Monsters are disruptive characters, who cross boundaries and blend categories. They come in various kinds: Non-human monsters, such as Dracula, created-by-human monsters like Frankenstein, human monsters like Hitler, and more-than-human monsters such as the X-men. These monsters can either be dangerous or helpful to humanity. Dangerous monsters appear as infectious, viral forces, while helpful monsters are inoculative forces for positive change. In either case, they penetrate the borders set up between normatively separate categories. Critics and authors have long realized the connection between heroes and monsters, often portraying them as necessary to one another, as two sides of a single coin. However, this analogy is lacking, because it does not allow for the possibility that a single character can display varying degrees of both heroism and monstrosity. Mario Yerro and Bruna Husky present such characteristics in Yeti and Lágrimas en la lluvia, as evidenced by their physical appearance, their relations to scapegoats, the porosity of species and other boundaries, and the decisions they make in regards to the Other.

British speculative fiction writer, Diana Wynne Jones, has published over forty books for middle school to adult readers, and her work continues to receive many awards for its creativity and high quality. Jones is a prolific and talented writer who has contributed to and influenced speculative fiction. She uses magical contexts to comment on social situations in what she sees as an essentially non-magical world. Whether she is being humorous, drawing upon myths and legends, or using fantasy or science fiction, Jones reflects the contemporary unpredictable adolescent mind. Jones's unusual childhood has influenced her writing, and a brief biography of Jones's life provides insight into her work—why certain themes have greater interest to her over others. Recurring themes in her books include alienation, empowerment, and identification. Through often convoluted plots, she encourages her readers to think for themselves. From her stories, readers learn to appreciate and accept the complexity and inexplicability of life. While her themes are consistent, her work varies. Some of her work is humorous, some is based on myths, some leans more towards science fiction than fantasy, and some seems more like fantasy than science fiction. Despite this diversity, Jones consistently seeks to learn from her own work by questioning basic assumptions and endeavors to contribute wisdom to her readers through her fiction. Jones uses myth and the heroic ideal to encourage readers to question their motives and recognize the empowerment that comes from self-sacrifice.

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Ongoing scholarship on the impact of speculative fiction demonstrates how science fiction and fantasy are fundamentally concerned with interrogating the socio-political networks that define contemporary life, and in constructing alternative environments that both critique and offer solutions to present-day inequalities. This project contributes to this scholarship by focusing on the ways in which recent speculative fiction re-envisions space—including urban sites, new architectural forms, and natural landscapes—to theorize innovative forms of socio-political organization. This work draws from the spatial turn in cultural studies and critical theory that has gained popularity since the 1970s, and which takes on assumption that space and politics are always intertwined. Drawing predominantly from assemblage theory, assemblage urban theory, and new materialist theory, this project examines how human and nonhuman agents—including space itself—interact to create new spaces and relations that resist hegemonic neoliberal modes of spatial, political, and social organization. Chapter Two analyzes utopian assemblages and spaces in Bruce Sterling’s novel Distraction, deploying Noah De Lissovoy’s concept of “emergency time” and David M. Bell’s theories of place-based and affective utopias. Chapter Three examines place-making tactics in Lauren Beukes’ novel Zoo City through the lens of Abdou-Maliq Simone's concept of people as infrastructure, Deleuze and Guattari's theory of nomadology, and Jane Bennett's theory of “thing power.” Chapter Four uses the work of Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett to explore the thing power of the non-human and nature in China Mieville’s Kraken and Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. In sum, this work attempts to demonstrate how examining speculative spaces through the lens of assemblage theory can illuminate new paths for political resistance. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Exile is not only an appropriate lens through which to view the ecological, social, and psychological destabilizations of the Anthropocene, but also as a state which can inspire the flexibility and creativity necessary to survive difficult times through ecologically-connected states of being. Examinations of literary alienation and responses to this condition in this project are confined to women’s exoplanetary science fiction which anticipates the experience of physical and emotional separation from planet Earth. In contextualizing experiences of exile from our planet of origin and the expressions of such in women’s science fiction literature, this project interrogates selected cultural movements in human relationships to the environment, separation from the environment, and resistances to that estrangement through the concept of exile. Chapter One considers the Western myth of the lost paradise and the ways in which the Garden of Eden has contributed to Western conceptions of environmental and human perfection and belonging and the persistent idea of working one’s way back to Eden. In contrast to this idea, I present analyses of James Tiptree Jr.’s A Momentary Taste of Being and Molly Gloss’s The Dazzle of Day, both of which illustrate that working toward perfection is an ultimately stagnating and often violent move. Chapter Two, mounting further challenges to the Western paradise and its reverberations through environmental discourse, frames science fiction’s initial acquiescence to narratives of colonization and later feminist rejection of these narratives. Analyzing the connections between colonial structures, the environment, and beings considered nonhuman or less-than-human in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest and Joan Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean, this chapter describes the psychological and emotional estrangements necessary to survive and resist colonization and its ecological destruction and contextualizes experiences of exile. Chapter Two argues that though exile is often a destructive process, it can form a basis with which to resist entrenched social structures. Finally, Chapter Three examines the ways in which Indigenous science fiction, working in a different historical and cultural context than that of the Western feminist texts discussed in the previous two chapters, emphasizes an experience of and approach to exilic destabilizations which centres on what Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance”—the survival of colonial genocide and resistance to further colonial impositions. While Lee Maracle’s “The Void” and Mari Kurisato’s “Imposter Syndrome” utilize exoplanetary distance from Earth’s ecosystems to illustrate modes of survivance, they also demonstrate the ways in which relations to the land are maintained through interrelational rather than hierarchical subjectivities, and demonstrate the resilience intrinsic to interconnected ecological systems. In sum, the estranged position of women’s exoplanetary science fiction emerges as critical of the hierarchical structures which have resulted in widespread ecological collapse, and imparts the perspective necessary not only to challenge those structures but also to survive their destabilizations. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

