Femspec

New Femspec Blog

2010-09-22T13:29:00.001-04:00

Apparently there's a new blog for Femspec. You should visit there for news:

http://thevoicesoffemspec.blogspot.com

CFP: “Extraordinary Women”

2009-01-21T15:57:00.001-05:00

“Extraordinary Women”

Femspec, an interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to SF,
fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore, and other supernatural genres, welcomes submissions for “Extraordinary Women,” a special issue or themed section dedicated to women and disability.

In her book Extraordinary Bodies, Rosemarie Garland Thomson establishes that “Many parallels exist between the social meanings attributed to female bodies and those assigned to20disabled bodies.” We are interested in critical and creative works, including memoir and nonfiction narrative, that explore these parallels.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Aliens and freaks
Disability, technology, and the cyborg
Adaptation and survival
Women with disabilities in myth and folklore
Disability and feminist spirituality
The “alien” experience of being a woman with a disability
Intervention and accommodation (alien, supernatural, technological, or other)
"(Un)natural” women
Ability/Disability in Octavia Butler’s work
Writing, feminism, disability
“Coming out” as non-normate (disabled, queer, other?)
Passing” as normate

Please submit three copies of your piece to Deborah Bailin at this address: 2101 Susquehanna Hall, English Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Submissions must *exclude* any indication of your name on them so that your piece may be read anonymously.

Include a separate sheet with the title and genre of your piece, your name, address, email, phone and a two sentence abstract.

Also, include a disc with your document in Word and RTF format. All submissions should conform to MLA standards, as found in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. MLA guidelines can also be found on-line at http://www.mla.org.

Any submission that does not come in with sufficient copies will not be sent through the review process. We will accept submissions through June 1, 2009.

Please note that only subscribers may submit to Femspec. To subscribe, go to femspec.org.

All editorial enquiries should be e-mailed to Batya Weinbaum at femspec_at_aol.com.

CFP: Special Issue to Honor Paula Gunn Allen

2009-01-19T16:31:00.000-05:00

FemSpec, an “interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and creative works in the realms of SF, fantasy, magical realism, myth, folklore, and other supernatural genres,” is accepting submissions for a special issue to honor Paula Gunn Allen (PGA) tentatively scheduled for Fall 2009.

Topics may be stimulated by, but are not limited to, concerns raised in her interview with John Purdy in 1997 ("And Then, Twenty Years Later . . .": A Conversation with Paula Gunn Allen, by John Purdy, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 9(3), 5-16, Fall 1997 retrieved 8/19/2008 from http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/paula/PGA-int.html). 20 years after the Flagstaff conference that resulted in the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, PGA identified continuing issues in Native American literary criticism in the context of a major shift:

1] “There was nothing then, and now there's everything.” We welcome essays that detail or engage her contributions to that shift, and/or that identify, assess, and/or remedy problems in the field.

2] “Something was said today, something about answers. And I wanted to say, no, no, no. That's not the point. It's not about answers; it's about good questions.” Building on any of the questions PGA’s work asks us to consider, how can we develop continuing lines of inquiry? For example, in Sacred Hoop she demonstrates that we need not reinvent the wheel with imagined gynocracies. How does the paradigm she describes inform Native American women’s literature?

3] “Very little of our literature is the literature of protest, of oppression … Most of it is the literature of the spirit or the literature of ritual. Almost all of it is, call it political voice and drama, is always informed by the presence of this knowledge that there is always this other world, with which we are always engaged. It isn't over "there" somewhere; it's in our presence and our midst and we are in its presence and its midst.” Feminist speculative literature is predicated on “what ifs.” If we were to continue as we are – what would future dystopias be like? If we were to dismantle oppressive cultural schemata (race, class, sexuality, ability, gender) and live according to an egalitarian paradigm – what could future utopias be like? PGA’s work can push these queries further. For example: what are the implications of an equi-present spirit world for the dystopia/utopia binary?

4] “My own calling has always been of the spirit ...” What are the relationships between women’s speculative literature, criticism, and spirit work?

We seek critical articles, artwork, poetry, and fiction. Articles and fiction can be up to 15 pages. All submissions should conform to MLA standards (see www.mla.org). For further information, please contact special issue guest editor, Menoukha Case, at menoukha@yahoo.com.

Submissions marked "PGA" should be sent to:
Menoukha Case
POB 51
Gt. Barrington, MA 01230-0051

Please submit 4 copies on which your name, address, and contact points do NOT appear, accompanied by a separate page that includes title, genre, your name, address, phone, and email. Submissions with insufficient copies will not be sent through the review process. To submit, you must be a subscriber for calendar year 2009. To subscribe, include a check made out to FemSpec or subscribe on line and send a print out of the receipt with your manuscript. Full price is $40, low income price is $25. Ask your library, public or institutional, to subscribe.

Deadline: June 15, 2009

Patricia Melzer. Alien Constructions Science Fiction and Feminist Thought.

2008-06-17T04:51:00.003-04:00

The road from successfully defended dissertation to published book is proven yet again to be long and winding. Patricia Melzer’s dissertation Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Theories—defended in 2002—finally saw the light in 2006 under the eerily-similar sounding title: Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. Both works share the same subjects of study: the Alien tetralogy (Alien vs. Predator is not included), Octavia Butler, and the Matrix movies. Being unfamiliar with Melzer’s work made me apprehensive as I did not know what type of “analysis” to expect from her, esspecially when applied to the films she chose to dissect. Furthermore, when it comes to Matrix-related criticism, I doubted anything could top William Irwin’s edited The Matrix and Philosophy (Open Court Publishing, 2003) and other studies I had read related to Matrix criticism. Nevertheless, Melzer’s feminist approach made me a believer of the adage I’ve just created: nothing is old under the sun.

Melzer is not alone in her field, and neither is The University of Texas Press unique in publishing her study. Said press is one of the few that constantly explore issues of speculative feminist science fiction by publishing academic studies from the likes of Melzer and Batya Weinbaum (whose Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities is out-of-print and whose second critical study for The University of Texas Press has gotten bogged down by unusual editorial politics). Perhaps, something else that Melzer, Weinbaum and others share is their affinity for Butler, a sci-fi author at the center of some of Melzer’s most profound analysis

The book itself is organized in a very geometrical fashion with three sections and two chapters each. In the first section, “Difference, Identity, and Colonial Experience in Feminist Science Fiction,” Melzer dedicates her analysis to Butler’s Survivor, Dawn, Wild Seed and Imago. The chapters that comprise this section allude inevitably to the fear of the other, to that which is different from our selves. While the “different body” may be of an alien in Butler’s work, it is a reference to the alienation that the author felt because of her race and gender. In the second section “Technologies and Gender in Science Fiction Film,” the critic concentrates her analytical talents to deconstructing—from a feminist point of view—two of the most beloved sci-fi franchises. Melzer resorts to the study of science fiction films in order to expound theories of female corporeality by way of the Alien franchise film products that refer—yet again—to “the Other.” The Wachowski Brothers Matrix films broke new ground in science fiction mythology and, as Melzer affirms, also explore issues of humanity and post-humanity, the appropriation of “the Other,” and the oppression of the individual. The third and final section, “Posthuman Embodiment: Deviant Bodies, Desires, and Feminist Politics” explores said topics in science fiction works from Richard Calder’s Dead Girls, Melissa Scott’s Shadow Man and Butler’s Wild Seed and Imago. This final section emphasizes, according to Melzer, “sexual difference and the process of regulating desires for ‘unfamiliar’ bodies by declaring them as perverse” (177).

After reading Melzer’s study, it is easy to see why it was nominated for the 2007 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Studies category. It is an acute critical work and one that Melzer will be hard pressed to surpass, which is why it is all the more disconcerting to know that Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought lost the aforementioned literary award to Their Own Receive Them Not by Horace L. Griffin (Pilgrim Press). I am not familiar with Griffin’s work, but had I been able to, I would have voted for Melzer. The excellence of Alien Constructions makes me look forward to the work she is currently the editor for: I’ve been a woman I-don’t know-how-many-times: A Critical Tribute to the Work of Octavia E. Butler. It promises to be a thorough investigation into the work of Butler. In sum, Patricia Melzer’s Alien Constructions:Science Fiction and Feminist Thought is an incisive critical work that advances feminist critical approaches to science fiction that extol female-centric narratives. Melzer is an original critic with a unique style to organizing her discussion and thoughts. She could, very well become, the “go-to” literary critic of science fiction-centered feminist thought or “intergalactic feminism”.

Review of Alien Constructions by Gerardo T. Cummings printed in FEMSPEC 8.1/2

FEMSPEC VOLUME 8 CONTENTS

2008-06-11T07:55:00.004-04:00

BATYA WEINBAUM. Editorial Remarks.
Getting the Mad People Out of My Attic: Not an Advertisement for Myself.
Batya Weinbaum introduces this special issue on tenure, promotion and women in academia.

WORK SECTION. DISCRIMINATION REVISITED

MEMOIR & NON-FICTION NARRATIVE

TINA ANDRES. Growing Thick Skin.
Tina Andres reflects on her life experiences within academic and engineering culture.

HELEN BANNAN. Derailed but Not Defeated.
Helen Bannan writes about the long road to tenure which began in interdisciplinary social science program in 1969.

JANE DAVIS. The Value of Stupidity: Negative Values in Academia.
Jane Davis documents her experiences in academia and tries to understand why racist behaviour is still tolerated within North American Universities.

LINDA HOLLAND-TOLL. What to Do When You Are Stuck at Toxic U: Strategies for Avoidance, Sabotage, and Survival.
Linda Holland-Toll offers ten rules to other academics "to help you avoid digging your own pit and tumbling into it."

RUTH PANOFSKY. Professor/Mother: The Unhappy Partnership.
Ruth Panofsky writes about the paradoxes and problems encountered by academic women who are also mothers.

BATYA WEINBAUM. Memoirs of an Academic Career
Batya Weinbaum reflects on How Buddhism and the act of going on retreat has helped her the many problems she has faced in her academic career.

CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS:

PAT ORTMAN. Don’t Tread on Me: Painting My Way Through.
Pat Ortman talks about how loosing tenure helped her re-discover her love for painting.

BATYA WEINBAUM. Waiting for Justice: Scene for TV.
A short drama about a legal gender discrimination case.

GINA WISKER. New Blood.
A cautionary tale about applying for 'New Blood' appointments in England.

GENERAL QUEUE

ESSAY:

GERALDINE WOJNA KIEFER. Overlays, Matrices, and Boundaries: A “Mixed-Media” Approach in Pedagogy and Art.
Geraldine Wojna Kiefer's essay maps out her methods for linking teaching and creativity in her drawing and art history classes.

FICTION:

K.A. LAITY. Eating the Dream.
A hungry visitor tours America in a rusty Honda Civic.

POETRY:

LOUISE MOORE. Joan of Arc, Circe, Cassandra, The Annunciation Angel.
4 poems by Louise Moore.

REVIEWS:

ARDYS DELU. Review of Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975 Edited by Barabara J Love.
ARDYS DELU. Review of Daughters of the Great Star by Diana Rivers
ARDYS DELU. Review of the Code Pink Women for Peace fund-raiser.
ARDYS DELU. Review of The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding): A short novel by L Timmel Duchamp.
ARDYS DELU. Review of On We, Robots by Sue Lange.
RITCH CALVIN. Review of Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of Her Life and Work by Lesley A Hall.
LYNN REED. Review of Becoming the Villanness by Jeannine Hall Gailey.
BATYA WEINBAUM. Review of Fissures directed by Alante Alfandari.
GERARDO CUMMINGS. Review of Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist
Thought by Patricia Melzer.
JAMES D. BROWN. Review of Paprika directed by Satoshi Kon
DOCTRESS NEUTOPIA. Review of The Secret DVD

SPEECHES:

GLORIA ORENSTEIN. Gertrude Stein as Mentor and Passing the Flame.

MEMORIAL:

ARDYS DELU. Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 - August 22, 2007)

BOOKS AND MEDIA RECEIVED

15 titles of interest.

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Rikki Ducornet receives lifetime achievement award

2008-06-03T06:57:00.002-04:00

On May 21 the American Academy of Arts and Letters gave Rikki Ducornet a lifetime achievement award for her novels and short stories. Dalkey Archive will publish her new collection of stories, The One Marvelous Thing, in November. The award is considered one of the highest formal recognitions of artistic merit in the United States.
In the Independent Weekly Ducornet stated that she was, "astonished and delighted. It’s such a lonely job to write books. I write books that are very strange. To have anyone respond to them is delightful."

Tiptree Award announced: The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall

2008-04-17T11:53:00.003-04:00

The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council announced that the winner of the 2007 Tiptree Award is:

The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (published in the United States as Daughters of the North).

The 2007 Tiptree Award Honor List is:

"Dangerous Space" by Kelley Eskridge, in the author’s collection Dangerous Space (Aqueduct Press, 2007)
Water Logic by Laurie Marks (Small Beer Press, 2007)
Empress of Mijak and The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller (HarperCollins, Australia, 2007)
The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Hyperion, 2007)
Interfictions, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss (Interstitial Arts Foundation/Small Beer Press, 2007)
Glasshouse by Charles Stross (Ace, 2006)
The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper (Harper Collins 2007)
Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Pia Guerra (available in 60 issues or 10 volumes from DC/Vertigo Comics, 2002-2008)
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce (Harcourt, 2007)

more info from Gwenda Bond here and The Tiptree site here

Angela Carter. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

2008-04-07T04:54:00.005-04:00

Agata Szczeszak-Brewer is currently teaching Angela Carter's 1972 novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman at Wabash College, a liberal arts college for men in Indiana, North America. There's an active blog here: http://literaryculturaltheory.blogspot.com/ where the students are discussing their reactions and insights to the book.

Utopian Studies Octavia Butler Special Issue

2008-04-04T08:05:00.003-04:00

Call for papers: Octavia Butler.

A special issue of Utopian Studies will be dedicated to the work of Octavia Butler.

The editors are looking for:

'previously unpublished papers that address utopian and dystopian themes in any of Butler’s work. We welcome analyses from multiple disciplines and theoretical approaches. Comparative essays and reminiscences that engage the utopian and
dystopian themes in Butler’s work will also be considered.'

Deadline for completed papers, August 1, 2008.
Inquiries and papers to either Claire Curtis or Toby Widdicombe.

Anarchy and Fiction: Interview with Ursula K LeGuin

2008-03-21T02:54:00.002-04:00

There's an interesting interview over at Infoshop, which has been written from an anarchist perspective. Ursula K LeGuin talks about consciousness-raising, her role as a 'non-activist' and describes how she first began imagining anarchies of the future.

Alien Languages and Futuristic Slang

2008-03-14T11:27:00.001-04:00

Eastern Michigan University (with the help of Suzette Haden Elgin) have compiled a wonderful list of alien languages, futuristic slang, animal languages and other adventures in words.

Here's a few from the main list at the Linguistics in SciFi Book List

Confluence — Brian Aldiss (1967)
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Ficciones — Jorge Luis Borges (1956)
"The Dance of the Changer and the Three" Terry Carr (1969)
40000 In Gehenna — C.J. Cherryh (1983)
Babel–17 — Samuel R. Delany (1966)
Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand — Samuel R Delany (1984)
We Have Always Spoken Panglish — Suzette Haden Elgin (2004)
Flight Of The Dragonfly — Robert L. Forward (1984)
"A Tangled Web" in Dealing in Futures — Joe Haldeman (1985)
The Haunted Stars — Edmond Hamilton (1960)
West of Eden — Harry Harrison (1984)
Red Planet — Robert A. Heinlein (1949)
Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert A. Heinlein (1961)
Inherit The Stars — James P. Hogan (1977)
Hellspark — Janet Kagan (1988)
Not So Certain — David I. Masson (1967)
Weltgeist Superstar — P.M. (1980)
"Omnilingual", in Federation — H. Beam Piper (1981)
Contact — Carl Sagan (1985)
After Long Silence — Pamela Sargent (1987)
Psychaos — E. P. Thompson
"A Martian Odyssey" in SF Hall Of Fame — Stanley Weinbaum (1934)
Surfacing — Walter Jon Williams (1988)
"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" in SF Hall Of Fame — Roger Zelazny (1963)
Eye of Cat — Roger Zelazny (1982)

+ + + + + + +

(found on Annalee Newitz's http://io9.com/ )

M. Rickert: The Girl Who Ate Butterflies

2008-03-06T08:57:00.003-05:00

In 1999 Mary Rickert published her first story, The Girl Who Ate Butterflies. Since then she's produced over 30 pieces, many of them appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is a Nebula finalist and a winner of two World Fantasy Awards. Her first collection, Map of Dreams, won the Crawford Award. The Girl Who Ate Butterflies was highlighted in Femspec Volume 7.2 as an example of beautiful, speculative writing. In an interview with John Joseph Adams, Mary Rickert speaks about how important this story was in her development, describing it as, "where I finally found my voice". Loss, desire and beauty are central themes, and ones which she has continued to pursue. The Girl Who Ate Butterflies is an excellent introduction to Mary Rickert, and we are happy to reprint it here.

Copyright M. Rickert (1999) originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1999. Reprinted with kind permission from the author.

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THE GIRL WHO ATE BUTTERFLIES

By M. Rickert

Her mother carved angels in the backyard. The largest was six feet tall and had the face of her mother's first lover, killed in a car accident when they were still in their teens. It took eighteen months to sway the purple and blue webbed stone into wings and skin, to release the wisp of feathers from the metallic clasp. She carved through the seasons, the easy spring, the heat of summer. In autumn she moved closer to the garage and plugged in the space heater, and in winter she wiped the white ash, that was what she called it, from his broad shoulders and unformed brow and in fingerless gloves carved him with a heat that flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes.

The smallest angel was no larger than Lantanna's pinky and it was for the memory of an aborted fetus. Lantanna had heard the woman whisper her request through the closed door on a dark and moonless night. "I know I made the right decision," she said, "but still, I feel empty. I want something to mark the absence. A little angel for the one I sent past. Can you carve it a girl? Can you make her face at peace?" Lantanna stood shivering in the kitchen doorway, unnoticed by her mother who listened with a passive expression to the stranger behind the door. "And one last thing?" whispered the voice. "As you carve will you say a prayer, or whatever, for me. Though I'm sure I made the right choice."

Lantanna turned and walked back to bed. She shivered into her blankets and wrapped them around herself, tight as a cocoon, and fell asleep again without her mother even noticing she had awakened. In her home, as in her life, Lantanna, like a shadow was rarely noticed.

She was the sort of girl who did not know she was pretty. A pale face with the lightest scattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Pale blue eyes the color of dreams. Hair the color of corn.

She wore summer dresses of the nineteen-forties (regardless of the season) thirty years after that time, but unmended and clean as if they had never been worn before. She also wore a slip, which was also not the fashion. The dresses were airy as wings, so thin that the slip straps with paper clip-looking adjusters could be seen through them, as well as the flower at her chest, a squashed tiny pink or white or yellow rose. In the winter she wore little sweaters, the kind with three-quarter length sleeves and pearl buttons, while the other students at Oakdale High were ripping their jeans and rubbing their new sneakers in dirt. She was pretty but not fashionably so. Hardly anyone noticed. Really, only one.

Quetzl lived in Oakdale in the summer with his father who worked in the city and provided little supervision or restraint. A rare, dark-skinned creature in the town of apple-white, he spent the summers playing his guitar and smoking pot. He watched Lantanna from a distance, first as something vaguely noticed, a blur of color in a vision of black and white, then, with more focus, as she took her daily stroll early each morning past his house, always and mysteriously (in that age when most moved in packs) alone. "She's a space cadet," his friend Emma told him once when she saw him watching Lantanna. But he watched with growing fascination because in the dull, same-paced world of Oakdale, Lantanna was different, and because he was different too, he recognized her as one of his kind.

The day it began Lantanna went to her mother with blood-stained panties. Her mother looked up from the dusty chiseling to say, "This is the blood of a broken heart all women suffer. It is inevitable. Wounds must bleed." Then, when Lantanna began to cry, scolded, "You should be happy. This is good. You will have a long, pain-filled life."

She showed Lantanna the box of tampons and demonstrated how to use them, watching as she did, tapping her fingers to get back to her work. Lantanna inserted the thin white cardboard-sheathed cotton with a stab of discomfort and in a tremulous voice asked if she was still a virgin. Yes, yes, her mother nodded. "Though it doesn't matter. Time is relative. After all," she said, "you already have the wound."

Following her mother's instructions, Lantanna washed the blood from her fingers and panties with cold water and yellow soap. By the time she left for her morning walk, her mother was back in the yard absorbed with angel and stone. Lantanna walked past in silence, absorbed in her own study of astral realities. What, she wondered, made true angel wings? Were they gossamer and thinner than glass like butterflies' wings, or were they heavy with flesh and feathers, coursed with veins and blood?

She did not notice Quetzl following her. And he, so absorbed in the swing of her pale pink dress, the arch of her long legs to the drop of short white slip, did not realize Emma followed him, her eyes glinting with fire.

When Lantanna got to the meadow she walked into the tall grass and lay down. Quetzl stopped at the edge of the meadow and lay down too. At some distance, Emma stood in the shadow of trees that bordered the meadow.

Lantanna lay still. Her arms raised. Her hands like little white stars fallen into the grass. He could only see moments of her face. A small butterfly flitted in the bush nearby, but she did not turn her head or move, only lay there as still and disinterested as a flower. More butterflies flitted nearby. A small orange one lit on her wrist. A tiny blue hovered at her lips but he blinked and in that moment it was gone. Passion rose in him like Jesus' winged heart in the picture over his grandmother's bed.

From her distance it is as if Emma is suddenly sainted, a person who sees spirits and changes in the soul. Seeing nothing that can be described like this, she knows Quetzl has fallen in love with Lantanna. She feels a particular response in her own chest. An explosion of desire, the way flame swells to explode.

Lantanna, in the meadow, knows nothing of those who watch. Lying in the grass, her white arms extended like stems her hands flower, her little mouth open with one small lilac bloom on her tongue, parched to swallow, dry in the hot sun, her heart beats like the quick wings of the sleepy orange that flits about her and finally lights on her wrist. A small blue hovers at her lips, darts in and out, in a maddening tease before it rests on the lilac bloom. Quickly, she closes her mouth, tastes the fluttering wings. She chews and hears the vaguest crunch of its small body and, treasuring its quick flavor minced with the lilac, swallows. Sighing, she lets her tired arms fall. Eyes closed, she feels the hot sun, the vague itch of meadow grass, hears the insect hum. But the pulse of her heart is the loudest and most vibrant sensation, as if it is filled with all the butterflies she's swallowed since she was a little girl. Wings beating in a blood cocoon. Bursting to be free.

When Lantanna rises from the meadow grass and turns to walk home, Quetzl follows. But Emma does not follow them. She waits until they are out of sight and then walks to the meadow, which is bright at the edge of summer with wild flowers and butterflies, alive with an energy she can describe with only one metaphor. Emmma stands at the edge of the meadow, at just about the spot, she estimates, Quetzl lay in. Where the grass looks flattened she bends to touch it, as if it is a holy space, as if by placing her palm where he lay she can touch him. She closes her eyes. Yes, she thinks, she can feel his heat. Then, she lies there too, turns her head to see his vision through the grass, the spear of blades at crosshatch, the flitting of colors, wings and petals. Here, she knows, he lay and watched Lantanna. Lantanna! Emma rises quickly when she realizes she has been laying in the meadow just like that space cadet. She forgives Quetzl for this. He is bewitched, it is obvious. Everyone knows Lantanna comes from a family of witches.

Emma comes from a family of fire fighters. Her father was a volunteer fireman for the Oakdale Fire Department before he mysteriously disappeared on his way to work two years ago. Almost exactly two years ago, Emma thinks. She remembers the hot tears, the new pain in her mother's eyes. She remembers the first realization of the woman's disappearance that same morning. She wished, for a long time after, that she had paid her more attention. She remembers a vague slash of red lips, dark hair, heavy perfume in church. But she cannot remember more than this. At this point, she can barely remember him.

Emma reaches in her pocket. She pulls out the lighter. She flicks the top with her thumb, expertly. Emma has a secret. She is the girl who loves fire. She used to start fires to make her father come. No matter what time of day or night, how impossible it was for him to be home for supper, how terribly too tired he was for her or her mother, if there was a fire, he was there. Vibrant. Heroic. She used to watch in awe this strange aspect of him, the strength of his stance, the sternness of his face, his power. Now Emma reaches down. With a quick movement she brushes the flame across the grass in front of her. It sizzles, small as a stitch, but she watches it grow in the tangle of grass. She runs quickly to the edge of woods as the smoke and flame rise behind her, like phantom snakes and devils' tongues.

She runs to the trees at the edge of the meadow and climbs one. The bark scratches her fingers and she tears a pant leg in her rush. But she barely notices such minor pain. Though it has been two years since he left them, it is at moments like these that she feels closest to her father. There is the same rush of excitement, the same heat of anticipation that used to bring him. Now she can relish the feeling. It is almost like having him back again. The meadow burns. A late afternoon breeze pushes it farther. Emma feels the sting of smoke in her eyes. Strains to hear the sound of sirens. Emma climbs higher. She can see the dirt street, the distant houses. Fire snakes through the grass below. Her eyes sting. Her throat tightens. Even the tree is hot. She feels the pores of her skin open and tears weep out. Her hands tighten to hold the limb, her fingers strain like bird claws, the bones pressed against the skin. Smoke fills her lungs with pain. The flames reach for her. She screams.

She feels she screams but she hears no sound other than fire.

Suddenly, he is there, in his suspenders and baggy yellow fire pants. He stands at the edge of the limb. Graceful as a star balanced on its point. He is saying her name over and over again. Emma, Emma, Emma. He extends one hand to her; with the other, he parts the sky. She can see just past him a blue and gentle day at the edge of summer. Emma, Emma, he says, Come. She stands. She stretches her hand to touch his. The limb creaks. Come, he says. He parts the smoke and flame with one hand. Reaches for her with the other. She strains to touch him. She hears a sound like a branch breaking and suddenly she is falling. Falling. Where? In the blur of heat and pain she forms this final thought. Where? Where are you now?

It is a long winter. It snows every day and the air is brittle. When the sun shines, it sharpens the points of ice that hang from the eaves like daggered teeth.

Lantanna's mother carves a graveyard angel for the girl who died in the fire. She thinks Emma and Lantanna were friends because of the way Lantanna cried and cried.

She wept for days and nights. She would eat nothing but tears.

Lantanna's mother tried to comfort her. "You have to stop crying. You have to make the decision. Death is inevitable," she said, "joy is not. You have to choose."

Of course there had been other winters. Long months when the meadow was frozen and the butterflies gone. Lantanna suffered through those other winters but only by counting the full moons until summer. Now, she cannot count, for she does not know when the meadow will be alive again.

Quetzl sends her letters. Many, many letters. He writes of beauty, desire, and loss. He wrote, "The lesson of the fire is that we must accept we all burn. I burn for you. I go to sleep with the memory of your eyes. Do they remember me?"

Only vaguely. She had been surprised when, on that last summer day, he had come up from somewhere behind her on the path and introduced himself. He had begun speaking strangely almost immediately. He told her he had been watching her. Then he said he would make her a light lunch of butterfly pasta.

But of course, it wasn't butterflies at all, only bow-shaped pasta sprinkled with parmesan and melted butter, and she did not even taste it, because the fire engines screamed past and she looked down the road in the direction they traveled and saw that the sky was a bright orange of fluttering blues and wings and she knew that the meadow was on fire. Of course they wouldn't let her near it. She heard them talking about a body, whom she later learned was the girl, Emma.

Whenever Lantanna tried to picture Emma, even after she saw her face in the newspaper, she could only hold the image for a fleeting moment. It was true, she was haunted. But not by the death of Emma.

At night she dreamt the fluttering of wings brushed her cheeks and teased her lips.

