"Wisker argues that despite the damaging sociocultural and intellectual effects of austerity upon scholars and students in higher education, feminist scholars have the opportunity to counter the negativity of diminishment. Wisker calls on feminist scholars to use their influence on the higher education curriculum to show how feminist scholarship proactively engages the concepts of social justice, waste and self-worth that lie at the heart of austerity discourses and contexts. Using examples from her own literature studies background, Wisker demonstrates how austerities can be challenged through feminist speculative fictions by contemporary women writers, whose writing, she shows, offers creative, value-oriented and critically engaged ways of imagining self and society beyond austere constraints" (JGS 1-2)

Announcing 2016 Femspec Retreat

As the Great Age issue 14.2 is finalized, Femspec is also pleased to announce plans for its first retreat. 

Open to the public, this event can be attended in whole or in part and will feature opportunities for both personal and professional development as well as a chance to meet like-minded authors, artists, students, and scholars of feminist speculative fiction studies. 

Watch this page or like us on Facebook for more news!

The Great Age Issue: Reproductive Equality in Marge Piercy

“So We All Became Mothers”:

Reproductive Equality in Marge Piercy

By Mala Ghoshal

            One of the facets of science fiction which is particularly valuable to feminism is its ability to conceptually separate elements which are, in our society, nearly inextricably bound together, in order to consider each element individually. An excellent case in point is the distinction between sexual difference and reproductive difference. This paper focuses on Marge Piercy’s novel Woman on the Edge of Time, which preserves the existence of two sexes but does away with the distinction between a birthing sex and a non-birthing sex. Furthermore, Piercy argues that sexual difference in and of itself doesn’t preclude the creation of an egalitarian society; reproductive difference, on the other hand, must be surmounted before true equality can be achieved.

The Great Age Issue: Power of the Positive Crone #4

The Power of the Positive Crone

by

Carole Spearin McCauley

The following is the second of the four part series by Carole Spearin McCauley. The first part is available here

This article was written for The Great Age Issue. The author has graciously permitted us to serialize it on our blog as a prelude to the issue itself.  Our second issue for this year - 14.2 - is dedicated to aging and gender: representations in speculative fiction, everyday experiences, creative fiction or non-fiction, and more. Inspired by board member, Constance Brereton, we're calling this The Great Age Issue.