And it was strange, in the way that strange things happen, that just when she was at her worst, suffering the despair of what was lost from her life forever (some things should be certain, an appetite fed, for instance) that, though she had not answered a single letter, Quetzl came to her, knocking at the door in the midst of another winter storm. He found her wan and pale, shivering in her too thin dress. She invited him in and brought him to warm by the fire but he could see that she was suffering, and of course his love sank to the depths of her despair, and he felt it within him, in the place where Emma died, a greater widening of the emptiness. He implored her to eat and removed from his knapsack a bruised peach, a flattened sandwich, a brown spotted banana, but she wanted none of it. In desperation he moved her closer to the flame where he discovered he could see, not just through the thin fabric of her pale yellow dress to the wisp of shape beneath, but through her skin to the blue course veins and delicate bones.

He found Lantanna's mother in the garage, huddled near the space heater, carving an angel who looked vaguely familiar. He watched for a long time her intense carving, before he approached, saying, "You give more attention to this statue than you do your own daughter." At which she did not pause but continued to carve, the scrape of metal against stone shrill to his ears. "Did you hear me?"

"I heard you."

"Well? What kind of mother are you? Can't you see what's happening?"
At this the woman laughed. "I see what's happening," she said. "You're happening. And if she can survive you, perhaps she'll live."

"Survive me? I love her."

"You destroy her."

"I save her," he said, and then turned on his heels, muttering, "Standing here talking to a crazy old witch," he walked out of the garage into the storm.

That night he returned with a car and took Lantanna and a suitcase he directed her to pack and drove through the white snow sifting the sky, soft as petals. "Where are we going?" she asked, suddenly aware that she was confused.

"Mexico."

"But why?"

She slept. When she woke, it was light. He offered her a hamburger and this she refused but she ate some of the lettuce and the tomato so he was pleased. The stars were white-bright, intense. She slept. When she woke again a hot sun followed them. Her cheeks were wet, and she sniffed at her own scent, salty, musty. He drove with a grim resolve, stopping to piss, to kiss her mouth that she was embarrassed tasted of her own bad breath. "Mexico?" she said and he shrugged his shoulders and nodded as if, yes, it was strange, but somehow inevitable. "Why, we're driving into summer," she said. At night they slept in rest stops where she washed her armpits, and feet, and crotch, and wet a comb through her hair, and still she felt wild somehow and could not wash or neaten the feeling away. She'd squint into the dimpled mysterious rest stop mirrors and try to see the change reflected there, the strange strength that grew inside her, and she looked at his face and came to believe she saw it in his profile too. Wild. Free.

When they got to the border there was a wait of traffic and it was the first time she entered another country and she did not know it would be so much like an amusement park. Tijuana was strange, bright with color and cheap, but he kept driving past chain link fences with holes cut out of them that marked the border, past cardboard-and-tire shacks with the blue light of a TV inside, past the fish stands, and women with babies begging. He stopped only to look at the map and she began to think that this was not love, not love at all, but some sort of obsession and then he said, "We're here. I think." But it was dark and so they slept until morning showed them the edge of the jungle and they followed the strange trail she could not object to because it was inevitable until at last they stood at the top of the hill and he waved his hand across the expanse of valley below. "Here," he said, "I give you this." She had to squint and not really look at all before she saw that the spotted trees quivered with red and black wings, thousands and thousands, so what could she do but walk into them? They lit on her, in her hair, on her hands. They fluttered against her skin. "Monarchs," she said.

"Yes," he said. "For you."

"Monarchs," she said again.

"Because you love them."

Monarchs flitted against her skin and hair. Each touch reminded her of the loss.

"Now you see how I love you," he said. "I left home. I stole the car. I did everything for you. Because I know you miss the butterflies. I would do anything for you. I would die for you."
"But…" She could not continue. She saw the bright light in his eyes and could not cast it out with the venomous truth. He saw the tears in her eyes and mistook them for joy. He broke the distance between them and kissed her with the passion of a thousand wings, of an exile, of an appetite starved.

She returned the kiss with her own pain. Poisonous. All these butterflies, she thought, and not one of them edible. His tongue fluttered in her mouth. She had to concentrate not to bite down. He pressed against her. His hot hands on her thighs, her panties stretched tight as his fingers wiggled inside, eager, one tip, wet, there. She groaned. His other hand pushed the panties down. Yes, why not, she thought. Anything, anything to stop the sound of wings.

"Oh, Lantanna," he said. "I will love you forever."

But this she could not believe. Even as she lay on the jungle ground, monarchs fluttering against her skin and brushing her hands, even as she arched to meet the stab of pleasure, even later in the car where it happened again, and at the rest stops, beneath the desert stars, even as he risked arrest to drive her home because she missed her mother, even though she knew he meant to, she also knew he could not love her forever, for he did not love her now, not really. Not knowing her secret, not understanding her appetite, how could she believe he loved her at all?

III

When they returned to Oakdale, Quetzl was arrested. They talked of arresting Lantanna but Quetzl said she did not know he'd stolen the car. Lantanna did not want to go to prison so she did not argue for truth.

Winter melted. Queetzl wrote to Lantanna every day. Every day she read his mysterious, passionate letters and wept.

Finally, she took the bus and hitchhiked to the county jail.

"How did you get here?"

"I took the bus and hitchhiked."

"I don't want you hitchhiking, it's dangerous."

"Anyway," she said to change the subject.

"No. Not anyway. I'll end this visit," he said, "if you don't promise. Promise me you will not hitchhike again."

"Quetzl."

"Promise."

"You're not understanding."

"What am I not understanding? I love you. I want you safe."

"No," Lantanna said. "That's not what I mean. What you don't understand is I won't promise you anything. I am not the one. You need me. Let's just be clear about this. You need me. And I don't need you. So don't make threats that hurt only yourself."

Quetzl waved for the guard.

Dear Lantanna,
Yes. I need you. Beautiful, beautiful girl. I love you. I need you for your beauty. Your love of beauty. Come visit. Tell me you love me. I live to hear you say it. I would do anything for you. I would die for you. But I don't want you to die for me. I just want you to be safe. Come back to me. I love you. I love you. I love you. Say it.

The second visit.

"How did you get here?"

"I took the bus and hitchhiked."

"I just want you to be safe."

"How can you love me," she says, "if you don’t believe I want the same thing for myself?"

"Lantanna, I love you. Tell me what you want. Tell me what will make you love me."

"Well," she says, "that's a start. Finally, you ask. There are things about me. Things you do not even guess.

I have many secrets and there is one that really matters. I've never shared it with anyone. I've never known anyone who would understand."
"Yes. Me. I love you. You can tell me anything."

"This I have to show you."

"Then show me."

"I can't show you here."

"Will you wait for me?"
"How can I answer? How can I know?"

Several nights later she is awakened. "Quetzl?"

"I escaped," he says. "But they'll find me. They'll come here. We have to go."

"What?" she says. "Is this your gift to me? I don't want to go to prison for helping you to escape."

"No, no. Didn't I tell you?" He sits beside her on the bed. He grabs her arm and she feels the pulse and weight of his passion. "You never wrote, you only visited twice, and when you came we fought. I have this all planned. You tell them I kidnapped you. If we're caught you tell them that. See, I have this rope. Let me tie you up."

"You must think I am really stupid."

"Lantanna," he begs. "Trust me. All I've ever done is love you. I escaped so you could show me your secret."

"It's not here," Lantanna says. "It's not in this room." She sees that he is sweating. She sees fear in his eyes.

"Lantanna, please."

It isn't that she really believes he loves her but because she hopes he does, that she agrees. He ties her wrists to the bedposts. She watches his profile as he does. So serious in his work he does not seem to notice her. With the final knot he kisses her. "I won't do this, if you don't want me to," he says as he lifts her thin nightgown.

When he kisses her, she kisses back. It is wonderful, she thinks, to only lie there. He is hungry. It has been a long time and she knows about appetites. He is touching her everywhere. As if his hands had wings. She closes her eyes and tries to feel only these feelings and forget, for a while, the longing, the empty hunger, her own appetite.

Afterward, he takes the silver scissors shaped like a bird from her dresser and saws through the rope. It dangles on the posts and the loops bracelet her wrists. When they stand up together there is a wet spot exposed on the bed. "That's good," he says, "it looks like I raped you."

It is getting light. They sneak down the stairs together as if Lanatanna lived in a house with the sort of parent who would interfere.

She takes him down the path, past his father's house, past the burnt trees of last summer's fire, to the meadow, which is stubby as a bad haircut but sprite with flowers.

"I didn't know it would grow back so quickly," he says.

She lies down. She ignores him. He finds this moving, that she has let him in so close now that he can see what she is alone. She picks a bud and puts it in her mouth. He is fascinated. This small gesture he had not seen before. She raises her arms, the knotted rope bracelets her wrists, her hands are like little white stars fallen into the meadow grass. The early morning strengthens with heat. He is restless. But she is still and he has learned patience from her stillness.

Finally, a very small yellow butterfly begins to flit about. It lands on the rope.

He thinks, this beautiful girl.

It flits around her lips.

Beautiful, beautiful.

It lands on the bud in her mouth.

Beauti-

She snaps her mouth shut. Chews. Swallows. She looks at him.

He looks at her.

She covers her face with her hands, like a child, as if by not seeing him she disappears. When she removes them, he is still watching her. She cannot bear what she sees. She closes her eyes.

"Go away," she says.

"I can help you."

"No. Go away."

"But I love you," he says.

She looks at him.

"Really," he says.

"And this?" she gestures toward her mouth.

"I'll help you," he says. "I'll stick by you while you work it out."
"This is not a problem," she says. "This is my appetite."

He bends to kiss her, but just above her mouth, hesitates.

"Don't worry," she says, "they don't fly back out."

She closes her eyes. For a long time the only sound is the scrying of bugs. Then she hears the sound of his feet like a scythe, cutting through the meadow grass.

Now, everything is different. She does what she has never done before. She picks another bud. Places it in her mouth. Today she will eat until she has enough. A small blue flits about. She waits. Waits. Waits. It lands on her tongue. Wings fluttering. She bites. In the distance, she hears sirens. Chews. Yes, everything is different now. Swallows. It even tastes different. It tastes better.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Copyright M. Rickert (1999) originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1999. Reprinted with kind permission from the author.

Call for Papers: Representations of Women and Science

2008-02-28T14:58:00.005-05:00

Tip from Laura Q over at Feminist SF - The Blog! from the science and literature reading group:


Université Stendhal Grenoble III
UFR d'Etudes Anglophones CEMRA 3016
4-6 June 2009
International pluridisciplinary conference

Women in science, Women of science: figures and representations from 18th
century to present.

Scientific knowledge has always been, both empirically and politically, a
masculine stronghold. Since the mid-19th century, however, despite
institutional and cultural resistance, women have progressively gained
access to scientific studies and careers.

The first theme of study will focus on emblematic female scientists of the
18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Papers may concentrate on historical,
social and political analyses of how, why and when women "infiltrated" the
scientific world and (re-) appropriated scientific discourse at different
moments in History. Another possible approach is to analyse the reactions
of the scientific community/ the press… to such women.

The second theme of study will analyse the evolution of (pseudo-)
scientific discourse on women and women's condition (for example medical
or eugenist discourse, etc).

The third theme will be devoted to fictional representations: how does the
popular culture construct and vehicle images of women of science and women
in the world of science? From the famous scientist's wife/daughter to the
androgynous cyborg of feminist science-fiction, to what extent have these
representations evolved over time? What impact did the feminist movement
of the 1970s have on how women are seen and how they see themselves in
relation to the sciences? Papers which include studies of television,
cinema and various genres of pulp-fiction will be welcome.

The conference will be followed by a publication.

Deadline for submissions: November 14th 2008

Please send a 300- to 350- word abstract (in French or in English) to the
co-chairs

Donna.Andreolle@u-grenoble3.fr
Veronique.Molinari@u-grenoble3.fr
And to the research secretary
Agnes.Vere@u-grenoble3.fr with the heading «WS abstract, copy»

New Women's Worlds In Fantasy

2008-02-20T10:04:00.005-05:00

There's an interesting article in the Guardian about women writers of speculative fiction
here
It mentions these writers:

Ekaterina Sedia
James Tiptree Jr
Connie Willis
Nancy Kress
Kelly Link
Catherynne M Valente
Marly Youmans
Theodora Goss
Cat Rambo
Erzebet YellowBoy

Aircraft Worker, California 1942

2008-02-18T10:24:00.004-05:00

photographer: D. Bransby
Part of the Library of Congress collection.

This Should Have Been Printed In Femspec

2008-02-17T07:44:00.006-05:00

(From Volume 7.2) It was suggested that we start a feature, "This Should Have Been Printed in Femspec," in order to at least point our readers to possible creative works of interest. This might have several purposes, including creating awareness of certain writers for critics to incorporate; providing models to writers who might submit to us; raising awareness of the writers thus recognized that we are an additional venue for their work. Send in ideas of your own. Here is what has been suggested so far:

Nancy Etchemendy. "Werewife." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1 999. A funny story about how a wife changes into another sort of being for the in-laws' visits.

Vance Aandahl. "Deathmatch in Disneyland." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1987. Another funny story, this one about Nature Girl Nelson, a female pro wrestler who is dying of "vegerexia" (eating nothing but vegetables) when she thaws out way into the future.

Kristine Kathryn Rush. "The Women of Whale Rock." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1999. A rather weird story, not particularly feminist, but a new take on mermaids.

M. Rickert.'The Girl Who Ate Butterflies." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1 999. Beautiful magical real story that shows the influence of García Márquez.
[Update: Mary Rickert has given us permission to reprint this story here ]

Transformative Works and Cultures

2008-02-05T06:16:00.000-05:00

Transformative Works and Cultures, a new electronic journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works, has just released its first Call for Papers:

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is a Gold Open Access international peer-reviewed journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works edited by Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson.

TWC publishes articles about popular media, fan communities, and transformative works, broadly conceived. We invite papers on all related topics, including but not limited to fan fiction, fan vids, mashups, machinima, film, TV, anime, comic books, video games, and any and all aspects of the communities of practice that surround them. TWC’s aim is twofold: to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics, and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community.

We encourage innovative works that situate these topics within contemporary culture via a variety of critical approaches, including but not limited to feminism, queer theory, critical race studies, political economy, ethnography, reception theory, literary criticism, film studies, and media studies. We also encourage authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship, hypertext articles, or other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. Transformative Works and Cultures copyrights under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Theory accepts blind peer-reviewed essays that are often interdisciplinary, with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offers expansive interventions in the field of fan studies (5,000-8,000 words).

Praxis analyzes the particular, in contrast to Theory’s broader vantage. Essays are blind peer reviewed and may apply a specific theory to a formation or artifact; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; or otherwise relate transformative phenomena to social, literary, technological, and/or historical frameworks (4,000-7,000 words).

Symposium is a section of editorially reviewed concise, thematically contained short essays that provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures (1,500-2,500 words).

Reviews offer critical summaries of items of interest in the fields of fan and media studies, including books, new journals, and Web sites. Reviews incorporate a description of the item’s content, an assessment of its likely audience, and an evaluation of its importance in a larger context (1,500-2,500 words). Review submissions undergo editorial review; submit inquiries first to review@transformativeworks.org.

TWC has rolling submissions. Contributors should submit online through the Web site

http://journal.transformativeworks.org
Inquiries may be sent to the editors
editor(at)transformativeworks(dot)org

Review of Islands of Women and Amazons

2008-02-02T12:29:00.004-05:00

Review from Geografiska Annaler · 87 B (2005) the international journal publishing articles covering all theoretical and empirical aspects of human and economic geography.

Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations
and Realities. Batya Weinbaum. (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1999). ISBN 0292791267

This ambitious and wide-ranging study explores
material across a very long historical and a very
broad geographical sweep. Batya Weinbaum argues
that the myth of Amazons and of separate
communities of women living apart on islands has
had diverse and often contradictory meanings. She
does not attempt to shape her findings in one direction,
towards a liberal or conservative reading. But
she does underpin her entire assemblage of examples
by her belief in archetypes. The advantage of
this is that it allows her to investigate nuanced similarities
and differences among texts and practices
as far distant from each other as the Odyssey and the
Mexican Marian island, Isla Mujeres, dominated
(and to some degree formed) by American tourism.

The principal disadvantage of her devotion to archetypes
is that, in the end, all this diversity is in
danger of being homogenized.
So her work presents a paradox: encyclopaedic
in its array of instances, prodigious in its devotion
to knowledge of the field, it yet often simplifies the
findings of the many authorities she cites from different
fields of enquiry. They all return, in her analysis,
to the archetype of the Amazon. This makes
for a certain repetitiousness but it would be ungrateful
to insist too much on that, since the work
offers an extraordinary quarry and is the fruit of
long thought and observation.
Weinbaum faces the problem of working with a
rich symbol: where are its boundaries? She opens
her discussion with page after page of provocative
questions, ranging across actual events, story formation,
cultural interpretation, ancient accounts,
recent TV series. This allows her to trawl in copious
records, but after several pages the suspicion gathers
that perhaps for her all these questions have a
single answer. So that moving through Apollonius,
Herodotus, Paul Friedrich, Prester John, Sir John
Mandeville, an early Renaissance Spanish writer
and a missionary off the coast of China to reach
the question Is this the same Womens Land to
which Maxine Hong Kingston referred in Chinamen
(1977)? I shout No! while uneasily suspecting
that I am supposed to be saying Yes.
The problem is signalled also by the trouble
Weinbaum has with the frequently repeated word
really: to take some examples from within a halfpage:
Was this supposedly manless island to the
south of China really a place where women mated
with the winds? Did women really arm themselves
with bows and arrows, live without men, and
mate with cannibalistic lovers? Did Columbus
really think he had arrived in the east when he sighted
the island, Matinoto? Did Columbus really
take this island to be the refuge the ancients wrote
about in relation to the Themyscian Amazons
(Jane [1930] 1970)? Was this present-day tourist
paradise retreat once really a matriarchy? A convent?
A harem? A site of goddess worship? (p. 7)
Some of these questions invite scepticism, some
are quite imponderable, and some seem to imply a
steady reality behind them by which they can all
be judged, yet for which evidence is lacking. They
issue from a scatter-gun and are gathered up together
without discrimination.
Of course, this is in the first chapter where, engagingly,
Weinbaum seeks to arouse in the reader
a shared fascination with her subject, and some of
her later chapters proceed at a slower pace. For example,
Chapter 8, Amazons go American: Montalvo
s Sergas De Esplandian concentrates on this
single [1510] work after opening with an interesting
comparison with Christine de Pizans The Book
of the City of Ladies [1405]. Weinbaum unfolds a
series of gendered contrasts between the texts: for
example, Montalvos Amazons killed their male
children, while Pizans gave their male children
back to the fathers. (p. 129). She then pursues the
insight that one cultures utopia may well be another
cultures dystopia and that texts preserve faint
traces of earlier understandings in among their asserted
ideologies. In particular, she argues, this will
be so where oral elements have penetrated the written
form. These may not be fresh insights within the
academic communities from whose work she
draws, but there is a freshness in placing them within
such a sweeping study, and one that also frankly
embraces autobiographical elements.
The second part of the work draws on anthropology,
sociology, popular culture and tourism to give
a rounded picture of the changes in her relations to
her materials. She has lived for a number of years
on the Mexican island she has particularly studied,
Isla Mujeres, and she gives a wry account of culture
clashes brought about by her trajectory between a
North American university and the habits of the island
culture. She declares: My experience of seeking
a cultural identity on the island, and of the discrediting
dominant culture of the university, colors
all my interpretations (p. 168). The rest of the book
explores the ways in which, in her analysis, that island
becomes a communal work of fiction created
by tourists and their mentors. What they all seek,
she suggests, is exactly that archetype of matriarchal
untouched female space she associates with
the figure of the Amazon. So the book comes to rest
in a demonstration of the ways in which material
objects in leisure primitivism bear on persisting
needs and fantasies across centuries. Whether or
not one accepts Weinbaums belief in an archetypal
base to all this diversity of expression, there is a
marvellous range of materials gathered together in
this work and a personal passion in its exploration.

Gillian Beer
University of Cambridge
UK

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Contact

2008-02-01T07:00:00.001-05:00

femspec(at)gmail(dot)com

Volume 7, Number 2

2008-01-29T13:14:00.004-05:00

Issue 7.2 Table of Contents:
[Cover Image: The Grain Goddess (2001) by Jenna Weston]FEMSPEC VOLUME 7.2

BATYA WEINBAUM: Editorial
Batya Weinbaum gives an overview of the journal and announces numerous achievements and future projects at FemSpec. The winners of the first 'Five Year Contest' are revealed; a new section begins called 'Ethnography Through Your Soul' which combines personal narrative with current research; a forthcoming feature called 'This Should Have Been Printed In Femspec' is presented; and a memorial section begins by commemorating Tillie Olsen and Monique Wittig.

BRUCE E. DRUSHEL: Pandora's Box in Cyberspace: The On-line Alternative Fan Sites of Hercules: The Legendary Journey
Drushel looks at the North American television show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It provides a background to the show and to the community of fans who express their admiration by writing their own stories based on the series. Bruce Drushel investigates various websites where fans write fiction, and makes a detailed inquiry of some of the homoerotic or 'slash' writing.

ROMAYNE SMITH FULLERTON: Not 'Of Woman Born': Fairy Tale Mothers for Postmodern Literary Children.
Fullerton examines the subversive potential of re-casting fairy tale stereotypes into postmodern fiction, focusing on the writers Angela Carter, Jenny Diski and Jeanette Winterson. Romayne Smith Fullerton writes about how these authors have adapted and borrowed from the monstrous and imaginative characters of classic tales. Her argument suggests that by tinkering with these stereotypes, the writers in her study have discovered ways to limit the unhappy realities of patriarchy in their fiction. This is done by challenging and sidestepping the problems of the feminine in fairy tales.

MARY KIRK: Vision of the Possible: Models for Women's Heroic Journey Applied to Madrone's Path in The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Kirk applies a series of feminist interpretations to the myth of the hero. By pointing out the somewhat misogynist, mono-myth of the male hero as laid out in the work of Joseph Campbell, Mary Kirk explores other models of heroism created by feminist scholars such as Susan Lichtman, Carol Pearson, and Katherine Pope. Mary Kirk then tests out these models by applying them to a self-actualized character who lives in a feminist utopia: Madrone in Starhawk's first novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing.

C. S'THEMBILE WEST: The Competing Demands of Community Survival and Self-Preservation in Octavia Butler's Kindred.
West demonstrates that Octavia Butler's novel Kindred is both instructive and challenging because it forces the reader to re-imagine the complicated decisions made by Black women during chattel enslavement. C S'Thembile West outlines the complexity of Black women's lives and emphasizes the connections between the practice of chattel slavery, US economic viability and contemporary social problems.

GLORIA ORENSTEIN: When the Imaginary Becomes Real, as Surrealism Said It Would: 'All the Rest Is Litterature'
Gloria Orenstein writes about her journey to Lapland and initiation by a Sami shaman. She tries to assimilate these strange experiences into her belief system using the surrealist conviction that acts of the imagination can begin to manifest themselves into reality. Her spiritual journey gives her a greater tolerance and respect for her own religious background and those of her students.

ELLA JO STREET: The Origin of Tarot
A series of chance encounters leads Ella Jo Street on a journey to Bishnupur in North East India, searching out the origins of the Tarot Pack. There she meets Mr. Fouzdar, the only person in the world who is currently painting Dasabatar cards. These large circular cards, originating from the 14th Century bare remarkable similarities to Tarot Cards and lead Ella Jo Street to wonder about the historical and linguistic links between the packs.

MONICA DE NEYMET DE GIACOMAN: Living Hours (excerpt)
With an introduction by Batya Weinbaum , FemSpec presents a translated excerpt from M'nica de Neymet de Giacoman's first novel Las Horas Vivas.

KATHLEEN McCONNELL: The Inevitable Feminist Treatise on Catwoman (excerpt)
A comic poem outlining preparations for a text on the much maligned film Catwoman, with references to many other television and cinema heroines.

AIDAN THOMPSON: Maple Tree (excerpt from Crossings)
A short text takes the reader from Oberlin Lane to Calcutta, by way of Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Simon and a very talented owl.

ERIC DROWN: 'Buffy, Who?' Review of Athena's Daughters: Television's New Woman Warriors, edited by Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy.

ERIC DROWN: 'Ooooo!, We Hate Bush.' Review of Hollywood's New Radicalism: War, Globalization and the Movies from Reagan to George W. Bush, by Ben Dickerson.

SHANNAN PALMA: Review of From Alien to The Matrix: Reading SF Films,
by Roz Kaveney.

A memorial to Tillie Lerner Olsen (1912 - 2007) by Ardys of Berkeley.
A memorial to Monique Wittig (1935 - 2003) by Gloria Orenstein.

BOOKS AND MEDIA RECEIVED: 44 titles of interest.

Bluebeard

2008-01-27T08:02:00.001-05:00

Goose Girl

2008-01-27T07:37:00.000-05:00

Goose Girl at the Well by Elenore Abbott

Submissions

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Only subscribers may submit to Femspec.

For CRITICAL ESSAYS, POETRY, ART, MEMOIRS, DRAMA and FICTION

Please submit two copies of your piece *without* any indication of your name on them so that your piece may be read anonymously. Include a separate sheet with the title and genre of your piece, your name, address, email, phone and a two sentence abstract . Also, include a disc with your document in Word and RTF format. All submissions should conform to MLA standards, as found in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. MLA guidelines can also be found on-line at http://www.mla.org. Any submission that does not come in with sufficient copies will not be sent through the review process at our expense.

Send submissions to:

Femspec
1610 Rydalmount
Cleveland Heights OH
44118.

All editorial enquiries should be directed to Batya Weinbaum.

BOOK REVIEW GUIDELINES.

These are intended to be flexible, not rigid, and if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us.

GUIDELINES

Head your review with the title of the book. Next is the bibliographic information, including author, title (in italics), city of publication, publisher, year, page length, binding, price, and ISBN number. If you are reviewing a serial, include the ISSN number. Please include all of this information.

Example:
Sargent, Pamela. Climb the Wind. New York: HarperPrism, 1999. 436 pp., cloth, $25. ISBN 0-06-105029-6.

Content:

Reviewers should keep Femspec’s diverse audience in mind -- writers, readers, and scholars of feminist speculative fiction, poetry, and theory. Reviews should encourage critical rather than merely aesthetic response, and, especially in the case of fiction, should avoid summarizing a book’s narrative. Writers should consider the following questions in writing their reviews. Note that since Femspec reviews fiction, poetry, and academic work, not all questions will be relevant to all books reviewed. Contact the book review editor if you need clarification.

1. What is the book about? Don’t summarize the plot, but do identify the genre or sub-genre the book belongs to. (utopia, dystopia, alternate history, etc.) Your description should enable scholars and teachers to decide whether the book is useful to their research or classroom curricula. What courses would the book be good for? What level (freshman, senior, etc.)?
2. What is the context of the book? Where does it fit into the author’s other works, if any, and into the tradition(s) of feminist speculative fiction and criticism? Context should place the book in terms of its relationship to other texts with which it can be compared. If the book is an anthology, indicate whether it contains mostly new essays.
3. What is the scholarly potential of the book? What interesting issues are raised? What insights are offered? What moral problems are addressed and how useful is the author’s treatment of them? How well researched is the book, and does the author’s bibliography (if applicable) provide useful resources for further study?

Style:
1. Do not use footnotes. All references to the text should be noted in parentheses with the relevant page number.
2. If you refer to other works in your review, include a separate list of works cited at the end of your review. Include relevant page numbers in parentheses in the text.
3. Do not refer to other reviews of the book.
4. Double-space your review. If you are using a computer, it will be immensely helpful if you use Times New Roman 11 pt. font.
5. Finish your review with your name in capital letters, your institutional affiliation, if applicable and you wish to include it, and email address, if you wish to include it. Right-hand justify this block of text.

Length:
Reviews of anthologies may be up to 1200 words, depending on whether you have been asked to review the entire contents or only selected contributions. Consult the book review editor. Reviews of poetry and fiction should not exceed 1000 words. Do not feel that you must meet the length limit ? sometimes a short review is preferable.

Deadlines:
Reviews are due 8 weeks after you receive the book. They may be submitted by post, fax, or email. If you submit by post, include a disc copy in MS Word 95 or higher.

About Femspec

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A brief history of our organization

The editorial group grew as an outgrowth of the Science Fiction/Fantasy Area of the American/Popular Culture Association. We came together at a conference in San Antonio in April of 1997, discussed our experiences of non-feminist editorial practices by SF journals that were male-dominated, and the bias towards realism in journals that published feminist literary criticism or creative works. A group of us decided to found our own journal, the first issue of which appeared in September 1999; in the process of which, our organization grew. Our impetus came from the collectively perceived lack of attention to science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and supernatural works in feminist journals and audiences; the lack of consistently developed levels of feminism in science fiction criticism; and the inadequacy of magical realist publishing outlets and forums in the United States. The first issue was well-received and sold out in three months. Since then, a total of six more, bringing our in-print issues to seven, have appeared. In the fall of 1998, the founding editor in chief, Batya Weinbaum, was offered a position teaching Multicultural Literature at Cleveland State University, where the journal was housed for five years.

How our organization encourages diverse groups of women to work together

The journal has a multicultural focus, with an upcoming theme issues on speculative works by African American women, and another on race and culture. We have already published 2.2, the first collection of Native women's speculative art and writing. We have collected and printed articles on Asian American women's writing, Latina magical realism, Jewish women's magical realism, and now intend to create a specifically Jewish women's work. Our special girls' issue is "under construction," with contracts already mailed to authors and returned, and final editing being completed. This is the same status as an upcoming issue on film.

The editing group is diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and age, including emeritus scholars, SF fans, creative writers and critics in various fields at an array of universities in the US and internationally. We advertise through MELUS, the Journal of the Society of Multiethnic Literature of the United States; Journal of Research on Mothering; Meridians' SF Studies; Extrapolation; Foundation; and other venues to attract diverse groups of women who otherwise would not come into contact with each other.

The first issue of our bi-annual publication included the writings of two African Americans, and we have a regular girls' feature where we publish writings about girls' literature or writing by girls. Girls' art also appeared in the first issue. We also have salons and readings at bookstores, and at conferences such as National Women's Studies, Popular/American Culture, and International Association for Fantasy in the Arts. On particular issues, such as the Native issue, we work with women from special constituencies such as Rachael Whitehawk Day of the North American Cultural Center.

The current activities of our organization

We are currently involved in a subscription sales campaign to reach the goal of 100 library in the interest of getting picked up by a university publisher to expand the distribution of our work. We process manuscripts on a regular basis, having received over 500 submissions and having accepted about 5%, with an additional 15% after revision. We arrange postings on listservs, distribution of flyers and brochures at conferences, review of the issue in library and small press journals, production and sales of promotional products such as posters and mugs, sessions at national conferences, bookstore readings, exchange ads with other publications and journals, manuscript review, and a promotional webpage. We are also in the process of getting posted on GenderWatch, a database held in libraries. We review books received, conduct a readers forum, excerpt historical documents, conduct cover art competition, and offer on campus apprentice/internships for women and other students who volunteer to work on the project.

How our organization is structured

The founding editor and editor in chief works with an Advisory Board with artists and scholars such as Florence Howe, Octavia Butler, Suzy Charnas, Joanna Russ, Pamela Sargeant and Diane Skafte. In addition, contributing editors Marleen Barr, Samuel Delany, Darko Suvin, and Gloria Orenstein are quite active as well as an editorial board of people who primarily act as reviewers that currently stands at about 10. Furthermore, local editorial consultants are involved with the Journal from Cleveland State University as well as Case Western Reserve University. Some students volunteer or work each semester, with student involvement averaging about 12 a year. In addition, there are special editors in charge of developing their own issues who may or may not be on the Board.

How policy and decisions are made

The Femspec Local Advisory Committee meets once a month as a formal body, with smaller meetings between the monthly dates. These are announced and open meeting that involve all people interested in or engaged at any level of the project. Otherwise decisions are made in consultation with consultants, board, and advisory members as well as contributing editors. Sometimes that happens through our editorial listerv.

How we measure the success of our organization

Success of Femspec is gauged as follows. By the positive response of people involved over the first years; by the expressed positive experience of women and minority students who have volunteered, interned or worked on the journal and ask for extended participation for more credit or more hours in subsequent semesters; by the success in fundraising from other universities and individuals who have contributed to the journal including University of Southern California, University of Texas at Dallas, Oakland University, State University of New York at Stonybrook; by the increased number of submissions; by the willingness of esteemed scholars to give us their work; by the willingness of authors and publishers to send us review copies; by authors' willingness to revise and resubmit according to our production schedule; by the volunteered time of scholars even in their sabbatical year to work on fundraising and grants; by the interest of local bookstores in hosting events; by the positive media coverage we got, for example, in the Cleveland paper the Plain Dealer, The Free Times, Magazines for Libraries, and in campus newspapers such as On Campus, The Vindicator, and The Cleveland Stater; and by some of the following responses: "The first issue of Femspec… exceeded my expectations! It is gorgeous and excellent." Oregon Writer; "A striking first issue of an exciting new journal." Karen Schneider, Western Kentucky Univ.; "Lively." John Crawford, West End Press; "What an artifact." Carol Stevens, Society for Utopian Studies; "An amazing thing here." Marleen S. Barr, Sci-fi Critic;"I absolutely LOVE it!!!" Patricia Melzer, Clark University; "Refreshing-finally making a place in academia for such things." Theresa Carter; "The issue looks beautiful!" Christina Springer, Philadelphia Performance Poet.

More About Femspec

1. We are recommended on www.litwomen.org. Here’s an excerpt from their glowing review: “The editorial board includes some of feminism’s most radical, visionary, and critical thinkers and writers… Overall, this journal covers an important area of literature and thought often overlooked in feminist scholarship… FEMSPEC is definitely worth the attentions of those who look to these genres for feminist vision.”

2. We are part of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database, an on-line, searchable compilation by topic and author. The Database is an inclusive tool, designed to cover all aspects of science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural, and weird fiction. Check out their site at http://access-co2.tamu.edu/hhall/

3. We are listed in Magazines for Libraries, edited by Katz & Katz under “Women: Feminist and Special Interest” in the 10th edition.

4. Based upon the recommendation of Magazines for Libraries, beginning in January 2004 we will be included in Humanities Full Text, Humanities Abstracts and Humanities Index. Humanities Full Text is cited as “the most comprehensive resource available in its field.” It supplies readers with the full text of articles plus abstracts and bibliographic indexing of scholarly sources.

5. Our table of contents is listed in Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents, published by The University of Wisconsin System.

6. Femspec’s calls for submissions are prominently listed in various locations such as the University of Pennsylvania’s “History Journal News,” University of Maryland’s “Diversity Database,” the Network of East-West Women, the University of Minnesota’s “Voices from the Gap: Women Writers of Color,” Bucknell College’s ListProc, the University of Toronto Cquest, Rutgers University’s “Howz Updates,” Michigan State University’s Jewish Studies newsletter, Callihoo’s newsletter (a weekly writers’ group in Salt Lake City), Queer-E (an electronic message board), www.queertheory.com, “News Notes: E-Publication for the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States,” “Chora: A Community for Emerging Feminist Scholars,”University of Dundee, Narrative Alchemy (a newsletter in Finnish), www.speculations.com and www.multiculturaladvantage.com.

7. Femspec’s web page is linked from numerous sites, including www.sfsite.com/depts/magazol.htm, www.feministsf.org, Association for Research on Pop Culture, www.feminista.com, “N. Paradoxa” (an international feminist art journal), www.sfaite.com, the German women’s network “Frauennetzwerk” as well as the German-language sites www.feministische-sf.de and www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de, Council of Editors of Learned Journals, Extrapolation (a SF journal based at Kent State University), www.gayellowpages.com, www.sf3.org (Society for the Furtherance and Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy), the International Center for Women Playwrights, the Cleveland Women’s On-line Calendar, and Women’s Print Periodicals on the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press.

8. We have exhibited at conferences such as Pop Culture and National Women’s Studies, and served on panels with other editors and publishers including from Greenwood, Feminist Teacher, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and NWSAJournal.

9. Our advertisements have appeared in Extrapolation, Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, MELUS, Frontiers, Science Fiction Studies, Paradoxa, and the American Educational Studies Association.

10. We are listed as a resource on numerous Women’s Studies web pages such as Clark University, the University of York, University of Wisconsin, DePauw University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

11. We have signed a contract to appear in Gender Watch database, which will bring the journal on line as a Women’s Studies resource at over 100 libraries.

12. We were chosen as the Website of the week at www.artwomen.org.

13. Femspec is available at a reduced rate for members of the Science Fiction Research Association (www.sfra.org).

Editors

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Editor: Batya Weinbaum

Founding Co-Editor: Robin Anne Reid

Book Review Editor: Edrie Sobstyl

Past Associate Editor: Ritch Calvin

Advisory Board: Suzy Charnas, Florence Howe, Joanna Russ, Pamela Sargent

Contributing Editors: Marleen S. Barr, Samuel R. Delany, Gloria Orenstein, Darko Suvin

Editorial Board: Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawaii-Manoa), Beatriz Badikian (Roosevelt University), William Clemente (Peru State College) ,Theresa Crater (Metropolitan StateCollege of Denver), Kathe Davis (Kent State University), Joan Gordon (Nassau Community College), Veronica Hollinger (Trent University), Phillipa Kafka (Professor Emerita), Sylvia Kelso (James Cook University), Laurel Lampela (University of New Mexico), Claudia Mesch (Arizona State University), Lynne Reed (HOWL), Gina Wisker (Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge)

Editorial Consultants: Sima Aprahamian, Brian Attebury, Bruce Beatie, Christine Boyko-Head, Cheryl Brooke, Elizabeth Pandolfo Briggs, Marcus Casal, Debra Rae Cohen, Tama Engleking, Mary Fambrough, Kass Fleisher, Sibelian Forrester, Joanne Gallivan, John Gerlach, Annie Jovan-Westlund, Susan Kornfield, Randal Knoper, Helen M. Kress, Ted Lardner, David Larson, Antonio Medina-Rivera, Patricia Melzer, Liora Moriel, Diana Orendi, Donna Phillips, Ruth Schwartz, Carol Stevens, Alana Suskind

---Biographies---

Batya Weinbaum taught multicultural literature at Cleveland State University, 1998-2003 and currently edits the journal at home as well as researching and writing for Women Review of Books, WeMoon, various encylopedias, and continuing to publish her own critical and creative work. She received her PhD from University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1996, and a Masters from SUNY Buffalo in American Studies in 1986. She has published Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities (U of Texas Press, 1999) and two books of feminist theory with South End Press, and a collection of short stories with Clothespin Fever. Her critical work has appeared in such journals as NWSAJournal, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Utopian Studies, Monthly Review, Review of Radical Political Economics, Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, Foundation, Women in Judaism, Biography, Frontiers, and Studies in Progressive Judaism as well as Peace Review. She has also published fiction and poetry in venues such as Home Planet News, Spectrum, Key West Review, Feminist Review, Town Crier, Big Fish, and ThoughtCrime. She is the mother of one, Ola, and in the summer really craves VT. She is working on an eight act play, Waiting for Justice, and completion of a novel, Mirages and Nightmares: Sasha Weitzwoman in the Mad Hotel, which is about Jerusalem. She works with the Cleveland Heights Homegrown Learners Cooperative, and lectures on such topics as Ecopsychology and Healing. She sells her own art online at reclamationproject.info, and wearable arts products at redserpentarts.com. Proceeds help to support the functioning of the journal.

Robin Reid received her doctorate degree from the Univeristy of Washington in 1992, and she is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the Texas A&M University-Commerce. She has published both Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion and Arthur C. Clarke: A Critical Companion. Her essays have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, SFRA Review, Feminist Nightmares, and Diversity: A Journal of Multicultural Issues.

Ritch Calvin is currently an Instructor of Women's Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He holds a PhD in Comparative Studies (with a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies). His dissertation, entitled, "A Feminism of Their Own: Escritoras mexicanas, Chicana Writers and Autochthonous Feminisms," examines the feminism of four writers: Rosario Castellanos, Brianda Domecq, Gloria Anzaldúa and Ana Castillo. He has written on a variety of topics and writers, including, Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, and C. J. Cherryh. His publications have appeared in Enculturation, Feminism in a Multi-Cultural Context, and SFRA Review.

Born in Manhattan, New York, Suzy McKee Charnas was educated at Barnard College and New York University. The writer of original and highly regarded novels, she was awarded the Nebula Award, Mythopoetic Society Award for a best children's book, and a Gilgamesh Award for best fantasy stories. Her "Boobs," a short story, won the Hugo Award in 1989. A noted History and English teacher in a girl's high school in Nigeria, Suzy Charnas also served in the United States Peace Corps. Her books include: The Slave and the Free (Orb 1999), The Conqueror's Child (Tor 1999), The Furies (Tor Books 1994), Dorothea Dreams (Arbor House 1986), and The Bronze King (Houghton 1985).

Born in New York, Florence Howe was educated at Hunter College, Smith College, and the University of Wisconsin. From the many positions that she has held, Howe was a lecturer in English, a professor of English, and the founder and president of the Feminist Press. As a writer, editor, and publisher, she won the awards of the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 1971-73, many other fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Fellowship for the study of women in.society, and the Hall of Fame honor at Hunter College. As a contributer to the field of women's studies and feminist scholarship, Florence Howe has made a unique and critical voice for the American feminist movement, especially as founder of the Feminist Press.

Born in New York, Joanna Russ was educated at Cornell University and Yale University. She held many positions as a lecturer in speech, assistant professor of English, and professor of English at the University of Washington. Combining a feminist'perspective and a sophisticated style in writing science fiction novels, Joanna has become the recipient of the Nebula Awards, Hugo Award, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1974-75. From her many short stories, "When It Changed," won a Science Fiction Writers of America Award in 1972. Her The Female Man, published in 1975 remains a classic in feminist science fiction. Her other books include: What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism (St. Martin's Press 1998), To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism, and Science Fiction (Indiana University Press 1995) Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (Crossing Press 1985), Kittatinny: A Tale of Magic (Daughters Publishing 1978), and Alyx (G. K. Hall 1976).

Pamela Sargent (1948 --) is the author of numerous novels and short stories, and she has edited a number of anthologies. Among her novels are Cloned Lives (1976), The Golden Space (1982), The Alien Upstairs (1983), Eye of the Comet (1984), The Shore of Women (1986), and Heart of the Sun (1997). She has also authored the popular Venus series, which includes the novels, Venus of Dreams (1986), Venus of Shadows (1988), and Child of Venus (2000). Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, If, Orbit, and Universe. The short fiction has also appeared in a number of collections, including Starshadows (1977), The Best of Pamela Sargent (1987), Behind the Eyes of Dreamers and Other Short Novels (2002), and The Mountain Cage and Other Stories (2002). Among her edited collections are Bio-Futures (1976), Women of Wonder (1975), More Women of Wonder (1976), The New Women of Wonder (1978), Women of Wonder: The Classic Years (1995), and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years (1995). Sargent has contributed several books to the Star Trek universe.

Paula Gunn Allen (1939- 2008), a poet, novelist, and editor, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Cubero, New Mexico. She received a bachelor's degree in English (1966) and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing (1968) from the University of Oregon. She received her doctorate in American studies with an emphasis on Native American literature (1975) from the University of New Mexico. Her books of poetry include The Blind Lion (1974), A Cannon between My Knees (1981), Shadow Country (1982), and Life Is a Fatal Disease (1996). Her novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows was published in 1983. In addition, she has contributed to The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986), Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook (1991), As Long as the Rivers Flow: The Stories of 9 Native Americans (with Patricia Clark Smith) (1996). Finally, she has edited From the Center: A Folio: Native American Art and Poetry (1981), Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course Design (1983). Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women (1990), Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1900-1970 (1994), and Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1974-1995 (1996). Memorial Site: http://www.paulagunnallen.net/

Marleen S. Barr is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. She won the 1997 Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Her most recent book is Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies.

Samuel Delany, born in New York, attended the City College in New York, 1960, and 1962-63. As a writer, he won the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Samuel Delany is also a noted author of scripts, a director, and an editor for two short films. His best novel is Babel-17, a winner of the Science Fiction Writers of America Award in 1966. Samuel Delany has also earned the notation as the innovative and imaginative science fiction writer of today. He currently teaches Queer Studies at Temple University. His other books include The Bridge of Lost Desire (Arbor House 1987), Dhalgren (University Press of New England 1996), Atlantis: Three Tales (Wesleyan University Press 1995), The Star Pits (Tor Books 1989), and Equinox (Masquerade 1994).

Gloria Orenstein received her Ph.D. in 1971 from NYU, a Masters in 1961 from Radcliffe, and a BA in 1959 from Brandeis. She is a tenured professor in the Deptartment of Comparative Literature at University of Southern California, where she also works in Gender Studies. She has previously taught at Douglass College of Rutgers University, and organized the NYC Women's Salon in the 1970s. She is active in the field of ecofeminism, and has published numerous articles on literature, art, ecofeminism, shamanisn and religion Her books published include Multicultural Celebrations: The Paintings of Betty LaDuke (1993), The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990), Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (1990), and The Theater of the Marvelous: Surrealism and the Contemporary Stage (1975).

Darko Suvin was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at McGill University in Montreal until he retired. He is also an author of Russian Science Fiction in 1956-1974, and other works. He serves FEMSPEC as a Contributing Editor and a noted author. His books include the ground breaking Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979), Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of Knowledge and Power (1983), and To Brecht and Beyond (1984). For several years he also edited Science-Fiction Studies.

A part of the faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Cristina Bacchilega is a Professor in the Department of English. She received a B.A. from the University of Rome, Italy, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She also is a writer of contemporary fiction, folklore, fairy tales, and feminist theory. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellow in 2001, the Board of Regents' Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1991, and the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature Excellence in Teaching Award in 1988. Cristina has published on Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Maxine Hong Kingston, women writers and the fairy tale, and fairy tales in Hawaii. Her current work includes a study of the representation of place in twentieth-century narratives that adapt native Hawaii's traditional stories. She is also the reveiw editor of Marvels & Tales: Jouranl of Fairy-Tale Studies.

Beatriz Badikian was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has resided in Chicago since 1970. In 1994 Badikian earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she specialized in poetry and multiethnic literature. Since 1994 Badikian has been a faculty member at Roosevelt University where she teaches literature., writing, and women's studies. Her publications include: Mapmaker Revisited. (Gladsome 1999); Mapmaker (Red Triangle 1994); Akewa is a Woman and Other Poems (Abrazo Press 1989). Her poems have also been translated and published in India, Greece, Mexico, Argentina, and Canada.

Since 1992, Bill Clemente has taught at Peru State College in southeastern Nebraska, where he is a Professor and Chair of English. His teaching schedule includes a variety of courses, including Non-Western Literature, Film Studies, Creative Writing, and World Literature. A few years ago, he introduced a composition course that focuses on Science Fiction, which he tries to teach once a year. Director of the college's Honors Program, he also offers a course on Asian Literature. A reader of sf for nearly forty years, Bill has been a fan and a student of Feminist sf for the past decade and some change. He was also a judge for the James Tiptree Award, which honors gender-bending Speculative Fiction. His publications in that area include essays on James Tiptree, Jr. and Suzy Charnas. Bill and his wife, Linda, are also the authors of a biography of one of Canada's premier authors: Gabrielle Roy: Creation and Memory. In addition, Bill is an avid bird watcher and the editor of The Nebraska Bird Review.

Theresa Crater did her undergraduate work in English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the school where you can throw a rock and it will hit at least two writers. Then, Theresa studied Vedic philosophy and taught meditation until she ran out of money. Deciding she did not want to be a secretary for the rest of her life, she returned to graduate school and received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, in beautiful, rainy Seattle. Theresa's first teaching job was in the Writing Center at the Evergreen State College, the alternative school that had the distinction of being slated for closure by right-wing state senators every four years until it gained aninternational reputation. Theresa went on to teach humanities and writing at South Puget Sound Community College. Seeking the sun, she moved to Colorado and has been at Metropolitan State College of Denver since 1992. Theresa has written one novel, God in a Box, about her experiences in the meditation movements of the 1970s, and is working on a second, Key to the Halls, an Egyptian mystery. She has edited a composition reader, Outside the Box, looking at paradigm shifts in various disciplines, due out from Longman in 2003. Her scholarly writings have focused mainly on Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing and The X-Files.

Kathe Davis is Director of Women's Studies at Kent State University in Ohio, where she teaches women's writing, contemporary poetry and gender issues. She has published on early science fiction, popular film, Ursula Le Guin and Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell, Robert Bly, and, most copiously, on John Berryman. Besides the topics above, she has presented papers on Rita Dove, Louise Bogan, Jane Cooper, Ani di Franco, Elizabeth Bishop, Hitler, masculinity studies, addiction, Stephen King, feminist sword and sorcery, nexialism, and the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where she was a delegate at the NGO Forum. She is on the editorial board of Extrapolation, and has guest-edited a special issue on Women and Science Fiction, as well as writing numerous reviews. Her poems have appeared in Hurricane Alice (Providence), the collections Opening Doors and Great Lake Erie: Imagining an Inland Sea, and in such Cleveland-area little magazines as Art Crimes, The Coventry Reader, and The Time of Your Life. She is also included in A Gathering of Poets (1991), the anthology commemorating the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State. She lives in the woods of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park with her partner and two cats.

Joan Gordon is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College. She is an editor of Science Fiction Studies and has co-edited two volumes of scholarly essays for UPenn with Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (1987) and Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction as Contemporary Cultural Transformation (forthcoming).

Veronica Hollinger is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. She is co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies and Vice-President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and has published many articles on science fiction and speculative literature, especially feminist and postmodern fantastic fiction. With Joan Gordon, she has co-edited Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press 1997) and Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation (University of Pennsylvania Press 2002). She is a past winner of the SFRA's Pioneer Award.

Phillipa Kafka is currently Professor Emerita at Kean University, Union, New Jersey, and the former Director of its Women's Studies Program. An active participant in the Second-Wave feminist movement, she was also a pioneer in multi-ethnic studies. She has published essays, reviews, poetry, and four full-length works of feminist literary criticism: The Great White Way: African-American Women Writers and American Success Mythology (Garland, 1993); (Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writings (Greenwood, 1997); (Out)Classed Women: Contemporary Chicana Writers on Inequitable Gendered Power Relations (Greenwood, 2000); and "Saddling LaGringa": Gatekeeping in Contemporary Latina Writers (Greenwood, 2000). Most recently, she edited a collection of memoirs and essays, Lost on the Map ofthe World: Jewish-American Women's Quest for Home, 1890-Present (Peter Lang, 2001).

Sylvia Kelso is currently a part-time lecturer and tutor at James Cook University in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia. She has taught English there since 1985 and in addtion is currently contributing to a course on Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Social Sciences school. She has published poetry, including a contribution to an Australian Women's Anthology, and essays, and reviews on fantasy, science fiction, modern female Gothic or mystery novels and modern male horror writers like Stephen King. Her essays have appeared in Science-Fiction Studies, Foundation, the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Para.Doxa: Studies in World Literature, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. She is currently an editorial board member for Para.Doxa. She has a PhD on the interaction of feminism with modern Gothic and science fiction, and has just submitted a Creative Writing MA based round an sf novel set in alternate North Queenslands. A long-term creative writer, she is also working on publication of a fantasy novel.

Dr. Laurel Lampela is an Associate Professor who teaches courses in the History of Art Education, Secondary Art Methods, Studio Art in the Schools - Printmaking, and Feminism and Art. She has been on the faculty at UNM since August 2001. Previously she was Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio for 10 years and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Marshall University for one year. Dr. Lampela is co-editor of "From Our Voices: Art Educators Speak Out About LGBT Issues" [Lampela, L. & Check, E., (Eds.), 2003, Kendall- Hunt Publishers]. She has published a book chapter in "Realworld Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professors Never Told You" (2000, Falmer Press) and numerous articles in "Studies in Art Education," "Art Education," and "Taboo: A Journal of Culture and Education." Dr. Lampela is the co-founder of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Issues Caucus of the National Art Education Association.

Claudia Mesch teaches 20th- and 21st-century art history and art theory at Arizona State University. Her research and publications have focused on performance-oriented art after 1945. Among other things, she is currently thinking about the appearance of the Queen of Mud and other female sci-fi personas in recent art.

As an undergraduate at Tufts University, Lynne Reed studied in 16 different departments, reflecting her multidisciplinary mind. Graduating in 1978 with a BA in Drama, she focused primarily on theatrical lighting in NYC for many years, fast forwarding through Textile Design, Owner of a Multicultural Spiritual Bookstore, and Teaching in the NYC Public School System. Leaving the fast track, Lynne is currently living at Spiral, a lesbian intentional community, with the time to edit, write and paint. For info on retreat cabins, e-mail spiralwimmin@juno.com.

Gina Wisker is coordinator of Women's Studies at Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge, UK where she is also director of learning and teaching development and teaches English literature. Her publications range from postcolonial: Postcolonial and African and American Women's Writing: A Critical Introduction (Macmillan 2000), Insights into Black Women's Writing (Macmillan 1993), to horror and fantasy: It's My Party: Reading Twentieth Century Women's Writing (ed.1994), Fatal Attractions: Rescripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film (ed.Lynne Pearce 1998), and several essays on women's vampire fictions in, among others, The Companion to Gothic (ed. David Punter), and on Angela Carter, and she co-edits Spokes, a poetry magazine. She was brought up all over the world , re-visits and travels at every oppportunity and lives in Cambridge UK with her husband, two sons, and two small dogs. She is currently editing a women's horror edition of FEMSPEC.

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2008-01-02T15:27:00.003-05:00

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FEMSPEC INDEX

2008-01-01T15:17:00.008-05:00

This is a giant set of lists, first an index of everyone who has contributed, then more lists split into Criticism, Reviews, Fiction, Poetry, Interviews, Art and Memorials.

By Contributor |

Alcaly-Gut, Karen (4.2)
Alegre, Sara Martin (4.1)
Allen, Louise (3.2)
Anthony, Albert (5.1)
Andres, Tina (8.1/2)
Ardys of Berkeley (7.2)
Austin, Kathie (6.2)
Attebery, Brian (1.2)
Averbach, Margara (2.2)

Ball, Kat (2.2)
Bannan, Helen (8.1/2)
Baringer, Sandra (2.2)
Barr, Marleen S. (1.1); (2.1); (4.2); (7.1)
Barr, Scott (4.2)
Beatie, Bruce (3.1)
Betts, Tara (5.1)
Biressi, Anita (4.1)
Black, Sharon (5.2)
Blinebury, Beth (5.1)
Bogstad, Janice M. (1.1); (5.1)
Bould, Mark (5.1)
Bow, Beverly (6.2)
Briggs, Elizabeth Pandalfo (3.1); (5.1)
Broner, E. M. (4.2)
Brown, James D (8.1/2)
Buckman, Alyson (4.2)
Burton, Nsenga K. (4.2)
Butler, Andrew (5.1)

Calvin, Ritch (3.1); (8.1/2)
Casal, Marcus (2.1)
Charlick, Robert (4.2)
Charnas, Suzy MeKee (4.1)
Church, Kelly Jean(2.2)
Cirrone, Dorian (3.1)
Clemente, William (1.1)
Cochran, Tanya (6.2)
Cohen, Debra Rae (4.2)
Cook, Barbara J. (5.1)
Crater, Theresa A. L. (3.1); (5.1)
Crosby, Janice (2.1); (5.1)
Croyden, Christine (2.1)
Crump, Helen (6.1)
Cruz, Candra (2.2); (7.1)
Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Istan (5.1)
Cummings, Gerardo T. (5.1); (8.1/2)
Curtis, Sheryl (5.2)

Daly, Cathy (7.1)
Davis (8.1/2)
De Giacoman, Monica De Neymet (7.2)
DeGraw, Sharon (4.2)
Delany, Samuel R. (1.1)
Delu, Ardys (8.1/2)
Deman, J. Andrew (6.2)
DeWitt, Jim (7.1)
Dickinson, Stephanie (7.1)
Dimovitz, Scott A. (6.2)
Doran, Christine (3.2)
Dorozario, R. C. (7.1)
Douglas, Marcia (6.1)
Drown, Eric M. (7.1); (7.2)
Due, Tananarive (3.2)
Drushel, Bruce E. (7.2)

Eisenstein, Linda (1.2)
Epstein, Marion (6.2)
Eros, Paul (5.1)

Fambrough, Mary (1.1)
Ferreira, Aline (4.1)
Francisco, Allison (2.2)
Fullerton, Romayne Smith (7.2)

Gage, Carolyn (5.2)
Gale, Marilyn (4.2)
Geary, Joe (5.2)
Gehiere, Bruce (5.1)
Gish, Robert (2.2)
Giunta, Edvige (5.2); (7.1)
Goldberg, Wendy (5.2)
Govan, Sandra (4.2)
Grabowski, Rita (4.2)
Greenbaum, Andrea (4.1)
Guess, Carol (3.2)

Hains, Rebecca C. (5.2)
Hake, Liisa (1.2); (3.1)
Harper, Mary Catherine (2.1)
Harris, Clare Winger (3.1)
Harrison, Janet (7.1)
Hawkins, Cathy (5.1)
Hoefel, Roseanne (2.2)
Hollinger, Veronica (2.1)
Holland-Toll, Linda (8.1/2)
Hood, Yolanda (6.1)
Hopkinson, Nalo (6.1)
Houston, Shannon Mariana (4.2)

Jacques, Alison (5.2)
Jenkins, Candace M. (6.1)
Johnson, Linda (2.1)
Johnston, Nancy (1.2); (2.1)
Jones, Jennifer (3.1)
Jowett, Lorna (4.1)
Jurich, Marilyn (4.2)

Kafka, Phillipa (2.1); (3.1); (3.2); (4.2)
Kazalia, Marie (7.1)
Kiefer, Geraldine Wojno (5.1); (8.1/2)
Kelley, Brian (4.2)
Kelley, Elizabeth (7.1)
Kelso, Sylvia (1.2); (2.1)
Kendall, Kathleen (4.1)
King, Sharon (6.2)
Kirk, Mary (7.2)
Kleiner, Elaine (2.2)
Kray, Susan (4.2)
Kuhl, Nancy (3.2)

Laity, K. A. (5.2); (8.1/2)
Lassner, Phyllis(4.2)
Lavigne, Carlen (6.2)
Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. (3.1)
Leonard, Tara (3.2)
Lesses, Rebecca (3.2)
Levine, Emmy (3.1)
Liddell-King, Jane (3.2)
Lifshin, Lyn (5.2)
Littlecrow-Russell, Sara (2.2)
Long, Mary Beth (5.2)
Lupoff, Richard A.(3.1)

Mabee, Barbara (1.2)
Marinara, Martha (3.1)
Matchie, Tom (2.2)
Matisons, Michelle Renee (5.1)
McAdams, Janet (2.2)
McAuliffe, Moira (3.1)
McConnell, Kathleen (7.2)
McCauley, Carole Spearin (6.2)
McGregory, Jerrilyn (6.1)
McLean, Susan (7.1)
Melzer, Patricia (3.2); (5.1)
Meredith, America (2.2)
Merril, Judith (4.2)
Meyer, Sabine (4.1)
Michlitsch, Gretchen (6.1)
Middents, Jeffrey (5.1)
Minchinton, Barbara (2.1)
Moore, Louise (8.1/2)
Moriel, Liora (4.2)
Morris, Abigail (5.2)
Morrison, Monique (4.2)
Murphy, Katherine (3.1)
Murphy, Suzanne Zahrt (2.2)
Murray, Robin (3.1)
Musgrave, Megan (6.2)

Newsom, Victoria Anne (5.2)
Nicte-Ha (1.2)
Nwankwo, Ifeoma C. K. (4.2)

Orendi, Diana (4.2)
Orenstein, Gloria Feman (1.1); (1.2); (2.1); (4.2) ; (7.2); (8.1/2)
Orr, Delilah (2.2)
Ortman, Pat (8.1/2)

Pagan, Darlene (3.1)
Paley, Cynthia Feldman (3.1)
Palma, Shannan (7.2)
Panofsky, Ruth (8.1/2)
Patterson, Kathy Davis (6.1)
Pettigrew, Dawn Karima (2.2)
Phillips, Donna Burns (3.1)
Pike, Earl (1.1)
Pough, Gwendolyn D. (6.1)
Pratt, Annis Vilas (2.2); (3.1); (3.2)
Price, Shelley (5.1)
Putnam, Amanda A. (5.2)

Redmond, Glenis (7.1)
Reed, Lynee (6.2) (8.1/2)
Reid, Robin Anne (1.1)
Robb, Donna Marie (4.2)
Rose, Carol (4.2)
Ross, Sharon (5.2)
Russell, Doreen (4.1)

Salaam, Kiini Ibura (6.1)
Salas, Gerardo Rodriguez (6.2)
Salazar, Cristian (3.1)
Sargent, Pamela (4.2)
Saunders, M. Sean (5.2)
Scheef, Debra (7.1)
Schein, Lorraine (3.2); (4.2)
Schneider, Karen (2.1); (3.1)
Schwartz, Kaila (2.2)
Scott, Justin (5.2)
Self, Emily (5.2)
Sellers, Stephanie (2.1); (2.2)
Setton, Ruth Knafo (1.2)
Shaw, Andrea (6.1)
Shaw, Debra Bonita (7.1)
Shaw, Diona (5.1)
Shaw, Louise (4.1)
Simmons, Diane (2.1)
Sin, Aseret (6.1)
Smith, Anne Collins (1.2)
Smith, Erin A. (3.2) ; (6.2); (7.1)
Sommerville, Kristine A. (5.2)
Sonnenschein, Dana (7.1)
Springer, Christina (1.1)
Springer, Jennifer Thorington (6.1)
Stadler, Cathy (3.2)
Starhawk (7.1)
Stone, Leslie F. (1.1); (2.1); (4.2)
Stratton, Susan (3.1)
Street, Ella Jo (7.2)
Surkan, K. (5.1)
Suvin, Darko (1.1); (3.2)

Thomas, Alicia (6.1)
Thompson, Aida (7.1); (7.2)
Thorpe, Douglas (5.2)
Toll, Linda Holland (6.2)
Tomaszyk, Frances (4.1)
Tomberg, Shoshana (3.1)
Trawick, Leonard (3.1)
Turner, Stephanie S. (4.2)

Ungar, Barbara Louise (1.2)

Vance, G. Warlock (5.1)
Vanderford, Audrey (4.2)
Vlaicu, Angela (2.2)

Warne, Vanessa (5.2)
Washington, Teresa N. (6.1)
Wisker, Gina (8.1/2)
Weinbaum, Batya (1.1); (1.2); (2.1); (2.2); (3.1); (3.2); (4.2); (5.1); (7.1) ; (8.1/2)
West, C. S'Thembile (7.2)
Wilkerson, Carmiele Y. (6.1)
Williams, Lynn (1.2)
Wisker, Gina (3.1); (3.2); (4.1);(6.1)
Wolpert, Ilana (4.2)
Wood, Sarah (6.1)
Wray, Phoebe (1.2)

By Author and Article (Criticism, Review, Fiction, Poetry, Interviews, Art, Memorial)

CRITICISM

A

Sara Martin Alegre, The Other in Me: Nancy Collins’s Vampire Heroine, Sonja Blue (4.1)
Louise Allen, Monkey Business: Planet of the Apes and Romantic Excess (3.2)
Tina Andres. Growing Thick Skin (8.1/2)
Brian Attebery, Women Alone, Men Alone (1.2)
Margara Averbach, Technology, “Magic,” and Resistance in Native American Women’s Writing (2.2)

B
Sandra Baringer, The Terror of the Liminal: Silko’s Almanac and Klein’s Phantasy Paradigm (2.2)
Helen Bannan. Derailed but Not Defeated (8.1/2)
Marleen S. Barr, Interview with Janet Asimov (2.1)
Anita Biressi, True Crime, Medicine, and Corporeal Horror (4.1)
Alyson Buckman, "What Good Is All This to Black People?" Octavia Butler's Reconstruction of Corporeality (4.2)

C
Dorian Cirrone, Millenial Mothers: Reproduction, Race, and Ethnicity in Feminist Dystopian Fiction (3.1)
William Clemente, WisCon 22 and the (Not So) Secret Feminist Cabal (1.1)
Theresa Crater, The Resurrection of Morgan le Fey: Fallen Woman to Triple Goddess (3.1)
Janice Crosby, The Snow Queen and the Goddess in the Machine (2.1)

D
Jane Davis. The Value of Stupidity: Negative Values in Academia (8.1/2)
Sharon DeGraw, "The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same": Gender and Sexuality in Octavia Butler's Oeuvre (4.2)
J. Andrew Deman, "Taking Out the Trash: Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed and the Feminist Voice in American SF." (6.2)
Scott A. Dimovitz, "Cartesian Nuts: Rewriting the Platonic Androgyne in Angela Carter's Japanese Surrealism." (6.2)
Christine Doran, Fantasy as History: The Invention of Cixi, Empress of China (3.2)
R.C. Dorozario. "The Consequences of Disney Anthropomorphism." (7.1)
Eric M. Drown. "Business Girls and Beset Men in Pulp Science Fiction and Science Fiction Fandom." (7.1)
Drushel, Bruce E. "Pandora's Box in Cyberspace: The On-line Alternative Fan Sites of Hercules: The Legendary Journey." (7.2)

E

F
Mary Fambrough, Transcending Gender: Challenging the Binary. Divide at the Third International Congress on Sex and Gender (1.1)
Aline Ferreira, Artificial Wombs and Archaic Tombs: Angela Carter’s The Passion of Eve and the Alien Tetralogy (4.1)

G
Robert Gish, Voices from Bear Country: Leslie Silko’s Allegories of Creation (2.2)
Andrea Greenbaum, Bio-Technology as Kabbalah: Reconfiguring the Golem Myth in Alien Resurrection and Species (4.1)
Sandra Govan, The Parable of the Sower as Rendered by Octavia Butler: Lessons for Our Changing Times (4.2)

H
Rebecca C. Hains, The Problematics of Reclaiming the Girlish: The Powerpuff Girls and Girl Power (5.2)
Mary Catherine Harper, Mending the Rationality/Romanticism Divide in the Study of Women’s Science Fiction (2.1)
Janet Harrison. "The Muse Unmasked: Eileen Agar's Objectives Correlatives." (7.1)
Roseanne Hoefel, Narrative Choreography toward a New Cosmogony: The Medicine Way in Linda Hogan’s Novel Solar Storms (2.2)
Linda Holland-Toll. What to Do When You Are Stuck at Toxic U: Strategies for Avoidance, Sabotage, and Survival (8.1/2)
Veronica Hollinger, The Utopia of the Perverse: An Exercise in “Transgressive Reinscription” (2.1)
Nalo Hopkinson, Address Given at The College of New Jersey, Department of African American Studies, 30th Anniversary Symposia: "Afrofuturism: Womanist Paradigms for the New Millennium" (6.1)

I

J
Alison Jacques, "Lucky Jupiter Meets Your Ruler": Otherworldly Sources of Girl Power in Magazine Horoscopes (5.2)
Nancy Johnston, “I Would Have Swallowed the Kiss”: Reflections on Feminist Speculative Poetry (2.1); Made in Canada (1.2)
Lorna Jowett, “Mute and Beautiful”: The Representation of the Female in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (4.1)

K
Sylvia Kelso, No Place, the Good Place, a New Place (1.2); Third Person Peculiar: Reading between Acamenic and SF-Community Positions in Feminist SF (2.1)
Kathleen Kendall, Who Are You Afraid Of?: Young Women as Consumers and Producers of Horror Films (4.1)
Geraldine Wonja Kiefer. Overlays, Matrices, and Boundaries: A “Mixed-Media” Approach in Pedagogy and Art (8.1/2)
Kirk, Mary. "Vision of the Possible: Models for Women's Heroic Journey Applied to Madrone's Path in The Fifth Sacred Thing." (7.2)
Elaine Kleiner and Angela Vlaicu, Revisioning Woman in America: A Study of Louise Erdrich’s Novel The Antelope Wife (2.2)
Susan Kray, Refamiliarization: Jewish Women in the Narrative Strategies of "Pulp" Science Fiction Magazine Stories, 1993-2000 (4.2)

L
Carlen Lavigne, "Space Opera: Melodrama, Deminism and the Women of Farscape." (6.2)

M
Barbara Mabee, Reception of Fairy Tale Motifs in Texts by Twentieth-Century German Women Writers (1.2)
Tom Matchie, Fighting the Windigoo: Winona LaDuke’s Peculiar Postcolonial Posture in Last Standing Woman (2.2)
Jerrilyn McGregory, Nalo Hopkinson's Approach to Speculative Fiction (6.1)
Patricia Melzer, “All that you touch you change”: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents (3.2)
Judith Merril, That Only a Mother (4.2)
Sabine Meyer, Passing Perverts, After All: Vampirism, (In)Visibility, and the Horrors of the Normative in Jewelle Gomez’ The Gilda Stories (4.1)
Gretchen Mitchlitsch, Breastfeeding Mother Rescues City: Nalo Hopkinson's Ti-Jeanne as Superhero (6.1)
Liora Moriel, An Introduction, or the Jacket Blurb Comes of Age (4.2)
Robin Murray, Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife: A Space for Complementary Subjects (3.1)
Megan Musgrave, "Phenomenal Women: The Shape-shifter Archetype in Postcolonial Magical Realist Fiction." (6.2)

N
Victoria Anne Newsom, Young Females as Superheroes: Superheroines in the Animated Sailor Moon (5.2)

O
Gloria Feman Orenstein, Journey through Mlle de Scudéry’s Carte de Tendre: A 17th-Century Salon Woman’s Dream/Country of Tenderness (3.2); NWSA 2000-Boston (2.1); The Surrealist Cosmovision of Bridget Tichenor (1.1); Vision and Visibility: Contemporary Jewish Women Artists Visualize the Invisible (4.2); When the Imaginary Becomes Real, as Surrealism Said It Would: 'All the Rest Is Litterature'.(7.2); Gertrude Stein as Mentor and Passing the Flame (8.1/2)
Delilah Orr, Bear, Mountain Lion, Deer, and Yellow Woman in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (2.2)

PQ
Kathy Davis Patterson, 'Haunting Back': Vampire Subjectivity in The Gilda Stories (6.1)
Ruth Panofsky. Professor/Mother: The Unhappy Partnership (8.1/2)

R
Sharon Ross, Dangerous Demons: Fan Responses to Girls' Power, Girls' Bodies, and Girls' Beauty in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (5.2)

S
Gerardo Rodriguez Salas, "E.G.E. Bulwer Lytton's Covert Antifeminism in The Coming Race." (6.2)
Pamela Sargent, Jewish Enough (4.2)
Debra Bonita Shaw. "Sex and the Single Starship Captain: Compulsory Heterosexuality and Star Trek: Voyager." (7.1)
Diane Simmons, Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior and Shaman: Fighting Women in the New World (2.1)
Smith, Romayne. "Not 'Of Woman Born': Fairy Tale Mothers for Postmodern Literary Children." (7.2)
Leslie F. Stone, Letter of the Twenty-Fourth Century (1.1); Out of the Void (2.1)
Susan Stratton, Intersubjectivity and Difference in Feminist Ecotopias (3.1)
Ella Jo Street. "The Origin of Tarot" (7.2)
Darko Suvin, Cloning: On Cognition in the Discourses of SF and Technoscience (3.2); Must Collectivism Be Against People What Remains Of Zamyatin’s We After The Change Of Leviathans: Reflections From Feminist And Other Standpoints (1.1)

T
Douglas Thorpe, Girl Power and the Discourse of Aging: The Example of Ursula K. Le Guin (5.2)
Linda Holland Toll, "Bluestockings Beware: Cultural Backlash and the Re/configuration of the Witch in Popular Nineteenth-Century Literature."
Frances Tomaszyk, Lunatics with Lethal Combat Skills: Dark Doubles, Bacchae, and Soulless Women in Xena: Warrior Princess (4.1)
Stephanie S. Turner, "What Actually Is": The Insistence of Genre in Octavia Butler's Kindred (4.2)

UV

W
Teresa N. Washington, Power of the Word/Power of the Works; the Signifying African Soul of Africana Women's Literature (6.1)
Batya Weinbaum, Interview with Marge Piercy (3.2); NWSA FEMSPEC Salon (1.2); NWSA 2000-Boston (2.1); SFRA 2000-Cleveland (2.1); Sex Role Reversals in Star Trek’s Planets of Women as Indices of Second Wave Media Protest (1.1); Memoirs of an Academic Career (8.1/2)

C. S'Thembile West. "The Competing Demands of Community Survival and Self-Preservation in Octavia Butler's Kindred." (7.2)
Lynn Williams, Separatist Fantasies 1690-1997: An Annotated Bibliography (1.2)
Gina Wisker, “Honey, I’m Home!”: Splintering the Fabrication in Domestic Horror (4.1); Women’s Horror as Erotic Transgression (3.1) 'Your Buried Ghosts Have A Way of tripping You Up': Revisioning and Mothering in African American and Afro-Caribbean Women's Speculative Horror (6.1)
Sarah Wood, Subversion through Inclusion: Octavia Butler's Interrogations of Religion in Wild Seed and Xenogenesis (6.1)
Phoebe Wray, Writer’s Respite at Wiscon ‘99 (1.2)

XYZ

REVIEWS: (alpha by author)

Scott Barr, Review of The Defiant Muse (4.2)
Bruce Beatie, Review of Teaching toward the 24th Century (3.1)
Janice M. Bogstad, A Little Light Shed On: Into Darkness Peering (1.1)
Beverly Bow, Reivew of Cambridge Anthology of SF (6.2)
James D Brown. On Paprika (8.1/2)
Elizabeth Pandalfo Briggs, A Ramble through Fantasyland (3.1)
Nsenga K. Burton, Review of Female Hip-Hop Artists in Outer Space (4.2)
Ritch Calvin, Review of Turning on the Girls (3.1); On Naomi Mitchison (8.1/2)
Marcus Casal, The Poet as Cartographer (2.1)
Robert Charlick, Review of Sleeping with Cats (4.2)
Tanya Cochran, The On-line International Community of Buffy Studies (6.2)
Debra Rae Cohen, Review of The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (4.2)
Gerardo Cummings. On Alien Constructions (8.1/2)
Sheryl Curtis, Canadian Girl Power: Young Women Save the Day, happily-Ever-After Ending Unnecessary (5.2)
Ardys Delu. On Feminists Who Changed America (8.1/2); On Daughters of the Great Star
(8.1/2); On Code Pink (8.1/2); On The Red Rose Rages (8.1/2); On We, Robots (8.1/2)
Eric Drown: 'Buffy, Who?' Review of Athena's Daughters: Television's New Woman Warriors, edited by Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy. (7.2) ; 'Ooooo!, We Hate Bush.' Review of Hollywood's New Radicalism: War, Globalization and the Movies from Reagan to George W. Bush, by Ben Dickerson (7.2)
Joe Geary, Young Women (and More) in Anime (5.2)
Liisa Hake, Review of The Jigsaw Woman (3.1); Two Reviews (1.2)
Candice M. Jenkins, Review of Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (6.1)
Phillipa Kafka, Don Quixote, the Joads, and Jack Kerouac Move Over: A Chinese American Woman’s Adventures On the Road [of Life] (2.1); Review of Goja (3.1); Review of The Road to Fez (3.2); Review of A Spiritual Life (4.2)
Brian Kelley, Review of Dreaming the Actual (4.2)
K. A. Laity and Wendy Goldberg, Japanesse Magic: The Girl-Friendly Films of Hayao Miyazaki (5.2)
Phyllis Lassner, Review of Women's Holocaust Writing (4.2)
Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Review of Witches of the Atlantic World (3.1)
Emmy Levine, Review of Islands of Women and Amazons (3.1)
Mary Beth Long, Growing Up to Be Feminists: Reports on Girl Culture (5.2)
Richard A. Lupoff, Clare Winger Harris and “The Fifth Dimension” (3.1)
Gretchen J. Michlitsch, Review of The Salt Roads (6.1)
Monique Morrison, Octavia Butler Speaks: A Visit to Cleveland State University (4.2)
Suzanne Zahrt Murphy, Dream Poet: Marijo Moore (2.2)
Nicte-Ha, Dinotopia (1.2)
Doctress Neutropia. On The Secret DVD (8.1/2)
Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Review of Brown Girl in the Ring (4.2)
Diana Orendi, Review of Soundless Roar (4.2)
Gloria Orenstein, Surrealist Women (1.2)
Darlene Pagan, Review of Behind the Blue Gate (3.1)
Shannan Palma: Review of From Alien to The Matrix: Reading SF Films, by Roz Kaveney (7.2)
Kathy Davis Patterson, Review of Minion: A Vampire Huntress Legend (6.1)
Donna Burns Phillips, Review of Mary Shelley’s Fictions
Earl Pike, Margins Made Visible (1.1)
Annis Vilas Pratt, Review of In the Footsteps of the Goddess (3.1); Review of Life Is a Fatal Disease (2.2); Review of The Golden Book of Springfield (3.2)
Amanda A. Putnam, Reading Sacred: Feminists Confronting Future Feminists (5.2)
Lynee Reed, The Song of the Goddess (6.2); On Becoming the Villanness (8.1/2)
M. Sean Saunders, Marwen's Web: Living on the Loom of the Mother (5.2)
Karen Schneider, On Women of Other Worlds (2.1); Review of White Turtle (3.1)
Kaila Schwartz, Elements of Trickster in the Children’s Books of Louise Erdrich (2.2)
Anne Collins Smith, The Exploration of Gender in Deep Space Nine and Sacred Time (1.2)
Erin Smith. Women Writing Pulp (7.1) ; Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms (6.2) ; “Saddling La Gringa” (3.2)
Jennifer Thorington Springer, Review of Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction (6.1)
Alicia Thomas, Review of The Awakening: A Vampire Huntress Legend (6.1)
Audrey Vanderford, Review of The Raw Brunettes (4.2)
Vanessa Warne, Eyes Shining and Feet Kicking (5.2)
Batya Weinbaum, Reviews of The Bitch Is Back; Inanna; From Moon Goddesses to Virgins; The Lieutenant Nun (3.1); Review of Klezmer Music (4.2); Review of Summer with the Ghosts (5.2); interview with Diana Rivers (7.1); On Fissures (8.1/2)
Carmiele Y. Wilkerson, Review of Love (6.1)
Gina Wisker, Mothering in the African Diaspora (3.1); Reviews of “Saddling La Gringa”; (Out) Classed Women (3.2)
Ilana Wolpert, Review of Bee Season (4.2)

FICTION AND PLAYS (alpha by author)

Kathie Ausin, "Orion". (6.2)
K A Laity. Eating the Dream (8.1/2)
Marleen S. Barr, The Feminist Pathfinder Does Not Probe Mars (1.1); Close Encounters of the Monica Kind (4.2) ; Superfeminist Or, A Handmade Carol (7.1)
E. M. Broner, De-Winging the Angel (4.2)
Suzy MeKee Charnas, Evil Thoughts (4.1)
Christine Croyden, Interview with a Housework Beast (2.1)
Monica De Neymet De Giacoman. Living Hours (excerpt) (7.2)
Stephanie Dickinson. Grasshopper Woman (7.1)
Samuel R. Delany, Trouble on Triton – Excerpt (1.1)
Marcia Douglas, Marie-Ma (6.1)
Tananarive Due, Protection (3.2)
Linda Eisenstein, Revelation 24:12 (1.2)
Carolyn Gage, The Rules of the Playground: A One-Act Play (5.2)
Marilyn Gale, Lilith 1996 (4.2)
Girls’ SF by a 9-year-old, circa 1961, The Suncomers (1.1)
Carol Guess, Love Story with a Living Ghost (3.2)
Clare Winger Harris, Excerpts from “The Fifth Dimension” (3.1)
Linda Johnson, If the Sun and Moon Should Doubt… (2.1)
Sharon King, "Quiescent." (6.2)
Rebecca Lesses, A Dream Question for the Angels (3.2)
Martha Marinara, Ovum (3.1)
Janet McAdams, Plaza Bocanegra (2.2)
Carole Spearin McCauley, "Crone's Revenge." (6.2)
Abigail Morris, The Girl with the Metal Hair (5.2)
Dawn Karima Pettigrew, Manna Raptured (2.2)
Donna Marie Robb, Soul Spinner (4.2)
Doreen Russell, Spell (4.1)
Kiini Ibura Salaam, K-USH: The Legend of the Last Wero (6.1)
Debra Scheef. From The Archives... (7.1)
Justin Scott, The Truth in Dreams (5.2)
Stephanie Sellers, Coyote Wants a Baby (2.1); Father Coyote (2.2)
Ruth Knafo Setton, Beast (1.2)
Andrea Shaw, Jus' a Pinch of the Yellow Powder (6.1)
Louise Shaw, The Which Bitch? Project (4.1)
Kristine A. Sommerville, Runners (5.2)
Cathy Stadler, The Lost Tribe (3.2)
Leslie F. Stone: Cosmic Joke (4.2)
Aida Thompson. Thanksgiving Day (7.1)
Batya Weinbaum, Sasha's Harlem: Excerpts (4.2); Waiting for Justice (8.1/2)
Gina Wisker. New Blood (8.1/2)

POETRY

Karen Alcaly-Gut, One of Those Nights (4.2)
Sharon Black, Stone Dress (5.2)
Helen Crump, Morning Wake-up Sun (6.1)
Canda Cruz. The Goddess Rag; Avatar Blues (7.1)
Cathy Daly. Solo, Alone, False Apparitions, Untitled (7.1)
Jim DeWitt. While You're Waiting for the Wind? (7.1)
Edvige Giunta, "Stories of Sicilian Girls" and "Dark Play" (5.2)
Rita Grabowski, Recessively Blond (4.2)
Edvina Giunta. Night's Whispers (7.1)
Shannon Mariana Houston, Haiku (4.2)
Marilyn Jurich, Even Death is Uncertain without the Proper Forms (4.2)
Marie Kazalia. No Elvis Sightings (7.1)
Elizabeth Kelley. Letter (7.1)
Nancy Kuhl, If Kay Sage Painted Portrait as a Boy (3.2); The Hundred-headless Woman Opens Her August Sleeve: Part 2 (3.2)
Tara Leonard, Sanitary/Sanity (3.2)
Jane Liddell-King, Cornflakes (3.2)
Lyn Lifshin, Emily Dickinson (5.2)
Sara Littlecrow-Russell, Indian Tears (2.2); Those Indians Sure Are Crafty (2.2)
Moira McAuliffe, Orpheus (3.1)
Kathleen McConnell. The Inevitable Feminist Treatise on Catwoman (excerpt) (7.2)
Susan McLean. Circe, Scylla, The Siren, Melantho (7.1)
Barbara Minchinton, Housework Beast (2.1)
Louise Moore. Joan of Arc, Circe, Cassandra, The Annunciation Angel (8.1/2)
Katherine Murphy, Not Remembering My Childhood (3.1); To a Friend Afraid of Flying (3.1); For My Daughter, Dreading Dissection (3.1)
Cynthia Feldman Paley, Reflections from Kate’s Daughter (3.1)
Glenis Redmond. Lonely Girl, Train, Scripted Hope (7.1)
Carol Rose, Ex-nihilio (4.2)
Cristian Salazar, A Map of the United States of America (3.1)
Lorraine Schein, Remedios Varo, with Artwork by Zazie (3.2); The Goddess at Bergen-Belsen (4.2)
Emily Self, The Language of Paper Dolls (5.2)
Aseret Sin, Poetrix; Sister Ancestor (6.1)
Dana Sonnenschein. Man Ray's Muse (7.1)
Christina Springer, Dream Hunt (1.1); Juneteenth (1.1); Word Worlds (1.1)
Darko Suvin, The Taboo (1.1); Imagine a Fish (1.1)
Aidan Thompson: Maple Tree (7.2)
Leonard Trawick, Katherine Murphy (3.1)
Barbara Louise Ungar, Circe in Love (1.2)

INTERVIEWS:

Yolanda Hood, Interview with Tananarive Due (6.1)
Gwendolyn D. Pough, Interview with L. A. Banks (6.1)

ART:

Kat Ball, Stink of the Future (2.2)
Marion Epstein, Feminist Speculative Art (6.2)
Jennifer Jones, Untitled (3.1); Untitled (3.1)
America Meredith, Kelly Jean Church, Allison Francisco, Art from the “Three Sisters Show,”
Pat Ortman. Don’t Tread on Me: Painting My Way Through (8.1/2)
Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1999 (2.2)
Shoshana Tomberg, Domestic Violence (3.1)

MEMORIALS

Tillie Lerner Olsen (1912 - 2007) by Ardys of Berkeley (7.2)
Monica Sjoo by Starhawk (7.1)
Monique Wittig (1935 - 2003) by Gloria Orenstein. (7.2)
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 - August 22, 2007) by Ardys Delu (8.1/2)

[end]

Femspec Book Store

2008-01-01T08:42:00.001-05:00

We're building a book store at Femspec here:

http://astore.amazon.com/httpfemspeorg-20

An Amazon affiliate store seems, at the moment, the best solution, but it does bring up the question of supporting local independent sellers. When the Californian community, Laughing Squid, set one up last year it set off a few bad feelings within the community (see the discussion here), but because Femspec's readership is spread all over North America, this is probably the best way to do things. Of course we do suggest supporting and locating your local independent bookstore through this gadget (booksense) but if that falls through, try our new store - suggestions welcome.

Past Issues

2007-12-04T05:48:00.015-05:00

Scroll down this page or click on the links. Use the back button on your browser to get back to the top of this page.

VOLUME 7.2
VOLUME 7.1
VOLUME 6.2
VOLUME 6.1
VOLUME 5.2
VOLUME 5.1
VOLUME 4.2
VOLUME 4.1
VOLUME 3.2
VOLUME 3.1
VOLUME 2.2
VOLUME 2.1
VOLUME 1.2
VOLUME 1.1
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FEMSPEC VOLUME 7.2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

BATYA WEINBAUM: Editorial
Batya Weinbaum gives an overview of the journal and announces numerous achievements and future projects at FemSpec. The winners of the first 'Five Year Contest' are revealed; a new section begins called 'Ethnography Through Your Soul' which combines personal narrative with current research; a forthcoming feature called 'This Should Have Been Printed In Femspec' is presented; and a memorial section begins by commemorating Tillie Olsen and Monique Wittig.

BRUCE E. DRUSHEL: Pandora's Box in Cyberspace: The On-line Alternative Fan Sites of Hercules: The Legendary Journey.
Drushel looks at the North American television show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It provides a background to the show and to the community of fans who express their admiration by writing their own stories based on the series. Bruce Drushel investigates various websites where fans write fiction, and makes a detailed inquiry of some of the homoerotic or 'slash' writing.

ROMAYNE SMITH FULLERTON: Not 'Of Woman Born': Fairy Tale Mothers for Postmodern Literary Children.
Fullerton examines the subversive potential of re-casting fairy tale stereotypes into postmodern fiction, focusing on the writers Angela Carter, Jenny Diski and Jeanette Winterson. Romayne Smith Fullerton writes about how these authors have adapted and borrowed from the monstrous and imaginative characters of classic tales. Her argument suggests that by tinkering with these stereotypes, the writers in her study have discovered ways to limit the unhappy realities of patriarchy in their fiction. This is done by challenging and sidestepping the problems of the feminine in fairy tales.

MARY KIRK. Vision of the Possible: Models for Women's Heroic Journey Applied to Madrone's Path in The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Kirk applies a series of feminist interpretations to the myth of the hero. By pointing out the somewhat misogynist, mono-myth of the male hero as laid out in the work of Joseph Campbell, Mary Kirk explores other models of heroism created by feminist scholars such as Susan Lichtman, Carol Pearson, and Katherine Pope. Mary Kirk then tests out these models by applying them to a self-actualized character who lives in a feminist utopia: Madrone in Starhawk's first novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing.

C. S'THEMBILE WEST. The Competing Demands of Community Survival and Self-Preservation in Octavia Butler's Kindred.
West demonstrates that Octavia Butler's novel Kindred is both instructive and challenging because it forces the reader to re-imagine the complicated decisions made by Black women during chattel enslavement. C S'Thembile West outlines the complexity of Black women's lives and emphasizes the connections between the practice of chattel slavery, US economic viability and contemporary social problems.

GLORIA ORENSTEIN. When the Imaginary Becomes Real, as Surrealism Said It Would: 'All the Rest Is Litterature'.
Gloria Orenstein writes about her journey to Lapland and initiation by a Sami shaman. She tries to assimilate these strange experiences into her belief system using the surrealist conviction that acts of the imagination can begin to manifest themselves into reality. Her spiritual journey gives her a greater tolerance and respect for her own religious background and those of her students.

ELLA JO STREET. The Origin of Tarot.
A series of chance encounters leads Ella Jo Street on a journey to Bishnupur in North East India, searching out the origins of the Tarot Pack. There she meets Mr. Fouzdar, the only person in the world who is currently painting Dasabatar cards. These large circular cards, originating from the 14th Century bare remarkable similarities to Tarot Cards and lead Ella Jo Street to wonder about the historical and linguistic links between the packs.

FICTION & POETRY

MONICA DE NEYMET DE GIACOMAN: Living Hours (excerpt)
With an introduction by Batya Weinbaum , FemSpec presents a translated excerpt from M'nica de Neymet de Giacoman's first novel Las Horas Vivas.

KATHLEEN McCONNELL: The Inevitable Feminist Treatise on Catwoman (excerpt)
A comic poem outlining preparations for a text on the much maligned film Catwoman, with references to many other television and cinema heroines.

AIDAN THOMPSON: Maple Tree (excerpt from Crossings)
A short text takes the reader from Oberlin Lane to Calcutta, by way of Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Simon and a very talented owl.

BOOK REVIEWS

ERIC DROWN: 'Buffy, Who?' Review of Athena's Daughters: Television's New Woman Warriors, edited by Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy.
ERIC DROWN: 'Ooooo!, We Hate Bush.' Review of Hollywood's New Radicalism: War, Globalization and the Movies from Reagan to George W. Bush, by Ben Dickerson.
SHANNAN PALMA: Review of From Alien to The Matrix: Reading SF Films,
by Roz Kaveney.

MEMORIAL
A memorial to Tillie Lerner Olsen (1912 - 2007) by Ardys of Berkeley.
A memorial to Monique Wittig (1935 - 2003) by Gloria Orenstein.

BOOKS AND MEDIA RECEIVED: 44 titles of interest.

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FEMSPEC VOLUME 7.1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ERIC M. DROWN. Business Girls and Beset Men in Pulp Science Fiction and Science Fiction Fandom.
With the tools and methodology of American Studies, this cultural studies article brings evidence from the readers' columns in the early sf magazines as they respond to early sf writers exploring gender in relationship to the influx of women into the workforce in sf's early years.

JANET HARRISON The Muse Unmasked: Eileen Agar's Objectives Correlatives.
This article explores a surrealist woman painter not often included in the cannon of surrealist artists, in particular for her use of female imagery, some of which is reproduced in black and white here.

R.C. DOROZARIO The Consequences of Disney Anthropomorphism.
This article probingly examines how Disney produces a hyperrealism in which the landscape moves, and how this interrelates with the discourse on ecopsychology, ecofeminism, women and nature. In particular stereotypes of gender are explored with creations such as Bambi, showing how Bambi in the original cartoon was male but was later passed on as a female in subsequent movie productions in which the name was removed from the original referrent.

DEBRA BONITA SHAW. Sex and the Single Starship Captain: Compulsory Heterosexuality and Star Trek: Voyager.
Here the author insightfully examines why and how it is in the Star Trek television series that the male Starship captains, when single, are allowed to pursue sexial relations, whereas a single female captain is not, not without negative repercussions.

MARLEEN S. BARR. Superfeminist Or, A Handmade Carol.
This satire continues the adventures of a feminist sf professor to whom appearances are made.

STEPHANIE DICKINSON. Grasshopper Woman.
A surrealistic, magical realist piece in which a rural community is besieged with grasshoppers.

DEBRA SCHEEF. From The Archives...
This spoof imagines the career of a feminist researcher trying to get her research on male breastfeeding into establishment medical journals.

AIDA THOMPSON. Thanksgiving Day.
Terse, poetic prose in which "Enlightenment is an illusion" is a note slippe dunder the door while mash potatoes are being prepared for a Thanksgiving dinner.

CANDA CRUZ. The Goddess Rag; Avatar Blues
Blues-like song lyrics.

CATHY DALY. Solo, Alone, False Apparitions, Untitled.
Apocoplytic poetry requesitng to be burnt if love is built on fear, about the apparition of Mary,

JIM DeWITT. While You're Waiting for the Wind?
Like a Zen koan, contains great impossible suggestions like writing your name on water, slapping your face on wet cement, clutching at your silhouette to make your body heavy...

EDVINA GIUNTA. Night's Whispers.
Contains provocative imagery like purple angels fluttering in quiet despair.

MARIE KAZALIA. No Elvis Sightings.
Pablo Picasso eating lunch, a drunk Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau asking for spare change--these are images the author encounters, but no Elvis.

SUSAN McLEAN. Circe, Scylla, The Siren, Melantho.
Four poems drawn from Greek mythical imagery. Compares men to the various animals Odysseus dealt with in the Odyssey--fox, sheep, pigs. Humorous.

GLENIS REDMOND. Lonely Girl, Train, Scripted Hope.
"Lonely Girl" shows internal escape mechanism of a ghirl who moonwalks opnto distant planets; "She Can't Read" shows a sixth grader flying off on a black swan; "Scripted Hope" asks each of us to use magic naming to fill ourselves with the power of survival.

DANA SONNENSCHEIN. Man Ray's Muse.
Terse poetic prose poem about manifestoes from France.

ELIZABTH KELLEY. Letter.
Desire for escape from world horrors expressed.

BATYA WEINBAUM interviews DIANA RIVERS
In rural Arkansas, a feminist sf writer who lives in the woods is interviewed about her writing process.

ERIN SMITH. Women Writing Pulp.
An American Studies professor analyzes three of the Femme Fatale novels reprinted by Feminist Press.

BOOKS AND MEDIA RECEIVED: 44 titles of interest.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
STARHAWK STARHAWK on MONICO SJOO Artist, writer and visionary, author of The Great Cosmic Mother, memorialized by a leader of the women's spirituality movement.

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FEMSPEC VOLUME 6.2 TABLE OF CONTENTS.

BATYA WEINBAUM Editor's Notes

J.ANDREW DEMAN. Taking Out the Trash: Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed and the Feminist Voice in American SF.
The mere presence of the feminine perspective is an intrusion upon a key escapist element of masculine science fiction in America. To the majority of the pre-pubescent boys who represent the key demographic to which science fiction in America is marketed, there are few real-world terrors that they are more eager to escape than the terror of real-world women. Thus, the female characters of male-oriented SF tend to become the vessels through which the young male consumers of science fiction vicariously live-out their fantasy ideals of sexualized, romanticized, or fetishized women. It is thus the challenge of the female science fiction writer to legitimize depictions of sex and sexuality, while at the same time enabling the same escapist element that is the benchmark of science fiction. In Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed, the world of SF is introduced to a complex female character in the form of the maternal shape-shifter, Anyanwu. Butler's depiction of womanhood through Anyanwu defamiliarizes the construction of women in science fiction. In Anyanwu, Butler demonstrates the wealth of potential for characterization in science fiction, while at the same time operating against the male-oriented science fiction tropes that have traditionally excluded the voice of such strong female writers as Butler, along with complex female characters as Anyanwu. The result is that gender construction becomes a little more uncomfortable for the male, pubescent readers of science fiction, a little more identifiable to the othered readers of the genre, and, as a whole, science fiction becomes a lot more real, a lot less 'trashy.'

SCOTT A. DIMOVITZ. Cartesian Nuts: Rewriting the Platonic Androgyne in Angela Carter's Japanese Surrealism.
Angela Carter defined speculative fiction as "the fiction of asking 'what if?'" , and elsewhere defended her generic methodology by claiming that all fiction used non-mimetic techniques in one form or another. Through fiction, "speculations about the nature of our experience on this planet [could] be conducted without crap about the imitation of life getting in the way, because whose life are you supposed to be imitating? Obviously a trapeze artist has got as much claim to be alive as a solicitor". Her first allegorical speculative novel, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, was published the year she returned from Japan, where she lived between 1970 and 1972 after her divorce from Paul Carter, and it is useful to divide Carter's writing career into pre- and post-Japan. Heroes and Villains (1969), while also exploring an alternate reality, differs greatly in the manner of construction, formal properties, and methodology of thematic and symbolic explorations. While playing with popular post-apocalyptic conventions in 1950s and 60s science fiction, it never moves beyond a general and vague critique of structural anthropology and Rousseau. The allegories are a bit ham-fisted in comparison to the later work (Eve at the end of the world gets bitten by a snake but does not die, et cetera), even if they explore many of the key themes that recur in a more developed form in her later fiction. In her otherwise largely realist fiction before Japan, Carter often used a male protagonist (Shadow Dance, Several Perceptions, Love), and her feminism consisted mainly of female characters' exploitation and final destruction (Shadow Dance, Love) or violently taking the role of the male characters (The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains). This binary, as it happens, informs Carter's analysis of Sade's work, where women are classified into two types: Justine, passively suffering, the martyr at the hands of patriarchy; and Juliette, replicating the male libertines in their brutality towards women, the woman who learns to run with the wolves.

LINDA J. HOLLAND-TOLL. Bluestockings Beware: Cultural Backlash and the Reconfiguration of the Witch in Popular Nineteenth-Century Literature.
What cultural work is underway when the image of women as witches is used to discuss educated women, women to whom the mildly opprobrious epithet "bluestocking" has also been applied? How does the popular reading of a culture influence and reflect the ways in which that culture thinks? One site to explore such questions is a group of stories in which bluestockings, i.e., educated women, were associated in some manner with witchcraft. The linkage is interesting, but contradictory. Most bluestockings were middle to upper class urban women with formal education, while the most common, but not necessarily the most accurate, cultural archetype of witches was the village granny or the wise woman of the woods, good for spells and charms and herbal remedies as well as for the practice of evil in association with the devil. On the face of it, these knowledge bases are so different that no immediate connection springs forth. So how did this conflation come to be? To examine this idea, the author decided to view four nineteenth-century short stories that reflect this cultural linkage through the looking glass of narratives of American witch-hunting, Puritan theology, and the history of women's changing roles in mid-nineteenth century America. The main conflations stand revealed as possession of knowledge inappropriate for women, i.e., religious learning, or book knowledge or knowledge of healing. Women who were "cunning women," i.e., healers (midwives in particular) or fortune-tellers, and who could compete in wit and education with men were often at risk of being labeled witches.

CARLEN LAVIGNE. Space Opera: Melodrama, Feminism and the Women of Farscape.
Lynn Joyrich has outlined in some detail her theories regarding how television melodrama, gender and affect in soap opera coax a "feminine" viewpoint. At the same time, Tania Modleski has criticized soap operas for directing female anger at female power. While soap operas have never been lauded as ideal purveyors of a feminist ideology, elements of the soap opera have been freely used elsewhere in genre television. Soap operas themselves remain, for the most part, unchanging, while melodrama-which supposedly appeals more to a feminine viewpoint-has been spreading, and as such, has the potential to be utilized as a strong tool for feminism when combined with, and used to subvert, other conventions. The science fiction series Farscape (1999-2002) figures aesthetically as a science fiction/soap opera hybrid, which works toward increasingly empowered female representation, which this author discusses.

MEGAN MUSGRAVE. Phenomenal Women: The Shape-shifter Archetype in Postcolonial Magical Realist Fiction.
This article provocatively explores the usefulness of the construct of magical realism in the context of post-colonial oppositional narrative strategies, in particular by feminist authors.

GERARDO RODRIGUEZ SALAS E.G.E. Bulwer-Lytton's Covert Anti-Feminism in The Coming Race In The Coming Race.
E.G.E. Bulwer-Lytton envisages a highly unusual utopian model where he criticises, sometimes humorously, sometimes bitterly, issues related to socio-economic, political, cultural, and religious aspects of contemporary society. In the present article, however, I shall restrict myself to the analysis of gender relationships as depicted by Lytton in his novel. In doing so, I shall analyze this novelist's quasi-feminist work by connecting his focus on the so-called "Woman Question" with his choice of the dystopic sub-genre, ultimately presenting Lytton as a highly original writer, whose strategy lies in wrapping the traditionally misogynous utopian genre in a quasi-feminist cover.

FICTION & POETRY

KATHIE AUSTIN. Orion.
A woman in a motorized wheelchair struggling with a painful virusand delivering her own meds by push button faces her fear of death, remembering the shy girl she had been even as one of her country's most respected scientists and as member of a top secret research team.

SHARON KING. Quiescent.
A futuristic story about a loss of a family member due to an unauthorized power outage follows the life of protagonist Claire as she shuttles home to the half-under-water Venice, the ancient city enchanting at Christmastime amidst the flutterings of snow over houses, bridges and the relentless gentle waves. Flashing memories of child hood laced with messages sent to Archive Adjustment supervisor, "Grieftime requested" explores the intertwining of advanced technobureacracies and family life, a theme of sf since the late 1920s.

CAROLE SPEARIN MCCAULEY. Crone's Revenge.
In the science building, Helgart's 26th attempt to repair the auras of her expensive chinchillas had failed again. The bright life spikes of healthy aura were fading, and the healer is called upon to use her powers of mindstreaming to diagnose and heal. The talent magician had worked all night to save her animals sudden pneumonia. At 61 she had spent all her savings in buying the latest at the morning's Corporate and Patent Fair, thinking her husband, Geflen, in the traditional school of magic, which had few old lady enrollees, would be proud of her.

ART

MARION EPSTEIN. Feminist Speculative Art.
This nearly life-long Clevelander, now deceased, had displayed during her life time work in numerous exhibitions both juried and international. Artist, printmaker, and educator, she used the gum bi-chromate printing process to create images that made statements about family, civil rights, world peace, and the Holocaust. Through her art, she developed a visual vocabulary that allowed her to express ideas as well as aesthetics. A Brooklyn native, she considered her work concept driven from the beginning of the process. She received degrees from Cooper Union, Case Western Reserve University, and Cleveland Institute of Art. Her art reproduced here depicts the splitting of the internal woman from the object of the male gaze, the free spirit from collective female bonding at any age, and the internalization of the subject/object split that paralyzes an individual, isolated woman who contemplates her alter ego.

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FEMSPEC VOLUME 6.1 Table of Contents.

GWENDOLYN D. POUGH & YOLANDA HOOD. Editorial Remarks.
Speculative Black Women: Magic, Fantasy, and the Supernatural

JERRILYN McGREGORY. Nalo Hopkinson's Approach to Speculative Fiction.
Although speculative fiction has long privileged subversive modes, Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring redoubles the effect by antithetically hijacking this literary market. In turn, one encounters a number of cultural and political articulations at the center of sf and literary studies, i.e., the disruption of binaries, the recentering of womanism, the construction of mystical realism, the redefinition of "cognitive estrangement," and the privileging of transnational cultures while combating excessive universalism. Hopkinson syncretizes traditional West African-derived belief system with the fantastical. She exploits the degree to which sf renders the real unreal and creates an atmosphere of alienating defamiliarization for readers who stand as "outsiders" in relation to New World African religions.

GRETCHEN MICHLITSCH. Breastfeeding Mother Rescues City: Nalo Hopkinson's Ti-Jeanne as Superhero.
Gretchen J. Michlitsch considers Ti-Jeanne, the Afro-Caribbean Canadian protagonist of Nalo Hopkinson's novel , as a compelling literary model for women who take on the challenge of combining breastfeeding motherhood with work in the public realm. Mitchlitsch analyzes the heroine's engagement with the villain who controls the dystopic, near-future Toronto, attending especially to Ti-Jeanne's resentment of her responsibilities as a (young and single) mother and her interactions with Eshu and the other Afro-Caribbean spirits.

KATHY DAVIS PATTERSON. 'Haunting Back': Vampire Subjectivity in The Gilda Stories.
Derives its inspiration from an essay titled "Vampire Gothic," written by Teresa Goddu. Goddu makes the compelling assertion that "As the producers of terror instead of its text, African-American writers use the gothic to haunt back, re-working the gothic's conventions to intervene in discourses that would demonize them" (137-138). It is my contention that The Gilda Stories, by Jewelle Gomez, represents just such a 'haunting back.' The Gilda Stories is one of the relatively few vampire novels with a female vampire protagonist. Gomez further complicates her construction of vampiric Otherness by presenting a worldview from the perspective of a character who is also black and lesbian. Through Gilda and her other vampire characters, Gomez re-works numerous tropes of vampire fiction - especially strength, immortality, homosexuality, and blood drinking - turning them from signs of corruption into tools for personal and collective empowerment. I explore the foregrounding and validation of Gilda's blackness, her womanhood, and her lesbianism at length, noting the importance of this hybridity to both her identity and her survival. Because Gilda's survival is rooted in signifiers (black/woman/lesbian) that the dominant (white/male/heterosexual) Western discourse traditionally devalues, the novel 'haunts back' that discourse with an image of itself as stagnant, willfully ignorant and ultimately unnecessary to the diverse and evolving vampire tribe that Gomez implies will endure, growing beyond and in spite of it - not with it.

TERESA N. WASHINGTON. Power of the Word/Power of the Works; the Signifying African Soul of Africana Women's Literature.
Seeking to introduce African cosmological and philosophical concepts into the critical analysis of Africana literature, "Power of the Word / Power of the Works" uses the Yoruba concepts of ?r?, power of the word and ?j?, the spiritual power of women, to elucidate the verbal, spiritual, and artistic arts and powers of Africana women in life and literature.

GINA WISKER. 'Your Buried Ghosts Have A Way of tripping You Up': Revisioning and Mothering in African American and Afro-Caribbean Women's Speculative Horror.
This essay looks at Tananarive Due's, Toni Brown's 'Immunity,' Nalo Hopkinson's , "Greedy Choke Puppy" and Jewelle Gomez arguing that they represent a new contribution to African American / Afro Caribbean women's speculative fictions and horror. Each has a dual focus on recuperating/revisioning, recognizing the influence of the spiritual and the supernatural in the everyday and in placing centre stage the mother or grandmother as the key nurturing force who enables development of identity, history and responsibility. Jewelle Gomez, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, and Toni Brown have made significant contributions to the development of a new hybrid form, African American and Afro Caribbean women's speculative horror. In this new speculative horror form, each writer moves away from traditional (white, western) female Gothic to re-examine motherdaughter and/or grandmother-granddaughter maternal roles as significant in enabling women to develop a sense of identity, self-worth, nurturing and community values.

SARAH WOOD. Subversion through Inclusion: Octavia Butler's Interrogations of Religion in Wild Seed and Xenogenesis.
A prominent theme of Octavia Butler's speculative fiction is the negotiation and interrogation of religious discourses traditionally used to substantiate sexism and racism. This essay will analyze how the trilogy and chronologically the first of the series, challenge the assumptions of a predominantly white-authored and historically inscribed patriarchal Judeo-Christianity. The essay will argue that Butler is able to query the authority and hegemony of western Judeo-Christianity by repositioning "outcast" figures of femininity and introducing alternative religious traditions specific to the African American tradition. It will also suggest that the speculative framework Butler employs enables a radical visualization of empowered black womanhood that subverts through the inclusion, amalgamation and revision of the various religious traditions and mythologies available to African Americans.

SPEECH

NALO HOPKINSON. Address Given at The College of New Jersey, Department of African American Studies, 30th Anniversary Symposia: "Afrofuturism: Womanist Paradigms for the New Millennium".
This is a speech in which Nalo Hopkinson talks about the importance of research on African and the African Diaspora and charts her own process as a researcher and a writer.

FICTION

MARCIA DOUGLAS. Marie-Ma.
Night falls and Marie-ma walks in the hot pepper patch. She is barefooted and wears a long white nightgown. I am watching her from the window above my bed. I have turned off the lamp so that she won't notice. One after the other, Marie-ma snaps the hot peppers from their stems and plops them into her mouth as if they are as sweet as plumbs. The yellow ones are her favorite-- she stuffs them two at a time while her dark eyes quick as mosquitoes search for more. When the peppers are all gone, she turns on her small feet and leaves the yard.

KIINI IBURA SALAAM K-USH: The Legend of the Last Wero.
The seekers wait, hungrily, as K-Ush rises, hovering close to the ceiling of the dogra. Her large eye is closed, but she can feel them-the seekers-crouched on the dirt floor below. Their heads are lowered, hands raised. They send shards of prayer up to the ceiling, puncturing K-Ush's trance. Their needs-hesitant, but insistent-hit her at once, a skull-splitting pain flashes across her forehead. Her large skeletal hands twitch. She hears the tiny, timid voice of a seeker plead for help. She'd like to drift down to the floor, wrap her bony fingers around the seeker's neck and squeeze. She grits her teeth instead, and forces her body to relax. She rubs the hem of her robe with a claw-like toe and speaks.

ANDREA SHAW. Jus' a Pinch of the Yellow Powder.
"Jus' a Pinch of the Yellow Powder" is first person narrated story set in a decaying neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica. The protagonist, Miss Clarice, is an aging matriarch with supernatural skills that she uses for the benefit of her small community. However, when an outsider disrespects Miss Clarice and puts her young ward in danger, Miss Clarice uses her magical talents to deal with him, and she does not hesitate to give us all the details herself.

POETRY

HELEN CRUMP. Morning Wake-up Sun.
Lying on my stomach, head pillowed by the cross-fold of my arms, my right leg moved against the back of the right in that subconscious and conscious rocking motion --that reflects the habit of infancy and childhood, that soothed the body and spirit, eased the mind, and called forth the peace and comfort of sleep.

ASERET SIN. Poetrix.
Birthed in the sacred well steeped in the furtive pot rhythms wriggle forth Damballah-Style

ASERET SIN. Sister Ancestor.
What Zora Neale Hurston did for Marie Leveau Alice Walker did for Zora Neale Hurston

INTERVIEWS

YOLANDA HOOD. Interview with Tananarive Due.
This is an interview between scholar Yolanda Hood and horror fiction writer Tananarive Due. The interview took place in the spring of 2004.

GWENDOLYN D. POUGH. Interview with L. A. Banks.
This is an interview between scholar Gwendolyn Pough and horror fiction writer L.A. Banks. The interview took place in the spring of 2004.

REVIEWS

CANDICE M. JENKINS. Review of Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collin.

GRETCHEN J. MICHLITSCH. Review of The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson.

KATHY DAVIS PATTERSON. Review of Minion: A Vampire Huntress Legend by L.A. Banks.

JENNIFER THORINGTON SPRINGER. Review of Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

ALICIA THOMAS. Review of The Awakening: A Vampire Huntress Legend byL.A. Banks.

CARMIELE Y. WILKERSON Review of Love This by Toni Morrison.

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FEMSPEC VOLUME 5.2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIAL REMARKS
The editor explains how the Girl Power issue became the Girl Power Plus issue containing considerably more than the special editors from Canada had collected and submitted, the promotion of Beverly Bow to assistant editor and the idea of a PayPal tip jar on the web page.

REBECCA C. HARRIS. The Problematics of Reclaiming the Girlish: The Powerpuff Girls and Girl Power.
The author defines girl power as a playful form of third wave feminism seeking to reclaim the feminine and mark it as culturally valued. She describes aspects of the movement and how it emerged from The Riot Grrrls in the 1990s. She feels that the girl power icons presented in the media enact without embodying the new female strength. She explores literature on previous representations of powerful women to illustrate the progressive aspects of girl power texts and then presents her criticisms of the texts and messages.

Special Canadian Section: Girl Power.

DONNA VARGA ROXANNE HARDE. Editors' Introduction.
The editors contend that in contemporary popular culture, fantasy characters such as Xena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer take their place in a longer history where popular culture and ancient lore intermixed in the creation of popular female characters with superior powers. They advise that the work they have collected finds both positive and negative representations of girl power, since on the one hand girl power can mean independence and social transformation and on the other, consumerism, self-involvement and violence.

ALISON JACQUES. Lucky Jupiter Meets Your Ruler: Otherwordly Sources of Girlpower in Magazine Horoscopes.
The author examines glossy teen magazines in the mainstream such as Twist and considers the notion of girl power as it appears in the horoscopes of five American magazines. She asks such questions as Girl Power? Or the Power of Jupiter in Your COnfidence Sector? showing how the notions of girl power and the horoscope intersect with advise such as "Be Confident, He Will Notice!"

VICTORIA ANNE NEWSOM. Young Females as Super Heroes: Super Heroines in the Animated Sailor Moon.
The author claims that girl power is a pleasure-centered form of empowerment tied to ideals found in third wave feminism. Yet she also sees it as a media construct challenging female empowerment by limiting empowerment to a specific type of body and performance by young women. She contrasts girl power characters to stereotypes of the seventies, arguing that these characters represent a "tough girl" style of feminism, encouraging young women to stand up for themselves. Unfortunately this sometimes devolves into making shopping choices. She traces the roots of some of the contemporary female superheroines to Lynda Carter's Wonnder Woman, the original Charley's Angels, and Princess Leia from Star Wars. She looks closely at how the Sailor Scouts are physically portrayed.

SHARON ROSS. Dangerous Demons: Fan Responses to Girls' Power, Girls' Bodies, and Girls' Beauty in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The author maintains that in terms of Girl Power, the female bodies on Buffy serve as a rhetorical site for discussions of femininity, beauty, physical strength and inner strength. Viewers think through feminist goals as they view the show, which was one of the aims of the show's creators.

DOUGLAS THORPE. Girl Power and the Discourse of Aging: The Example of Ursula LeGuin.
Feminist science fiction realizes its potential by complicating our sense of the existing order. Yet usually gender is at stake, not age, even though ageism is as pervasive as sexism. The author asserts the ageism of proclamations of girl power in assuming they are the same as woman power, and drawing women into believing that they need to conjure up their girlish aspects to become empowered. He warns that to tag power with prepubescence obscures the role sexual maturity plays in marking womanhood. To assess the risks and rewards of girl power, the author examines Ursula LeGuin.

FICTION

JUSTIN SCOTT. The Truth in Dreams.
In Spring 2001, the Femspec intern class ran a contest of creative writing in Cleveland area high schools. This story in which Xena came to the author's high school for a day won the creative writing contest.

REVIEWS

Canadian Girl Power: Young Women Save the Day, Happily-Ever-After Ending Unnecessary.
This review of Margaret Buffie's The Watcher (Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2000) explores the borderland between childhood and adulthood. Seen from the point of view of a child of flower children of the sixties, the author's sixth book sounds like a counter cultural plot offering something different including an Earth Mother character who firmly believes that the bees in her inherited organic honey business have to be kept up to date on all family happenings or they get mad. An alternative to the mainstream for children of progressive parents.

Young Women (and More) in Anime.
Geary reviews Susan Napier's Anime from Akira to Princess Monoke: Experiencing C0ntemporary Japanese Animation (New York: Palgrave, 2001). Until the mid-1990s, the only information available on anime was primarily in a few magazines and fanzines. But with the blossoming of popular anime such as Sailor Moon, a large audience has developed for anime on television. Napier's book is the most academically available on the topic. She explores a number of topics including gender roles and representation of history, having in mind the student doing college level literary criticism and analysis.

Japanese Magic: The Girl-Friendly Films of Hayao Miyazaki.
Laity and Goldberg review Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro (1993), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) and Spirited Away (2002). They claim that until recently, Japan's most famous animator has been overlooked in the United States. Unlike Disney films, romance is at best a minor aspect of his stories. Young girls he creates face their trials in becoming adult, coping with family illness, and relating to nature as a process that they resolve with true wonder and joy even if not without tears and struggle.

Growing Up To Be Feminists: Reports on Girl Culture.
Mary Beth Long reviews Sharon Mazzarella and Norma Odom Pecora's edited collection Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 1999) a book that focuses on girls' reactions to mass-market creations rather than on their own participation in fantasy. The book contains essays on mass-produced novels, advertising, magazines, fashion and movies as well as a handful of interviews between academic feminists and their daughters.

Reading Scared: Feminists Confronting Future Feminists.
Reading Helen Harper's Wild Words, Dangerous Desires: High School Girls and Feminist Avant-Garde Writing (New York: Lang, 2000) was a disappointment as the author discovered how far feminists are from our goals in terms of impact on future generations. The research project discussed in the book was the sharing of feminist avant-garde writing with teen age girls.

Marwen's Web: Living on the Loom of the Mother.
Saunders reviews Martine Bates' The Dragon's Tapestry (1992), The Prison Moon (1992) and The Taker's Key (1998), published by Alberta's Red Deer College Press. The series together is called the Marmawell Trilogy, a young adult project that examines power. The author explores the ideas that those who receive power must also assume responsibility for its use, and that personal power should be put in service for others. The books are set in a kingdom called Ve, where an order of women called Oldwives have access to the magic, or the spiritually binding force upon which the fabric of life and culture is dependent. The central image through all three books is the weaver's loom.

Eyes Shining and Feet Kicking.
The author reviews The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women (Boston: Little Brown, 2000) by Tchana Katrin and Trina Schart Hyman. The new collection of feminist folklore anthologizes and retells eighteen stories about clever and courageous women. The phrase "eyes shining and feet kicking" refers to the depiction of women's strength as they are characterized by being willing to fight throughout, across cultures.

CREATIVE WORKS

SHARON BLACK. Stone Dress
Poetic retelling of Rapunzel in which one character, who makes her own dress, is both the maiden and the tower; when she walks, she sets the bones of the earth singing.

CAROLYN GAGE. The Rules of the Playground: A One-Act Play
A play set in the classroom discussing children's behavior on a playground as a vehicle for presenting issues about the gender sources for violent and aggressive behavior.

EDVIGE GIUNTA. "Stories of Sicilian Girls", and "Dark Play."
Unknown men rape a fifteen-year-old girl and the first poem connects this act to mythology, Jenny Jones blasting on TV and stories spat out on a frantic computer screen. The second poem is a seductive attempt to draw a child into a world where a boomerang is thrown that will cancel time.

LYN LIFSHIN. Emily Dickinson.
A short poem that connects Emily Dickinson to Alice, "trying to find/a way through/the glass around her."

ABIGAIL MORRIS. The Girl with the Metal Hair.
A high school girl with metal hair is compared to one of those sci-fi robots of H.G. Wells and everyone is afraid of her. She hated rain because of the rust and feared storms.

EMILY SELF. The Language of Paper Dolls.
A remembrance of the magic of paper doll language and casting spells, and "closed whispers under covers."

KRISTINE A. SOMERVILLE. Runners.
Imagistic short fiction of running through the suburbs in streets with space age names.

FILM REVIEW

BATYA WEINBAUM. Summer with the Ghosts
If ever homeschooling needed a model curriculum film, this one shot in Austria would qualify. The delighted adventures of a girl shadowing her father on a film shoot because her mother is traveling giving concerts back in Canada includes numerous romps with ghosts shot in Austria. Has girl power elements in that the girl is a problem solver, at home with adults, males and machinery.

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Femspec Abstracts Vol. 5 Issue 1

BATYA WEINBAUM. Announcing a Few Changes

PATRICIA MELZER AND SHELLEY PRICE. Editorial Introduction to "Gender and Technology in Science Fiction Film”.

CRITICISM.

ALBERT ANTHONY. Menacing Technologies: Counterfeit Women and the Mutability of Nature in Science Fiction Cinema.

MARK BOULD. Taking the Dream Girls Apart: Molly, Eve VIII, Barb Wire.

CATHY HAWKINS. I Married a Mysogynist from Outer Space: The Challenge of Being a Bride in 1950s Science Fiction Film.

PATRICIA MELZER. There Is No Spoon: Concepts o Subjectivity in The Matrix.

JEFFREY MIDDENTS. This Is Not Film: Ef/facing the Screen in Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days.

K. SURKAN. I Want To Be a Real Boy: A.I. Robots, Cyborgs, and Mutants as Passing Figures in Science Fiction Film.

ART

BETH BLINEBURY. Cyborg Bodies: How to Read the Body.

POETRY

SHELLEY PRICE. Animus Mundi. Alien, Wormhole, Golem

FILM REVIEW

MICHELLE RENEE MATISONS. The Cyber-Genius Hysterical Mother and the Techno-Virgin/Man's Man: Thoughts on Cronenberg's eXistnZ.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

PATRICIA MELZER AND SHELLEY PRICE. Gender and Technology in Science Fiction Film.

GENERAL CRITICISM

GERALDINE WOJNO KIEFER. Celebrations, Overlays, Matrices: Making Art in the Textures of Collage.

MARK BOULD. Gwyneth Jones: An Introduction.

Author recounts how Gwyneth Jones is under-read by Americans, and informs us of her personal biography and full bibliography as he introduces the following three critical articles he has edited.

MARK BOULD
Incredible Stories about Ordinary People: the Teenage Fiction of Gwyneth Jones/Ann Halam

Author discusses the twenty one novels for teenagers or young adults that Jones has written under the name Ann Halam, in addition to the nine sf novels, a number of short stories and fairy tales, and a not insubstantial body of reviews and criticism under her own name.

ANDREW BUTLER
Going Up Hill: An Interview with Gwyneth Jones

This interview concentrates on Jones' pseudonymous Ann Halam novels and the first two books from her current sequence of sf novels under her own name, Bold As Love and Castles Made of Sand.

ISTAN CSICSERY-RONAY JR.
The Lost Child: Notes on White Queen

Introduced by an attempted synopsis by editor Mark Bould, this impressionistic piece includes dreams of the author, an analysis of how dream grief lies just below the surface of fantasy, and an exploration of the types of reveries of characters in Jones' White Queen.

TARA BETTS
Brown Girl in the Ring

Nalo Hopkinson's winner of the 1999 Warner Aspect First Novel Award is described as combining a post-apocalyptic Toronto with the cultural myths of African and Caribbean people, with a focus on a single teenage mother.

BARBARA J. COOK
Myth and Ritual in Women's Detective Fiction

Review describes a book by Christine A. Jackson that draws upon the works of Joseph Campbell, Northrope Frye, Carl G. Jung, and other scholars of folklore, myth and anthropology to illustrate the parallels between myth and detective fiction.

JANICE C. CROSBY
Feminist Cabalism 101

Review of a collection Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Debbie Notkin, which includes winners of the Tiptree Award begun in 1991 to recognize works that interrogate gender roles. The winning authors are almost evenly split between women and men, which the reviewer says indicates "that no monolithic feminist perspective underpins the selection process."

GERARDO T. CUMMINGS
Biotechnological and Medical Themes in Science Fiction

A review of a work edited by Domna Pastourmatzi presents work by both male and female critics that center around science fiction topics such as cloning, invisibility, aliens, comic heroes, medicine, and future biotechnology.

ELIZABETH L. P. BRIGGS
Scheherazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature

Reviews a work by Marilyn Jurich which is a "wonderful sampling of folk and fairy tales from all over the world featuring strong women in trickster roles." The notion of "trickstar" emerges, to conceptualize stories such as "The Man That Had a Baby" from the Ozarks and "Three Strong Women" from Japan. Jurich, not a strict folktale researcher, coins the term trickster as the female version to trickster. The trickstar as Jurich recounts often operates from different motives and employs different tricks to different ends than do the traditional male tricksters.

G.WARLOCK VANCE
Images of Fear: How Horror Stories Helped Shape Culture (1818-1918)

A review of Martin Tropp's two hundred plus examination of "how a series of images of 'horror' in fiction interacted with an emerging modern culture over a century," which recounts how horror helped shape attitudes towards technology, crime and gender. He connects disparate ideas such as the Women's Liberation Movement of the Victorian Era and the brutality of war, particularly World War I.

JANICE M. BOGSTAD
Critical Theory and Science Fiction

Reviews Carl Freedman's theoretical criticism which argues that science fiction is the paradigm focus for the study of critical theory. Freedman's analysis of numerous classical texts focuses on the best of the best, but, the critic questions, "what good is a definition of a genre that excludes most of its examples?"

THERESA A.L. CRATER
Cauldron of Changes: Feminist Spirituality in Fantastic Fiction

A review of Janice C. Crosby's trade paper book which "offers a refreshing return to a branch of feminism that has been woefully ignored in academic feminist analysis of the past decade or two."

PAUL EROS
A Different Lens: Gender Studies and the Inklings

Reviews Women among the Inklings: Gender, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Charles Williams, by Candice Frederick and Sam McBride, arguing that although a wealth of critical material has been written about the Inklings, little has been written about gender in either their lives or writings.

DIONA SHAW
Communities of the Heart

Reviews Warren G. Rochelle's on representations of ideal communities in Le Guin's writing, looking at her writing "from the inside, providing a literary X ray that reveals the philosophical underpinnings of her books. Rochelle examines "how Le Guin has modified traditional storytelling modes to tell contemporary stories."

DIONA SHAW
Chicana Ways

Review of Karin Rosa Ikas' 2002 text that "intends to guide an international array of readers, students and scholars" to the works of ten prominent Chicana writers whom she interviewed between 1996 and 1997. Explores themes such as the link between land and identity, and Chicana female archetypes such as La Llorona.

BRUCE GEHIERE
Spiritual Syncretism, Innovation in the Speculative Realm and Radio Theater

Explores Ellen Kushner's radio program which is not as well known as her innovations in fantasy in the feminist sf/fanasy community. Show is discussed as "timely in its appeal to the nondogmatic and cosmopolitans spiritual sensibilities of her listeners." Discusses Kushner's career which began as fantasy editor of Tor Books.

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Femspec Abstracts Vol. 4 Issue 2, 2004

SPECULATING JEWISH WOMEN

LIORA MORIEL. An Introduction, of the Jacket Blurb Comes of Age.
Moriel praises the idea of focusing an issue on Jewish women’s perspectives in speculative fiction, and provides a few introductory comments about Jewish women artists in general.

CRITICISM

SUSAN KRAY. Refamiliarization: Jewish Women in the Narrative Strategies of ‘Pulp’ Science Fiction Magazine Stories, 1993-2000.
To force a different perspective on readers, sf authors “defamiliarize” aspects of society, while retaining a normalizing familiarity in other areas. Historically, sf’s defamiliarizing tendency has not generally extended to aspects of gender, ethnicity, or religion, thus the scarcity of female Jewish characters in sf. The rare exception functions only as a stereotype, a “refamiliarization.” One reason for this is the minimal intersection between the small group of people with an in-depth understanding of Jewishness, and the equally small group of lifelong sf readers from which most sf authors come. Women conversant in both are rarer still. In the second half of the article Kray describes the Jewish female protagonists found in sf after 1992, some of whom break the earlier typical patterns.

GLORIA ORENSTEIN. Vision and Visibility: Contemporary Jewish Women Artists Visualize the Invisible.
Orenstein lists the obstacles modern Jewish women artists face: 1) the traditional interpretation of the biblical second commandment as a prohibition against representational art; 2) a Christian bias in Western art; 3) patriarchal biases in art; 4) the loss of a generation of potential artists in the Holocaust; 5) the problem of assimilation in the face of anti-Semitism; and 6) hybrid religious identities resulting from the necessities of the Diaspora. Modern Jewish women artists, who exist as an identifiable group for the first time, reinterpret biblical women’s lives and document the lives of ordinary Jewish women. Tendencies include the use of materials that were in the past forms of oppression for Jews, e.g., fabrics/the garment industry; documentation of the reality of the Holocaust; and pilgrimages by the artists to Europe and Israel. Orenstein next discusses several Jewish-American artists: Ruth Weisberg, Susan Schwalb, Carol Hamoy, Gabrielle Rossmer, Cheslyn Amato, Anita Rodriguez, Fern Shaffer (with Othello Anderson), and Siona Benjamin. The article includes photos of representative works by each artist.

MEMOIR:

PAMELA SARGENT. Jewish Enough.
The author recounts coming to terms with her Jewish identity, despite having a non-Jewish father and nonobservant family on her mother’s side and being an atheist. At the end of the essay Sargent draws several connections between sf and the Jewish experience.

HISTORICAL FICTION:

LESLIE F STONE. Cosmic Joke.
Short story first published in 1935. A meteor shower causes unprecedented growth in Earth’s animal life.

OVUMINAL WORK:

JUDITH MERRIL. That Only a Mother.
Short story first published in 1948. A woman’s first pregnancy occurs in a time when radiation-caused mutations are becoming more common.

FICTION:

MARLEEN S BARR. Close Encounters of the Monica Kind.
Feminist sf professor instructs alien on protocol for first extraterrestrial visit to earth, but things don’t go exactly as planned.

E M BRONER. De-Winging the Angel.
Essay about distinguishing the stereotypical Jewish mother from the angel.

MARILYN GALE. Lilith 1996.
Jewish legend of Lilith in modern setting.

BATYA WEINBAUM. Sasha’s Harlem: Excerpts.
Sasha, feeling her biological clock ticking, revisits Isaac, the married owner of a Jerusalem hotel, and encounters a ghost.

POETRY:

“One of Those Nights” by Karen Alcaly-Gut
Yiddish ghost visits to bring message from poet’s mother on anniversary of her death.

“Even Death Is Uncertain without the Proper Forms” by Marilyn Jurich
Daughter deals with decisions that must be made when her mother dies.

“Ex-nihilo” by Carol Rose
Creation reinterpreted.

“The Goddess at Bergen-Belsen” by Lorraine Schein
Holocaust survivor’s daughter recalls mother’s pain of loss of family, musing on all the goddesses who could have intervened but did not.

REVIEWS:

“Review of The Defiant Muse” by Scott Barr
Review of bilingual anthology of Hebrew feminist poems from biblical texts to modern times. Edited by Shirley Kauffman, Galit Hasan-Rokem, and Tamar Hess.

“Review of Sleeping with Cats” by Robert Charlick
Review of Jewish feminist author Marge Piercy’s autobiographical essay.

“Review of A Spiritual Life” by Phillipa Kafka
Review of Jewish feminist Merle Feld’s memoir of her lifelong quest to make a place for women in a patriarchal Judaism.

“Review of Dreaming the Actual” by Brian Kelley
Review of anthology of fiction and poetry by modern Israeli women writers, edited by Miriam Glazer. [Note: the word “fiction” is omitted in all references to the title of the book; it should read, after the colon, Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women.]

“Review of Women’s Holocaust Writing” by Phyllis Lassner
Review of Lillian Kremer’s book which demonstrates the gender aspects of Holocaust suffering and Nazi ideology, as revealed in Jewish women’s fiction on the Holocaust.

“Review of Soundless Roar” by Diana Orendi
Review of Holocaust survivor Ava Schieber’s collection of stories, poems, and drawings.

“Review of The Raw Brunettes” by Audrey Vanderford
Review of Lorraine Schein’s novella about radical women in NYC on the last night of the 20th century.

“Review of Bee Season” by Ilana Wolpert
Review of Myla Goldberg’s novel about the unraveling of a Jewish family.

“Review of Klezmer Music” by Batya Weinbaum
Review of CDs by the Lori Cahan-Simon Ensemble, Pharaoh’s Daughter, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.

RACE AND CULTURE

ALYSON BUCKMAN. What Good Is All This to Black People? Octavia Butler’s Reconstruction of Corporeality.
Butler’s sf works recreate the “female monster” in various forms, but shows them adapting, surviving, and prospering because of their so-called monstrosity or difference. Butler presents humans (and aliens) as complex, evolving creatures, while deconstructing hierarchical categories like race, class, gender, and “the normative human body.” Buckman focuses on Butler’s Xenogenesis and Patternmaster series.

SHARON DEGRAW. The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same: Gender and Sexuality in Octavia Butler’s Oeuvre.
In Butler’s three major series (Patternmaster, Xenogenesis, and Parable), while Butler challenges power hierarchies, including gender, she often undermines “full feminist autonomy” by limiting her female leads to traditional roles (like mother). DeGraw demonstrates this “gender retrogression” by discussing female characters in these novels, and suggests possible reasons for it.

SANDRA GOVAN. The Parable of the Sower as Rendered by Octavia Butler: Lessons for Our Changing Times.
Butler’s novel is based on the New Testament parable, but is a much more elaborate parable. Like Jesus, the novel’s protagonist, Lauren, spreads a powerful and necessary message. Lauren critiques Christianity, yet takes from it and other religions to create her own religion of change, in a near-future dystopic world. Govan also discusses Parable in the context of 20th century neo-slave narratives: it conveys a cautionary message that, given the ills of our own society, a “devolution” into the recurrence of slavery is “not that far removed from the realm of possibility.”

STEPHANIE S TURNER. What Actually Is: The Insistence of Genre in Octavia Butler’s Kindred.
Turner analyzes Butler’s time travel novel as “historiographic metafiction,” finding that it contains some but not all features of such narratives. A “hybrid” combination of the slave narrative genre and speculative fiction aspects contributes the irony and self-reflection of historiographic metafiction, although in other ways Butler “does not attain that [requisite] level of parodic self-reflexivity.” That Kindred is a hybrid of genres means it is hard to classify, which led to a “marketing headache” and a mixed critical response.

FICTION:

“Soul Spinner” by Donna Marie Robb
Extraterrestrial Ke’ra confronts a giant from the “Great Blue Planet” who has invaded and brought deathly disease to her world.

POETRY:

“Recessively Blond” by Rita Grabowski
Reflections on homogeneity, bi-raciality, and recessive genes.

“Haiku” by Shannon Mariana Houston
God(dess) dreaming.

REVIEWS:

“Review of Female Hip-Hop Artists in Outer Space” by Nsenga K. Burton
Black female hip-hop artists work within the marginalizing male-dominated music and television industries. They resist dominant ideas about black womanhood by reinterpreting ideal images through their lyrics, aggressive sound, and surreal settings, such as outer space.

“Octavia Butler Speaks: A Visit to Cleveland State University” by Monique Morrison
Morrison relates highlights of Butler’s visit to Cleveland State University.

“Review of Brown Girl in the Ring” by Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo
Review of Nalo Hopkinson’s novel about Caribbean-Canadian Ti-Jeanne’s overlapping struggles in the human and spirit worlds.

GENERAL REVIEW:

“Review of The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction” by Debra Rae Cohen
Review of Justine Larbalestier’s study of attitudes toward women, sex, and gender roles in sf.

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Femspec Abstracts "Women's Horror", Vol.4, Issue 1, 2002

EDITOR'S REMARKS:

GINA WISKER. "Guilty Pleasures: Reading Women's Horror"
Editor Gina Wisker's Editorial Remarks begin with a contextualization of Horror in general, with an emphasis on horror fiction and film, the academic public and the feminine reader. She then goes on to explain the perverse delights and dangerous pleasures that it presents; it has a potential for enjoyment and for critique, the latter being the main reason why this issue is centered around articles that cover the range of horror representation in television, film, short stories, and novels.

FICTION:

"Evil Thoughts" by Suzy McKee Charnas
This short story, told by the perspective of an omniscient narrator, centers around the events surrounding a couple, Fran and Jeffrey; their uncomfortable domesticity, bothersome neighbors, and everpresent friends make for a harried tour through their abnormal life.

"The Which Bitch? Project" by Louise Shaw
This short story, also by a third person omniscient narrator, partly places the reader in the demented mind of a murderer, Kevin. The demeaning representation of women stems from Kevin's obsession with violent films and the right that he feels this films give him to demean and destroy Cathy, the female object of his dementia and violence.

"Spell" Doreen Russell
This poem mixes the genres of fairytale and horror, and as the editor notes, it "captures the threat of the impinging of the fairy world onto ours."

CRITICISM:

SABINE MEYER. "Passing Perverts, After All: Vampirism, (In)Visibility, and the Horrors of the Normative in Jewelle Gomez' The Gilda Stories"
In this article, Sabine Meyer first theorizes on what she calls "the new vampire" before delving into a study of The Gilda Stories. In her introduction, Meyer first succeeds in contextualizing the vampire myth through a comprehensive review of everything and anything related to this subject. In the body of her discussion, Meyer then succesfully delves in all the monstrosity and perversion in Gomez's revisionist re-framing of the horrific.

FRANCES TOMASZYK. "Lunatics with Lethal Combat Skills: Dark Doubles, Bacchae, and Soulless Women in Xena: Warrior Princess."
An excellently well researched and written article that studies Xena by discussing the "dark double," madness and horror which are part of the TV show. Tomaszyk, as the title suggests, delves into the depths of horror conventions utilized in the now defunct Xena: Warrior Princess TV series by presenting multiple examples of the dark doubles, bacchae and femme on femme violence (Xena VS Dark Xena and Callisto VS Xena).

SARA MARTIN ALEGRE. "The Other in Me: Nancy Collins's Vampire Heroine, Sonja Blue"
Martín Alegre's study introduces the reader to the concept of the "reluctant vampire"--or vampirism imposed onto innocents--in her discussion of Collins' Sonja Blue character. In her study, Martín Alegre not only alludes to previous studies she has published, but also offers insights by Kristeva, Richard Dyer and Nina Auerbach that are a propos the subject of her topic.

LORNA JOWETT. Mute and Beautiful: The Representation of the Female in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.
Jowett's article on Rice's canonized work, centering on the character of Claudia, studies the paradoxical and enigmatic nature of this character. This interesting study should be included in a critical collection dedicated to Anne Rice's reconfiguring of the vampire myth.

ANITA BIRESSI. True Crime, Medicine, and Corporeal Horror.
Anita Biressi contributes greatly to the theories of the body and corporeal corrosion by studying films such as Jennifer Chamber Lynch's Boxing Helena and George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Biressi, in her critical approach to these films and the magazine Real Life Crimes...and How They Were Solved uses critical works by Foucalt, Adorno and Benjamin in order to contextualize the reduction, fragmentation and compartmentalizing of the body as displayed in the artistic works discussed in her essay.

KATHLEEN KENDALL. Who Are You Afraid Of?: Young Women as Consumers and Producers of Horror Films.
This article effectively offers the results of a study Kendall conducted in her course on Media Studies. The key conclusion was that young women are prone to enjoy the visual aesthetics of the horror genre, but have their reservations about the way their intelligence may be underestimated by horror films.

ALINE FERREIRA. Artificial Wombs and Archaic Tombs: Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve and the Alien Tetralogy.
Aline Ferreira, in this article, considers the strong similarities between Angela Carter's post-apocalytic novel The Passion of New Eve with 20th Century Fox's Alien series, starring the character of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

GINA WISKER. Honey, I'm Home!: Splintering the Fabrication in Domestic Horror.
The editor of this special issue, Gina Wisker, does a superb job of discussing the foundations of horror and presenting prime examples in literature and film. In her analysis of horror, she alludes to Sigmund Freud, Stephen King, Carter and Julia Kristeva to adequately exemplify points of her discussion.

ANDREA GREENBAUM. Biotechnology as Kabbalah: Reconfiguring the Golden Myth in Alien Resurrection and Species.
Andrea Greenbaum presents in this article an ambitious piece of critical research. Greenbaum's presents the Golem, codes, DNA, and Hebrew literature in connection to the Alien Resurrection and Species films (by 20th Century Fox and MGM respectively).

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Femspec Abstracts Vol. 3 Issue 2

EDITORIAL REMARKS:

BATYA WEINBAUM
Editor's Notes
In her introduction, Batya Weinbaum, editor of Femspec, presents short snippets on each of the critical articles included in this issue and background on the critics and the authors to be examined. Octavia Butler's visit to CSU (former home of Femspec) is mentioned in relation to Patricia Melzer's article. The editor also offers an invitation to the readers to subscribe to the journal and entices them with what the future issues of Femspec will include.

CRITICISM:

LOUISE ALLEN. Monkey Business: Planet of the Apes and Romantic Excess
This article may very well be or become the cornerstone in Planet of the Apes related criticism. Louise Allen's learned and complete essay offers a deep analysis of two of the Planet of the Apes films, as well as comparisons with other science fiction cinematic texts (Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 2001: A Space Odyssey).

CHRISTINE DORAN. Fantasy as History: The Invention of Cixi, Empress of China
Doran's article is a fine study on Cixi, Empress of China, a cultural Chinese Icon with an important legacy in the Asian world of today. This essay explores questions of Cixi's sexuality, her lack of femininity, her animal-like nature, and whatever political aspirations of power, other than as a women ruler, she had or may have had.

PATRICIA MELZER. All that you touch you change: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.
The author of this incredibly well researched study left no stone unturned: an extensive end notes section, and a bibliography with more than 50 entries, makes her article a definite milestone in Octavia Butler-related criticism. Melzer, by examining Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, elucidates on "the notion of utopia, feminist politics and theory, and feminist science fiction" (31).

GLORA FEMAN ORENSTEIN. Journey through Mlle de Scudéry's Carte de Tendre: A 17th-Century Salon Woman's Dream/Country of Tenderness.
Orenstein's study of La Carte de Tendre, is "a map of Mlle de Scudéry's desire, and of the emotional geography of the territory of her political ambition and her sexual imagination" (53).

DARKO SUVIN. Cloning: On Cognition in the Discourses of SF and Technoscience
Darko Suvin, one of the most important American writer and critic of science fiction, presents a condesed version of a longer work that was published in Domna Pastourmatzi's Biotechnological and Medical Themes in Science Fiction. While this shorter version of his longer essay does present good insights into what Suvin sees as a wonder of technology (cloning), reading the longer piece offers a complete immersion into such an interestingly contemporary theme.

FICTION:

TANANARIVE DUE. Protection.
This short story, in the form of a "Letter to the Editor" most common in newspaper and magazines, offers a disturbing tale of a mother, a boy, and a witness that signs the letter "Unsigned."

CAROL GUESS. Love Story with Living Ghost
This story begins with a statement: "This is a novel" (79). In just under three pages, it offers an introduction, a complication, and a conclusion. A prime example of unrelenting, concise narration.

REBECCA LESSES. A Dream Question for the Angels.
An innovative short story that presents a transition effect between the real world, the conscious state we inhabit during the daytime, and the unreal, unconscious life we lead at night, when we are immersed in a sea of dreams and nightmares. Lesses, resorts to the use of italics when she wants to express the dream state of the narrator, and goes back to normal font when the dream ends.

GIRLS' FICTION:

CATHY SADLER. The Lost Tribe
Sadler's short narration begins with an introduction, flashbakcs twenty years earlier, jumps back to the present time, and flashforwards to six months into the future. A story involving an archaeologist, Amazon women and Xena, warrior princess is what plays through the jumping back and forth of time.

POETRY:

NANCY KUHL. If Kay Sage Painted Self-Portrait as a Boy
As the title already presents, this poem is a play on words, a lyrical explorations of emotions, feelings, smell, and touch.

The Hundred-Headless Woman Opens Her August Sleeve: Part 2
Like the previous poem, this one is a post-modern canvas of words, where the senses come to life, and again, the smell of turpentine, just like in " If Kay Sage Painted Self-Portrait as a Boy", makes a strange appearance as the poem concludes.

TARA LEONARD. Sanitary/Sanity
A musical poem, with an ever-constant question mark in almost every line, exposing the obsession of the poetic subject with washing clothes, which in so doing is a cleansing of the self and of the mind.

JANE LIDDELL-KING. Cornflakes
This poem is a strange trip for an innocent subject, Cornflakes, through a universe of planets, flowers, family members, and hell.

LORRAINE SCHEIN. Remedios Varo
This text is a post-modern poem that travels to Mexico City, visiting Remedios Varo and name-drops Max Erns and Friday Kahlo and paints with words images of a surrealist painting worthy of Salvador Dali with a feminist twist.

INTERVIEW:

BATYA WEINBAUM. Interview with Marge Piercy
This short but interesting interview deals with narrative topics such as anti-semitism, science fiction, feminist jews in WWII. A discussion of editorial practices at Knopf will serve as eye openers to the readers.

REVIEWS:

PHILLIPA KAFKA. Review of The Road to Fez
The book reviewed by the critic is filled with different manifestations of desire. It is set in contemporary Morocco, but also takes the reader back to 1834 and 1492, a time in which Sephardic Jews and Moors were kicked out of Spain, when this latter country became almost as powerful as the once mighty Rome.

ANNIS VILAS PRATT. Review of The Golden Notebook of Springfield
After a couple of sentences that anyone writing a dissertation should read, Vilas Pratt begins to review Vachel Lindsey's at times difficult utopian novel, only made bearable (according to the critic) by a three-part introduction written by Ron Sakolsky.

ERIN A. SMITH. Review of The Politics of Women's Studies
Smith's review, seeming more like a short essay (with its own Works Cited section at the end of it), concentrates its close to three pages in the Florence Howe edited The Politics of Women's Studies: Testimony from 30 Founding Mothers. This book is undeniably "a success story, albeit an unfinished one" according to Smith.

GINA WISKER. Review of "Saddling la Gringa"
Phillipa Kafka, a constant book reviewer and contributor to Femspec, now gets her book "Saddling la Gringa": Gatekeeping in Literature by Contemporary Latina Writers reviewed by Gina Wisker, another contributor of our journal. Kafka's book offers well written essays focusing on Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rosario Ferré, Magali García Ramis, Cristina García, and Julia Alvarez, with support from a critical framework that includes Michel Foucalt, Luke Irigaray, and Judith Butler.

GINA WISKER. Review of (Out) Classed Women
The reviewer finds this book well informed, threading "the path of feminist cultural politics with sensitivity and brings to life the engaged work of several Chicana writers" (116).

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Femspec Abstracts Vol. 3 Issue 1 2001

CRITICISM:

"Millenial Mothers: Reproduction, Race and Ethnicity in Feminist Dystopian Fiction" by Dorian Cirrone.

The author discusses Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night (1937) written in great Britain while fascism was on the rise; Suzy McKee Charnas' Walk to the End of the World (1974) written when feminism was in full voice in the US; Zoe Fairbairns' Benefits (1979) written in Great Britain in the midst over the Wages for Housework debate; and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) written in Canada as an expression of the Reagan years in the US. She argues that although the times, places and circumstances in which these authors were writing varied considerably, their concerns were similar especially in regard to their depiction of women as defined by their functions of reproduction and mothering.

"The Resurrection of Morgan le Fey: Fallen Women to Triple Goddess" by Theresa Crater

Arthurian legends have been retold many times, with each century emphasizing different parts of the story and presenting characters in various lights. Authors in the second part of the twentieth century focused on Morgan Le Fey, transforming her from a fallen, wicked woman to a leader of an alternative community. This reconstruction, the author argues, is due in a large part to the feminist movement.

"Terri Windling's The Wood Wife: A Space for Complementary Subjects" by Robin Murray

The author discusses feminist goals in dismantling hierarchies in texts such as Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and Gearhart's Wanderground, using Devine's notion that the focus on displaicng the masculine as center results in a feminine subject that is not attached to nature. She contends that Windling's The Wood Wife offers an alternative to this paradigm. She explores the ecofeminist context of this use of magical realism and discusses the novel as an arena in which the human/nature relationship can be examined more fruitfully.

"Intersubjectivity and Difference in Feminist Ecotopias" by Susan Stratton

Stratton acknowledges that ecofeminism, feminism, and the ecology movement have existed outside of academe decades before the field of ecocriticism became a recognizable movement among professors of literature in the 1990s. She hopes that now that literary criticism has embraced feminism and is opening to ecocriticism, that it may be ready for ecofeminism, and examines recent criticism and feminist utopias which she calls ecotopias in this light.

"Women's Horror as Erotic Transgression" by Gina Wisker

Contemporary women's radical horror writing critiques social conventions, and also challenges the conventional formulae of horror. The celebration of the erotic that occurs in this genre is, according to the author, essentially creative and liberating. Such writing refuses the value systems that underlie oppressive ideology in fictional and filmic formulations. The newly emerging genre of women's horror also denies the destructive polarities of male/female, good/bad, passive/active, life/death. The authors in this mode refuse to script women as victims, hags or femmes fatalles, and are reinstating forms of power. The author examines works of Angela Carter, Pat Califia, Katherine Forrest and Cheri Scotch in order to substantiate her views.

FICTION:

"Ovum" by Martha Marinara
This futuristic fiction begins with a first-time mother being kidnapped by soldiers out of uniform, armed and not well-camouflaged. The birthing mother is a scientist, who had impregnated one egg with another and hence had created a female being without the use of a male. The baby is born and raised in a laboratory, and develops psychic powers that confound genetic engineers who are responsible for her.

POETRY:

"Orpheus" by Moira McAuliffe
McAuliffe gives voice to Persephone and other women who perceive Orpheus on his way in to the underworld, where "the shapeless mouth of negation/swallowed his eyes." The retelling of his contact with Eurydice is set against a worled that remained unchanged when he returned from the underworld, where "the rivers were still branches of stone/and the sea was bitten metal." Serial women voices describe him as "out of the wild," and "back from the dead." They wash him and his clothes, take away his flute, and nurse him, "drying his clothes on stones/feeding him, talking to him/playing with him like a child in the sun." The women, often depicted as background only in Greek myth, here are interpreted as performing an important function: "Orpheus called the world together with music/but we knitted it/with light." An important poem in the process of feminist reclamations of the classics, and mythic revisioning.

"Katherine Murphy" by Leonard Trawick
Kate was a poet in her fifties returning to get a degree allowing her to teach poetry in the schools. She is remembered by Leonard Trawick, in an introduction to her work, as "a person of great kindness humor and joie de vivre, kindness and generosity." She pursued numerous modes of survival, including working as a medical record keeper and in the theater. She edited both Whiskey Island and The Journal (at Ohio State University where she went on for an MFA) and won an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Award for her poetry in 1998.

"Not Remembering My Childhood" by Katherine Murphy
Remembering a domestic moment of shopping for food, returning home with the food, and simmering memories in the pot "like red beans in the forgotten," the author tries to remember her first moment and connects with a fantasy moment in which her bones are silver.

"Dreading Dissection" by Katherine Murphy
A discussion of the body "as the place/you come back to" references the dead "taken back from horror films."

"To A Friend Afraid of Flying" by Katherine Murphy
A discussion of life as "a map/open, roads drawn in a design/through contrasting states/a web /dragging ends past margins/flyers never see."

"A Map of the United States of America" by Cristian Salazar
A Mexican-born poet from Cuernevaca now living in the US positions a young meztiza woman in a high school contest standing up in the middle of an auditorium to burn a black shape like a gun on the screen overhead, her "hand holding a knife," cutting a square heart shape out of the United States map when asked to locate and draw the location of the Hopi Reservation.

HISTORICAL DOCUMENT:

"Clare Winger Harris and 'The Fifth Dimension'" by Richard Lupoff
SF writer Lupoff introduces the Clare Winger Harris story that contains three characters, and is set in the home of a married couyple, Ellen and John, an unusual setting for a story that appeared in the early US sf pulps more often replete with whiz-techs and space operas. He relates her story to later Chaos Theory as developed in the world of physics.

"The Fifth Dimension" by Clare Winger Harris
Intense interaction in sharp realist prose of a woman who believes in the cycles of time, and sees her neighbor Mrs. Maxwell in a déjà vu. She has a premonition that her neighbor shouldn't go into her garage. She tells herself not to be silly, doesn't warn the neighbor, and then the neighbor dies when the garage burns. When this housewife's husband prepares to go on a business trip, he condescendingly thinks she is just making something up because she is afraid to be alone. She reminds him of the death of the neighbor, which she foresaw, and descends into hopelessness. She begins sobbing hysterically, and her husband changes his mind and decides not to go. The news arrives that the train he would have gone on, if his wife had not detained him, crashed. The husband explains it all scientifically to her, and offers to buy her a fur coat. Still a product of its times, the story shows a woman thinking, understanding and discussing theory and scientific concepts, and validates women's psychic perceptions.

REVIEWS:

"Review of Teaching toward the 24th Century" by Bruce Beatie
This book is based on Karen Anijar's 1994 dissertation and contains a valuable body of interviews, mostly with high school teachers. The quotations from these interviews the reviewer finds fascinating and often "quite frightening in their fanatacism."

"Review of Turning on the Girls" by Ritch Calvin
The reviewer finds this novel to be sometimes constructing an ideal society and at other times marking "feminine" characteristics and matriarchal values. The novel centers around Lisa, a young woman employed by the Ministry of Thought, who acquires a male assistant. All is not well in the New Order. The oppressed men get together and study the history from which they have been erased, as occurs in Egalia's Daughters. Lisa and her assistant team up to stifle the counterrevolution.

"Review of The Jigsaw Woman" by Liisa Hake
The reviewer finds this book to be a blend of magical realism and mythology, a "fast-paced romp from one mind expanding sexual episode to another." Three women who constitute the singular main character reappear in her past. She is able to go in and out of their bodies, helping them to give birth and to warn them of impending dangers.

"Review of Goja: An Autobiographical Novel" by Philipa Kafka
A poet, fabulist and essayist, Suniti Najoshi was born in India in 1941. She grew up critical of the class system even though she benefited from it as well. In an extended fantasy sequence, through a three way dialogue between grandmother, servant and author, Goja tries to resolve some of her issues including noticing gender inequality, male dominance, racism and lesbianism.

"Review of Witches of the Atlantic World" by Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt
The reviewer finds this book to include a variety of important contributions to the study of witchcraft persecutions in the early modern world. The collection encourages readers to consider witch hunting as an Atlantic phenomenon. She finds the book admirable for its commitment to providing an Atlantic view of the witchcraze. The primary sources provided in the volume might be helpful to those creating fiction. These include Kramer and Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum and Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles.

"Review of Islands of Women and Amazons" by Emmy Levine
Levine finds Weinbaum's volume to be "an enjoyable and readable study," interdisciplinary and comprehensive in approach. She also notes the connection of the topic to contemporary socioeconomic and cultural issues. The Amazon archetype is brought into the realm of life experience, through ethnography into Isla Mujeres in Mexico. She quotes other reviewers' assessments of her "in-depth exploration of the Amazon archetype, a symbol that pervades many cultures and has influenced views of women and women's culture."

"Review of Mary Shelley's Fictions" by Donna Burns Phillips
The reviewer finds this collection to be for those who are well versed in the entire Shelley corpus, as she explores the essays mostly by British scholars. Various versions of Frankenstein are discussed in the essay by by Nora Crook, for example. In the section on gender, Anne-Lise Francois and Daniel Mozes offer a provocative reading of Mathilde, and other titles and issues are discussed.

"Review of Behind the Blue Gate" by Darlene Pagán
Pagan notes that Carol Rose's poetry explores "the bounds of culture, national and religion," and hales her as "one of the most promising Manitoba writers." The collection reflects the poet's studies and interests in religion and international cross-cultural communication, "particularly from her perspective as a Jewish feminist. As the reviewer summizes, "Tending towards linguistic economy, a lyric style, and a formal range, Behind the Blue Gate represents Rose's mastery of craft and the sensual possibilities of language."

"A Ramble Through Fantasy Land" by Elizabeth Pandolfo Briggs
The reviewer finds this a unique book that looks at science fiction, children's literature and popular culture, and offers insights into coming of age in fantasyland. The author, Gary Westfahl, whose volume is reviewed, analyzes children's literature to see how its message affects adults. The book reads like a collection of essays, about some books which the author might have read as a child but which no longer seem relevant to the reviewer. Some books discussed include the Hardy Boys, and the Choose Your Own Adventure series. How Superman's tripartite identity contradicts western philosophy of unified identity is very American is also explored. It is not clear from the review whether or how gender is explored as a question in the text, or in the texts discussed.

"Review of In the Footsteps of the Goddess" by Annis V. Pratt
These personal stories edited and illustrated by Cristina Biaggi records what happened when women in the early 1970s were first becoming conscious of how the patriarchal world and everything we had been taught in society all contained weapons honed by men to use against us. That is, women began talking to each other in small groups, listening, and the fragmented and degraded bits of Goddess imagery that we came across in our research had to be retold to empower us. The book Biaggi produced from such materials, the reviewer says, is "the kind of book you want to carry with on your travels and dip into meditatively." She has collected definitions of the goddess, and personal stories by women and men who have learned celebration by coming into contact with goddess imagery.

"Review of White Turtle" by Karen Schneider
These are stories, not all fantasy, but even the ones that are not by Merlinda Bobis take on fantastic quality due to their frequent use of elaborate and/or unexpected metaphor. For example, in the first story, "An Earnest Parable," a communal tongue is shared by five neighborhood families of different ethnicity. Bobus, a Filipina living in Australia and writing in English spliced with other languages, relish their multicultural origins and speak as if through a universal translator.

"Review of Mothering in the African Diaspora" by Gina Wisker
Wisker's review of this special issue of the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering stresses beliefs and inspirations related to the mythical and spiritual in texts and other cultural representations. For example, she comments on Mackey's essay on how mother love is an act of resistance in Beloved. Mackey uses psychoanalytic theory to explain the return of the Imaginary, the ghost of the departed child, when Paul D. arrives.

"Review of The Bitch is Back" by Batya Weinbaum
The bitch has appeared as an archetype in world literature over the centuries, recognizable as the monstrous presence in Greek tragedy. This review of Sarah Appleton Aguiar's reclamation of the archetype suggests a lens to review work by Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and Mary Daly, Adreinne-Rich style.

"Review of From Moon Goddesses to Virgins" by Batya Weinbaum
The reviewer finds this exploration of the colonization of Yucatecan Maya sexual desire to possibly provide models for sf writers, feminist and otherwise, to extrapolate from in imagining other cultural forms of the organization of sexual desire and expression. The book is perhaps the first manuscript to study Maya sexual desire through Maya-language documents. In particular, the female figure of the Moon goddess is discussed.

"Review of The Lieutenant Nun" by Batya Weinbaum
Sherry Velasco's exploration of transgenderisim, lesbian desire and Catalina Erauso explores hybrid spectacles, monsters and how transvestite narratives function by tracing adaptations of the Lieutenant Nun figure in literature, theater, iconography and cinema. Velasco shows how "the male disguise provides many advantages and almost always empowers women in men's clothing." Cross-cultural fantasies of cross-dressing women are explored, by examining the popular representations of her throughout the ages.

"Review of Inanna: Lady of the Largest Heart" by Batya Weinbaum
Inanna was a goddess who celebrated her vulva, founded horticulture, and collected all the principles of her culture into her "boat of culture" as the introducing poet Judy Grahn tells us in this remarkable volume valuabe for teaching writing for performance, the possible boundarliess of female imagination, and the roots of matriarchal pre-classical literature. Scholars familiar with the oral literature of India's earth goddesses and Kali will notice similar characteristics as recorded by the poet Enheduanna, "High Priestess of the Moon God of the City of Ur," the city from which Abraham and Sara exited over five hundred years later. This Sumerian poet on a timeline lived seventeen hundred years before Sappho, and about eleven hundred years
before Homer. She is clearly the mother of written poetry, and we are priveleged to have her forty five hundred lines that seem as exotic and far removed as science fiction fantasy, as Grahn tells us. In the late nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson read from translated fragments of Sappho, the majority of whose work was burnt in the Christian era. Sappho was primarily focusing her attention on the star goddess, Venus in Latin, or Aphrodite in Greek. Thus Sappho was part of the female lineage of Enheduanna, this priestess and devotee of the goddess identified with the Venus in her time: Astarte in Syruia, Sihtar in Akkadia, and Inanna in Sumeria. Inanna has already influenced canonical writers in American literature, and she will more, after the publication of this volume, according to the reviewer.

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Femspec Abstracts Volume 2 - Issue 2 2001

Native Issue: Editor's Notes by Batya Weinbaum
Special themed issues occurred as an good idea when the journal began, as a way to create heightened awareness about particular kinds of work in volumes that had a specialty market and longer shelf life value. This first themed issue will raise the interest of the speculative techniques to interrogate gender roles used by Native women from different backgrounds. Special themed issues on the writings of women of particular ethnic minority groups that challenge gender help the reader to a better understanding of their creations. The writings and art in this special issue highlight myths, folklore, magical power, magical realism, and the focus on the interweaving of the real and the surreal, as well as the tribal real.

Native Issue: Introductory Overview by Candra Cruz

FEMSPEC 2.2's Native Issue has a Southwestern flavor focusing on Leslie Marmon Silko's works as well as Plains poetry by Sarah Littlecrow-Russell. The Southeast influence is represented by Marijo Moore's poetry, Louise Erdrich's work, and Paula Gunn Allen's poetry. Even Mexico is represented in the fiction of Janet McAdams. These works increase the interest not only of the different culture locations, but also of the better understanding of the stereotypes, new images, and theories about these indigenous cultures and the extraordinary women.

"Technology, 'Magic,' and Resistance in Native American Women's Writing" by Márgara Averbach
The special elements of technology, "magic," and resistance are present in the literature of Native Americans, especially Native American women. These elements that Western culture calls "magic" are the features that distinguishes Native American text. The authors use cultural hybridity combined with the use of English and their tribe's worldview. A consistent disappearance of the barriers constructed by Western culture also exists. Native American Women's Literature can be associated with two theoretical concepts, the idea of the postmodern rebellion, and the definition of cultural translations as violation or the violence of false equivalents.

"The Terror of the Liminal: Silko's Almanac and Klein's Phantasy Paradigm" by Sandra Baringer

This essay considers Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead as a difficult novel to read, not only for its length, but also for its negative, violence, and terror content. In return, Silko's is compared to Melanie Klein's Phantasy Paradigm. Even though Silko's novel disturbs male critics, it is also made evident in this essay that there are disturbed relationships with maternal objects, especially the maternal Earth. It is also acknowledged that spirits took over Silko's writing process. As Silko's novel is a part of the postmodern genre American Indian folklore and witchcraft, it is concluded that this powerful novel is more frightening than Oedipus Rex.

"Narrative Choreography toward a New Cosmogony: The Medicine Way in Linda Hogan's Novel Solar Storms" by Roseanne Hoefel

Linda Hogan's novel, Solar Storms, introduces a new different way, the medicine way. This is through the female narrator searching for her real self by using her female elders and relatives with the present supernatural forces. With this, Hogan constructs a pattern using valuable American Indian cultural and oral traditions. Themes were also developed as the seven ways of the medicine woman: the way of the daughter; the way of the householder; the way of the mother; the way of the gatherer and ritualist; the way of the teacher; and the way of the wise woman. Angel's journey is shown as the medicine way path of quality, spirituality, and genuine identity.

"Voices from Bear Country: Leslie Silko's Allegories of Creation" by Robert Gish

Leslie Silko's "Allegories of Creation" is written as a recreation of self. The creative process became an exactly literal subject matter. The "Creation" is the subject and the process that are linked to psychology and poetics of literary text and literary act. Silko is the artist and "maker" of romantic archetypes of creation with allusive textures in her writings. Oral and written, Native American myth, Shakespeare, and the Romantics are highlighted, as well.

"Revisioning Woman in America: A Study of Louise Erdrich's Novel The Antelope Wife" by Elaine Kleiner and Angela Vlaicu

Native American women's images contain the powerful qualities of identities intermixed with culture. Novelist Louise Erdrich uses these qualities from her won racial and ethnic mythology with artistic inspiration. This Native American culture commitment frequently uses trickster characters, The Antelope Wife also contains four major parts of the Ojibwa her cycle mythology and the "Medewiwin" or Grand Medicine society. Erdrich's novel protests and celebrates the course of cultures left in the wake of European invasion while telling the untold stories of contemporary survivors.

"Fighting the Windigo: Winona La Duke's Peculiar Postcolonial Posture in Last Standing Woman" by Tom Matchie

Winona La Duke's novel, Last Standing Woman, is a reconstruction text dealing with land, the nation, and the rebirth of La Duke's people, the Chippewa or Ojibway of northern Minnesota. This revisionist text focuses on the roles of women as life-givers or the manifestations of Mother Earth in human form. Three women serve as instrumentalists to regenerate the land at White Earth by taking a stand in the Midwest against land grabbers, lumbermen, and the FBI. This four part, new, beginning novel moves linearly through time from the late nineteenth century to the present. Although not original in the theme or structure, this novel is a story teller's take of the White Earth. Unique in the stories of social history and oral myth, they also contain much humor and a heart filled with compassion. The symbolic title also uses and highlights real and vital characters. This ironic novel concludes with a gentle tone, mixing music and myth, and depicting life beyond war, a life of constantly fighting for land rights and women's rights.

"Bear Mountain, Lion, Deer and Yellow Woman in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony" by Delilah Orr

A story about spiritual renewal and ceremonial recovery is Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. This American Indian novel focuses on Southwestern tribal folk literature and the importance of the roles of the powerful animal spirits of Bear, Mountain Lion and Deer with their guardian Yellow Woman. They also are shown as essential figures within the life of the main character, Tayo. They help restore his faith himself, his land his ceremony and play an important part as guides to his physical recovery and restoring his tribal identity. They become also his teachers in order to survive in a world of chaotic change. This critical study of literature uses traditional prose narratives and oral traditions. Pueblo Indian religion and ceremonial rituals and Navajo traditions with Yellow Woman as a wild game god. The uses of oral traditions that indicate the dynamics of cultural change are examined.

POETRY:

"Indian Tears" by Sara Littlecrow-Russell
A sad recall of an Indian past with Indian tears, with the speculation that tears left from 500 years of weeping were kissed away by a lover who was held in the poet's arms.

"Those Indians Sure Are Crafty" by Sara Littlecrow-Russell
The fantasy of Kmart (a Native American Barbie) clashes with the reality of the poet who tries to shop there.

FICTION:

"Plaza Bocanegra" by Janet McAdams
Sitting in the wrong Plaza, Anna thinks of the little Plaza, Plaza Bocanegra or Plaza Chica while writing a letter. She realizes that she has met two men since she came to the town in the mountains. Franklin is a drunken painter who shows her photos, including one of a thick young man always looking for a Buddhist temple, a man called Circe. This young man with a radiant face reminds her of the other man she has met, a mysterious Traveler. Anna closes her eyes to see this Traveler become the man in Franklin's painting, the man with a radiant face who beckons to her.

"Manna Raptured" by Dawn Karina Pettigrew
Manna leaves Gallup with her baby by the Greyhound for Graceland after a man hits her and injures her eye. In Graceland, Manna listens to conversations while patiently waiting in live to see Graceland. One of the women ask Mann if she is an Indian like Elvis. Manna's reply is that she is Cherokee, just like Elvis was Choctaw. But the woman does not agree. After Mann saw Graceland, she shared her hot dog with a hound dog and met his owner. The rich man left with his dog and gave her a fifty dollar bill. Returning to her motel, the clerk gives Manna a message that her husband is coming to take her home. Fearing her husband, Manna leaves for the wasteland border of the highway and prays to Jesus.

"Father Coyote" by Stephanie Sellers
Coyote put tricky spells on all women on earth and changed the to the beginning. Sick of women's lib, he made Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan be born men. He found out he could not look after all the women so he gave all the men the power of the trick over the women. He told the men to write a book so that all humans will believe in the trick. They wrote the book in different languages for all cultures to learn the Truth. Human beings then started to build different structures to learn the Truth. Human beings then started to build different structures to house the book. The book contained stories written by men to remind all of the women about their low status on earth. This made Coyote happy. Coyote later woke up 200 years after this event, to go to a wedding and view the power of women that still exists, but also view the bride's willingness to obey. This made Coyote feel as a genius until he had a dream of a sawn and woman power. The dream of women scratching visions on the face of Earth mother made him o to New York City to try his tricks on women again. It is there that he finally received his read rude awakening. A satirical use of the trickster-coyote Native American myth to critique women's oppression.

REVIEWS:

"Elements of Trickster in Children's Books of Louise Erdrich," reviewed by Kaila Schwartz
Louise Erdrich, an award-winning author of adult fiction, also writes books for children. Her first two children's books are Grandmother's Pigeon and The Birch Bark House. Since Native American people make everything into a story, they use this as a means to educate the young about the past and their cultural heritage. That is why Erdrich, a member of the Ojibwa community, uses trickster tales in her Native American folklore storytelling. Her trickster tales instruct children on the morality of how to behave. The tales also blend reality with fantasy, as Erdrich does easily because of her rich cherished heritage and talent. These trickster tales about animals or humans really exist between a spirit world and this world of today.

"Dream Poet: Marijo Moore" by Suzanne Zahrt Murphy
Marijo is a dream poet, but most of all, she is a Cherokee woman with a voice of nature and spirit blending. Since tradition is a link to culture and survival, Marijo Moore writes about traditions through her poetry, books and prose. "Going to Water" is a powerful example of a blessing ritual using a chanting voice. It is even a sacred tradition. Her writings even depend on her dreams for guidance. As she expresses herself about nature, women ancestors and the sacred earth mother, she also becomes a communal woman, a mentor to other Indians of North Carolina. Through her power, industriousness and spirituality, her writings discuss contemporary issues. This proves she is a true traditional native woman.

"Review of Life is a Fatal Disease" by Annis Vilas Pratt
Paula Gunn Allen's structure of poems from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties are from 1962-1995. It is of alienation and "enwholement." Allen also defines Native American's alienation in "A Stranger in My Own Life." Alienation turns to thematic in four other poems written in 1983. As her collection moves chronologically, she finds her many identities, images, and ancestral notes rewoven from bitterness and loss into hope and beauty.

"Stink of the Future" by Kat Ball
The stink of this artwork by a Native teen woman who sells her works at powwows are the disappearing trees, nature's artwork.

Art from the "Three Sisters" Show, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June, 1999 America Meredith, Kelly Jean Church, Allison Francisco.

Art From the "Three Sisters" Show, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1999
The art of America Meredith, Kelly Jean Church, and Allison Francisco reminds us of themyth of the Three Sisters, a story very common to Native people throughout the United States.The first work of art depicts the corn, beans, and squash surrounded by things of modern life.Second is the artwork of the Three Sisters, images of magical or mythic scenes. Among theinteresting is the lovely painting of three birds, the symbols of life.The cardinal, the black star bird, and the woodlands bird represent the great diversity of people in this world.Next is an untitled and unfinished sketch that is depicted in the middle figure of the Three Sisters.The lastpainting of the Three Sisters art is the image of the raven.This image also can be seen within Kelly Church's "Three Sisters."

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Femspec Abstracts Vol.2 Issue 1, 2000

Editorial Remarks: Batya Weinbaum and Ritch Calvin
The editors explain the nature of the editorial process and the transition to new editors taking greater responsibility, and they announce the acquisition of a new publisher. They explain the average response time for submissions is 4-6 months.

CRITICISM:

"The Snow Queen and the Goddess in the Machine" by Janice Crosby
Feminist theorists and critics have examined women's role in the history of religion. These findings have relevance for women who are experimenting with new forms of spiritual practice. The author argues that although feminist spirituality and goddess images are still rare in canonical fiction, genres do exist where female spiritual presences are found more readily, such as science fiction and fantasy. She examines Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen in this light.

"Mending the Rationality/Romanticism Divides in the Study of Women's Science Fiction" by Mary Catherine Harper
The author discusses the "chinks" she has discovered in the "science fiction criticism machine," which became apparent when she began studying women's science fiction and fantasy. She discusses her evolution from a romantic stance in her desire to follow aliens like the women characters created by Tiptree and discussed by Fenton, into a better universe away from the gender-based oppression of this world. She relates her own development of a more complex stance, under the influence of Haraway as a feminist theorist. She examines much feminist sf criticism, including that of Piercy's contrast between utopian and dystopian futures in Woman on the Edge of Time. She then categorizes and criticizes the numerous evolving feminist science fiction critics.

"The Utopia of the Perverse: An Exercise in 'Transgressive Reinscription'" by Veronica Hollinger
Part One of this essay explores Califia's Macho Sluts and Rice's Exit to Eden, which both appeared in the mid-eighties. She discusses the stature of Califia's underground classic, and Rice's mainstream publishing event that nonetheless seems like s trashy romance. She criticizes Rice for having what Foucault would call "peripheral sexualities" be resolved by conventional romance forms, while praising Macho Sluts as a utopia-oriented text. Part Two then offers a few conclusions about the intersections of perversity and utopia in these two texts, and raises questions about what might be meant by "a utopia of perversity."

"'I Would Have Swallowed a Kiss': Reflections on Feminist Speculative Poetry " by Nancy Johnston
The author establishes that a speculative poetry is something that continues to be published, and suggests we now turn to how women writers specifically participate in this genre. She surveys American speculative poetry in order to sketch what place women poets have in the field. In particular, she examines the poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin and Jane Yolen. She outlines the history of speculative poetry in relationship to science fiction, in order to provide an appropriate context.

"Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior and Shaman: Fighting Women in the New World" by Diane Simmons
The author explores how Kingston gives agency and subjectivity to the No Name Woman, in the beginning of Woman Warrior, and by doing so establishes the need to re-imagine the stories of subjugated Chinese women. She points out that while the woman warrior of Fu Mu Lan may seem to be a rather obvious figure of female empowerment to western eyes, that this device to conjure up ancestral help on the part of Kingston may in itself reinforce the male dominant system. The author connect the work of Kingston in examining how women have been colonized by controlling narratives of those who dominate them to the work of Edward Said who examined how narratives perform the work of subjugation.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND CREATIVE NON-FICTION:

"Interview with Janet Asimov " by Marleen S. Barr
Carol Stevens' introductory note explains the importance of oral history in changing the construction of social reality, and Marleen Barr then asks Janet Asimov to explain how two extremely professional people could have maintained a successful relationship. They discuss issues such as how budget cuts hit women worse than men, and the different assumptions with which both interviewee and interviewer were raised.

"Third Person Peculiar: Reading between Academic and SF-Community Positions in (Feminist) SF" by Sylvia Kelso
Kelso's presentation at WisCon 20 in Madison explains her discomfort with the academic slot at cons, although she admits to taking pleasure in academic-like consumption of sf texts. She discusses her history as a reader of such texts, beginning with her girlhood and moving through reading as a political English graduate student of the late 60s in Australia. Although the range of the texts explored is many, they include Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed and Nicola Griffith's Ammonite. She discusses as well her experience on the feminist sf list, and at women's studies conferences and the various understandings of feminist history and feminist issues in the feminist sf community.

POETRY:

"Housework Beast" by Barbara Minchinton
An observant poet from Brunswick, Australia, humorously describes her wrestling with the beast created by dealing with stale frying food, laundry and all the rest of the onerous tasks of keeping a houseclean, until she decided to dance with the beast rather than to conquer it, in middle age, whereupon it promptly disappeared.

FICTION:

"Interview with a Housework Beast" by Christine Croyden
An author involved in feminist publishing in Australia arranges to meet her own Housework Beast. Interviewing her right at her own kitchen table, she finds her to be "the personification of all the ugly thoughts and feelings" she has about housework which she had not recognized. She ties in her own feelings to the results of social research that shows although men's attitudes might have changed, their behavior hasn't yet, concerning housework, even though it has been thirty years since feminism took off.

"If the Sun and the Moon Should Doubt…" by Linda Johnson
A Canadian writer from the Vancouver area who has published a collection of short stories and novellas, short stories and numerous poems in dozens of literary magazines creates a futuristic work in which an alien couple, Choh and Mor, do everything they can think of to make Elizabeth, an eight year old human orphan, happy living with them on a new planet. The father adopts the alias Joe when he works as a social worker among the humans, where the ratio of male to females in the population had been reduced one to ten by the genetic engineers since the men were not surviving well on the new planet.

"Coyote Wants a Baby" by Stephanie Sellers
A lecturer in Native American and Women's Studies at Penn State-Mont Alto, a Shawnee and activist for the Native people as well as published writer in Through the Eye of the Deer: An Anthology of Native American Women Writers satirizes the male control of the medical business by showing how Coyote, the trickster, tried to get pregnant the way Rabbit told him she did by eating clover and tender bark. Various animals including the Mole give him similarly unhelpful advice, until Coyote decides to look in the Yellow Pages under gynecologists and then makes an appointment. He brings $2000 in travelers checks to pay for his first five minute appointment, and launches into a series of adventures with Dr. Babies=Money who adopts a variety of names and postures.

HISTORICAL DOCUMENT:

Out of the Void by Leslie F. Stone
This excerpt of a work by Leslie Silberberg, published under her pseudonym Leslie F. Stone originally in Amazing Stories, explores gender roles, androgynous aesthetics, homosexual relations and cross-dressing surprisingly to some in a 1929 issue. In the excerpt, the main character, a woman, cross-dresses as a man in order and goes to outer space on an experimental voyage.

CONFERENCE COVERAGE:

"NWSA 2000-Boston" by Batya Weinbaum
Paula Gunn Allen, Alix Dobkin, Mary Daly and about 20 other women attended the salon created by Batya Weinbaum and Gloria Orenstein. Daly talked about her "intergalactic study" in which she explored future, archaic, and pre-patriarchal non-linear pasts. Diane Saenz of Poet Talk read a poem about a dream of her mother who talks to the dead. Publisher of Calyx told of growing up in Latin America where she assumed that spirits were part of reality, not necessarily part of a separate "magical realist" reality, a North American publishing term.

"NWSA 2000-Boston" by Gloria Orenstein
Gloria Orenstein talked about the NWSA FEMSPEC Salon as part of the salon matrilineage, in line with her own Women's Salon in NYC in the 1970s.

"SFRA 200-Cleveland" by Batya Weinbaum
Many papers and panels addressed issues of relevance to FEMSPEC readers, including the discussion of the New York Futurian oral history project undertaken by Justine Larbalastier at the suggestion of Judith Merril. Also of particular interest was the discussion of feminists and the history of women in Feminist SF, attended by among others Karen Fowler, Samuel R. Delany, and Joan Gordon.

REVIEWS:

"The Poet as Cartographer" by Marcus Casal
Beatriz Badikian's Mapmaker Revisited: New and Selected Poems published by Gladstone in Chicago (1999) chronicles continents of experience, in the reviewer's view. Myth and geography are induced as metaphors in chronologies of relationships and the vision gesturing towards the mythic is sustained throughout.

"Don Quixote, the Joads, and Jack Kerouac Move Over: A Chinese American Woman's Adventures on the Road [of Life]" by Phillipa Kafka
The review of Dorothy Bryant's Confessions of Madame Psyche tells the history of the incarceration of the psychic who predicted the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

"On the Women of Other Worlds" by Karen Schneider
An eclectic collection growing out of the editors' experience at WISCON, the annual feminist sf convention held in Madison, covers the Guest of Honor speech of Ursula K. Le Guin and other highlights, such as an interview with Suzy Charnas and a "herstory" of feminist fandom.

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Femspec Abstracts Vol. 1 Issue 2, 2000

EDITORIAL REMARKS.

The Editorial Remarks by Batya Weinbaum explains that the FEMSPEC 1.2 contains critical articles that express how change in literature and culture correspond with the changes in the economic situations and its structures."Women Alone, Men Alone" by Brian Attebery is a paper that was read at last years (1999) International Association for Fantasy and the Arts, and dystopias.The new direction of existing tales in a national culture's fantasy life is in Barbara Mabee's article, "Reception of Fairy tale Motifs in Texts by Twentieth-Century German Women Writers."The reclaim of classical myth in a feminist direction is a creative poem by Barbara Louise Ungar.Her poem is called "Circe in Love."There are many more pieces in this issue, such as a play by Linda Eisenstein, "Revelation 24:12," conference and convention coverage, and a review by a young writer, Nicte-ha, about "Dinotopia," a utopian children's book for girls.

CRITICISM:

"Women Alone, Men Alone: Single-Sex Utopias" by Brian Attebery
Using the concepts of Eutopia and Dystopia to describe the extremes of utopias, Brian Attebery's article " Women Alone, Men Alone: Single-Sex Utopias" examines the revivification of utopian fiction since the 1950s. By coining the term masculinist as a linguistic parallel to feminist, Attebery provides useful terms for discussion of utopia and gender in new ways. Critical and creative works by Thomas More, Russ, Gilman, Marge Piercy, Edmund Cooper, Katherine Burdekin, Louise McMaster Bujold, Robin Roberts, Suzy McKee Charnas, Robert A. Heinlein, Nicola Griffiths, David Brin, Sheri S. Tepper, Eleanor Arnason, Edgar Pangborn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Theodore Sturgeon, John Jay Wells (a.k.a. Juanita Coulson), Philip Wylie, Samuel Delany, Geoff Ryman, John Varley, and Lucy Sussex are discussed.

"Reception of the Fairy Tale Motifs in Texts by Twentieth-Century German Women Writers" by Barbara Mabee
This article discusses how cultural information and stories have been passed from one generation to the next. The fairy tales were restructured to focus more on the female's point of view. Some of these include stories with mothers and no fathers, depicting feminism and imagination in one. Critical and creative works by the Grimm brothers, Karl Marx, Jack Zipes, Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Ruth Bottigheimer, Maria Tartar, Sarah Kirsh, Madonna Kolbenschlag, Colette Dowling, Kay Stone, Claire Farrer, Geertje Suhr, Annette Laun, Sigrid Kellenter, Charles Perrault, Angela Carter, Helga Schubert, Margaret Atwood, Karin Struck, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Franz Kafka, and Bruno Bettelheim were discussed. The focus is on resurgence of fairy tales with the fall of the Soviet regime in East Germany.

"Separatist Fantasies, 1690-1997: An Annotated Bibliography" by Lynn Williams
A bibliography produced by many conference presentations. All works in this bibliography deal with science fiction and feminism.

FICTION:

"Beast" by Ruth Knafo Setton
This is a work of fiction that starts out by showing marriage (sex) as being the way to let out one's true passion and true self. The use of subtle magical realism helps the author to tell of the enjoyable and the frightening aspects that co-exist while experiencing sex within the marriage. Men are beasts, or at least compared to them. A woman is not supposed to know more than the man wants her to. When she tries to find out more, she is rejected by all men. This includes her father.

PLAY:

"Revelation 24:12 A Ten-Minute Play" by Linda Eisenstein
This play includes two characters who are a married couple. The wife sees an angel. The husband tries to find something about angels in the Bible, while the wife defines revelation for him. She claims that the whole point of a revelation is to introduce something new. Gender differences are noted when reacting to the same situation. The revelations came from the conversation that followed the sighting. The husband found out things about his wife that he had never bothered to ask before.

POETRY:

"Circe in Love" by Barbara Louise Ungar
A poem that uses science fiction to describe the age-old idea of the saying, "you only want what you can't have." Ungar plays on themes of Greek myth and talks about turning men into animals. The object of her affection was the one that she could not change. She lost interest in turning men into animals when the hero left, so she turned the object of his affection into a dog and prayed for him to return to her.

GIRLS' SECTION:

"Review of Dinotopia" by, Nicte-Há
This article is a review of Midori Snyder's Hatchling, in which a girl has adventures and travels the world. "Nicte-Há is bi-cultural young writer who splits her life between Isla Mujeres, Mexico and New Hampshire.

CONFERENCE AND CONVENTION COVERAGE:

"Made In Canada: A Review of the 1999 Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy" by Nancy Johnston
This is a review of a conference in Canada where Canadian Science fiction was discussed. SF, Canadian literature was looked at in the context of all Canadian literature, and then with the concept of "borders" as creating regional identities. Many Canadian authors and works were discussed including Nalo Hopkinson, who performed an unpublished piece of hers.

"No Place, the Good Place, a New Place: The Twentieth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts" by Sylvia Kelso
This is a review of a conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where the theme was Utopias/Dystopias. Hetrotopic and biocentric themes are also discussed.

"The First FEMSPEC Salon: NWSA Albuquerque" by Batya Weinbaum
This is a review of a meeting that took place during a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. People from across the country gathered to discuss the progress of the FEMSPEC journal and how they became interested in working on it. Ideas for future editions were also discussed.

"Writers' Respite at WisCon '99" by Phoebe Wray
This is a review of a morning workshop, called writers' respite, that took place a conference in Madison, Wisconsin. New sf writers were brought face to face with experienced writers in order to help guide them to future success.

Surrealist Women, reviewed by Gloria Orenstein
Penelope Rosemont's Surrealist Women: An International Anthology, is discussed. This collection contains writings and some visual work by approximately one hundred women from all over the world. These surrealist women are also talked about as being political activists.

Two Reviews by, Liisa Hake
Judith Laura's novel, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century, and Treena Kortje's novel, Variations of Eve, are discussed. Laura is claimed to have spent a great deal of time and effort searching for original gender classifications in the bible. Kortje's novel describes many possible stories of Eve and the garden of Eden.

The Exploration of Gender In Deep Space and Sacred Time, reviewed by Anne Collins Smith
Jon Wagner and Jan Lundeen's novel, Deep Space and Sacred Time: Star Trek in the American Mythos, is discussed. The authors' ideas of how gender roles and relationships are used in the mythological context is critiqued. They agreed that it was good that even the alien life forms have gender problems and issues.

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Femspec Abstracts Volume 1, Issue 1

EDITORS' REMARKS:

"Birthing in a Hotel Room in San Antonio" by Batya Weinbaum and Robin Anne Reid
This brief introduction to the journal explains why the women writers and critics felt a need to begin an interdisciplinary journal. One reason for this need to create the journal was a common feeling of being alienated as writers in male-dominated publishing circles. The women who met in the Popular Culture meetings in San Antonio at the SF/Fantasy Area party decided the journal should include subjects that deal with spirituality, creative works. They wanted to expand from science fiction to speculative fiction and to also include women writers of mythological or imaginative stories written with the intent to debunk the historical perspective of gender roles. The articles contained in the journal are on different media critiques, art styles, poetry and authors of speculative literature who write about gender-bending roles. The articles the editors want to include in the journal are a representation of changes in gender roles and in the historical depiction of womanhood. The editorial states it was important to the professional women authors to create a journal that explained how feminism was a part of their lives and gave them reasons to use these literary devices. The literature covered in the issue reflects the avant-garde in writing and examines gender-bending creative art.

CRITICISM

"Sex Role Reversals in Star Trek's Planets of Women as Indices of Second Wave Media Protest" by Batya Weinbaum
The critique made is that popular shows on television are reactionary products of a culture that treats women as sex objects. The episodes of Star Trek critiqued in the journal are about how the feminist movement coincided with the sexist illustration of women in the television. Watching these Star Trek episodes will reveal how icons of American culture can express popular American ideologies. The text is concerned with two episodes of Star Trek (1968 and 1980). They both suggest in different ways an interaction between male dominance and separatist matriarchal society. This piece explores how Hollywood and its levels of hierarchy promote sexist television shows and how those containing women's issues are related to the feminist movement.

"Must Collectivism Be against People" by Darko Suvin
Suvin discusses how feminist theories connect to individuality and collectivity. He takes a look at the cubist, anti-utopian writing We by Eugene Zamyatin written in 1924. The novel expresses how man acts in response to the theological world that is full of conflicting characters who represent God, Satan, and the power of the State. The opposition of the positive individual and the negative collectivity dominates the central thesis of We. The role of the female protagonist as the seductress and agent of the revolution is discussed. There is some imitation of Orwell in the book We. There are comments made on authors who characterized a feminist/utopian/fictional society. In the essay, the reviewing of Sally Gearhart brings to light the prevailing attitude that the women are compared to other exploited beings and Stalin-like conditions exist. The dominant white male world is compared to the oppressive power of the State in We . In summation, the essay is a discussion on the fictional writings by Zamyatin from Soviet society and the usefulness of connecting his work to later speculative feminist authors who curiously enough deal with the same themes and issues in a very different context.

"The Surrealist Cosmovision of Bridget Tichenor" by Gloria Orenstein
Mexico provides a surreal surrounding for painters to experience new visions. Tichenor's artistic conceptions are not European. The artist makes an analogy about past practices of shamans and unexplainable phenomena in her art work. Her artwork glows in a radiating way that is un-natural. Tichenor's revealing artwork lets us see ordinary human beings unmasked. The artist also incorporates many figures from Mesoamerican myth and folklore. Orenstein describes the art as surrealistic. The dimensions of Tichenor's artwork are made up of the evolution of human beings toward clear vision for a harmonious world. The artwork transmits to the viewer an ability to interpret fate and the cosmos. The author connects this vision to later developments in ecofeminism.

HISTORICAL DOCUMENT:

"Letter of the Twenty-Fourth Century" by Leslie F. Stone
This writer from the 1930s was similar to modern feminists. The story set in the twenty-fourth century includes introspection on prophecies of the past through the mechanism of old books that had been discovered from the turn of the 20th century by the protagonist. It is an uncomplicated short discussion that compares utopian predictions coinciding with the inventions such as the radio and airplane, to the progress and changes that were taking place in the evolving modern world.

FICTION:

"The Feminist Pathfinder Does Not Probe Mars" by Marleen S. Barr
This is a short imaginative piece of fiction about a surrealistic office that has been invaded by a space probe. The main characters are women who have received a space probe in search of a prototype of a sexist man. It is an amusing inquiry on the disorder between sexes in the professional world.

POETRY:

"Dream Hunt" by Christina Springer
An artist writes "Dream Hunt" from a multi-disciplinary background. This poem has many metaphors and the descriptive verse includes references to colors. It is a poem full of the raw emotion of an industrial city. The poet mentions dreams and the colorful street life of Pittsburgh.

"Juneteenth" by Christina Springer
Depiction of WinoWoman on a street in Philadelphia, with references to the mythic Harriet Tubman's feet and other aspects of celebration.

"Word Worlds" by Christina Springer
The poet creates visions of similarities existing between the jungle and the city using metaphors that connect earthy atmospheric qualities with the emotions of street life. In lines such as "muscles churning like the birth/of the Atlantic Ocean when the continents divide," she conjures up female experiences related to reproduction in mythical poetic interpretations of the origins of the waters on the planet. She relates the street woman "Maugritte" crawling with her "bone necklace clacking" as she hassles people for money to the displaced shamaness who with her words, holds the world together.

"The Taboo" by Darko Suvin
The poet writes about a strange tribe of women he meets in a exotic country. He realizes the sort of man he is appears to be "taboo" to a certain type of female tribe.

"Imagine a Fish" by Darko Suvin
A very short poem of what a fish might look like if it was out of water, playing on images of male and female, and of a male trying to relate to a female being like a fish out of water.

OVUMINAL WORK:

Trouble on Triton--Excerpt of a Novel by Samuel R. Delany
In Trouble on Triton (1976), Delany prophesizes about issues related to gender sex and the body issues of relevance to feminists in both the 1970s -1990s. Delany's protagonist in this excerpt, Bron, is a genetic male who was born on Mars. He was living as a man on Triton a moon of Saturn. Most residents on Triton live in communes or co-ops which are distinguished according nonsexual preference. Here the character goes to apply for sex change; by the end of the excerpt, Bron has become a woman.

CONFERENCE AND CONVENTION COVERAGE:

"Transcending Gender: Challenging the Binary Divide" by Mary Fambrough
A doctoral candidate in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve covers the Third International Congress on sex and gender held at Oxford University. She discusses intersexual individuals reported on by Lee Anderson Brown of Sydney, and explores sources that might inspire artistic representations of gender that might be more experimental for creators of future gender bending science fiction works.

REVIEWS:

"A Little Light Shed On: Into Darkness Peering" by Janice M. Bogstad
Bogstad's review of Elizabeth Ann Leonard's collection Into Darkness Peering: Race and Color in the Fantastic, Number 74, Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Westport, CT: Greenwood 1997, 95 pp) commends the volume for remarkable feats in the history of science fiction criticism. In particular, Bogstad finds most notable the discussions that attempt to "fore ground, overturn or invert the preoccupations and stereotypes in America that are associated with race" (116). African Americans, Creole, Hispanic, Caribbean and Native American characters are discussed, in the works of such disparate writers as Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany. Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Elizabeth Lynn, Pamela Sargent, Lewis Shiner , Robert Silverberg and Leslie F. Stone.

"Margins Made Visible" by Earl Pike
Pike's review of Laurence Schimel, ed., Things Invisible to see: Gay and Lesbian Tales of Magical Realism (Cambridge, MA: Circlet Press, 1998, paper, 12.95) explores domains in which gender and desire are flexible, using the concept of border land communities. He finds the collected works in this volume to be uneven, but admires Sarah Schulman's "The Penis Story" in which the main character, a committed feminist and lesbian activist, wakes up to discover a penis hanging between her legs. He finds value in applying magical realist strategies to fictions of gender and sexuality.

"The Suncomers", pages 67-77, a girl's SF by a nine year old in 1961 is a young work that FEMSPEC sometimes includes.Since "girls have the same fantasies of omni potence and infinite transformation boys do," a nine year old girl shows the early attention to the joys of space invasion.Her "found" fiction contains three yellow people: Sunny, Beamer, and Ray, aliens equipped with an English dictionary.Young art work also accompanies this cute piece of history without an ending.

"WisCon 22 and the Secret Feminist Cabal" by William Clemente is a conference and convention coverage piece on pages 110 and 111.This convention at Concourse Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin, Memorial Day Weekend, 1998, was for about 600 writers and readers of sf and feminism.As stated:"You don't just get feminism at WisCon, you get thoughtful social analysis" (110).In fact, the questions about gender are asked with the questions of race, class, politics, and economics.WisCon brings together the community of writers, such as Suzy McKee Charnas, Eleanor Arnason, Joan Vinge, Pat Murphy, Karen Fowler, and Elizabeth Vonarburg, with the guest of honor, Sheri S. Tepper, an author of a feminist classic of speculative fiction."WisCon: Home of the Fminist Cabal", the motto, and laser-toting space babe logo of the convention programmer Jeanne Gomoll graced that year's t-shirts.Other special guests, Della Sherman, a fantasy author, and Ellen Kushner, a fantasy author/radio personality, attended as well, with different panels.There also was a presentation of the Tiptree Award, an annual literary prize event for sf or fantasy.

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