abstract: This dissertation examines how contemporary ideologies of race and “colorblind” discourse are reproduced, deployed, and reimagined in Mexican American literature. It demonstrates that the selected narratives foreground inconsistencies in colorblind ideologies and problematize the instability and perennial reformulation of race definitions in the United States. This study also contributes to the discussion of racial formation in Mexican American literary studies from 1970 to 2010. Chapter One provides the critical and literary context of Mexican American literature from 1970 to 2010. Chapter Two details the process of racial formation in the United States according to Michael Omi and Howard Winant. Simultaneously, this chapter describes the theoretical framework and concepts of experience and epistemic privilege, mestizaje, and intercultural relations as offered respectively by Paula M. L. Moya, Rafael Pérez-Torres, and Marta E. Sánchez. Chapter Three offers an analysis of racial discourse and assimilation via two autobiographical texts: Oscar Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982). Chapter Four examines the colorblind racial ideology in two texts by Mexican American women authors: Erlinda Gonzales-Berry’s Paletitas de guayaba (1991) and Mona Ruiz’s Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1998). Chapter Five explores the rearticulation of colorblind racial discourse in the “postracial” United States. In this chapter, we examine three works of speculative fiction: The Rag Doll Plagues (1992) by Alejandro Morales, Texas 2077: A Futuristic Novel (1998) by Carlos Miralejos, and Lunar Braceros 2125-2148 (2009) by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. By combining theories from Chicana/o Studies, Critical Race and Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies in my textual analysis, my dissertation challenges notions of contemporary colorblind or postracial ideologies that regard present day discussions of race as counterproductive to U.S. race relations. [Text in Spanish] / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation International Letters and Cultures 2017

À la suite des enquêtes menées par Annie Collovald et Erik Neveu dans Lire le noir, et par Christine Détrez et Olivier Vanhée dans Les mangados, sur les lectures de romans policiers pour l'une et de mangas pour l'autre, ce travail de thèse porte sur les lectures de littératures de l'imaginaire (catégorie éditoriale qui regroupe science-fiction, fantasy et une partie du fantastique). Après une étude de l'offre éditoriale française contemporaine, l'enquête de terrain, qui a été menée par entretiens auprès de lecteurs et lectrices âgés de 20 à 35 ans, a cherché à mettre en évidence leurs motivations, leurs appropriations de cette lecture et les réceptions qu'ils en font. Tout comme les mangas ou les romans policiers, la science-fiction, et plus généralement les littératures de l'imaginaire, constituent un genre dont la légitimité n'est pas acquise, souvent perçu comme une échappée hors du réel pour des amateurs parfois assimilés de façon péjorative à des exclus sociaux. Ces questions ont été abordées dans la recherche à travers différents angles d'approche : la réception des catégories éditoriales par les jeunes interrogé·e·s, les raisons de lire science-fiction et fantasy, les différents types de réceptions et appropriations du genre, les parcours de lecture en littératures de l'imaginaire, les pratiques culturelles et sociabilités qui prennent place autour de la lecture, le rapport des lecteurs et lectrices à la légitimité ambiguë du genre. / Following the research led by Annie Collovald and Erik Neveu on the reading of detective novels, and by Christine Détrez and Olivier Vanhée on the reading of mangas, this thesis studies the reading of the “littératures de l’imaginaire” (« imaginary / non realistic literature », or « speculative fiction »: a publishing category including science fiction, fantasy, and some fantastic stories). After a study of the currently available products on the French market, the field survey, which was conducted through interviews with readers aged 20 to 35, highlighted their reading motivations, appropriations, and receptions. Like mangas or detective novels, science fiction, and more broadly speculative fiction, form a literary genre whose legitimacy is not acquired. It is often perceived as an escape from the real for amateurs, and its fans are sometimes pejoratively assimilated to social outsiders. These questions were addressed in research through different prisms: the reception of publishing categories by the young adults who were interviewed, the reasons to read science fiction and fantasy, various types of receptions and appropriations of the genre, reading paths in speculative fiction, cultural and sociability practices that take place around reading, and the relationship of readers to the ambiguous legitimacy of the genre.

The female hero has been marginalized through history, to the extent that theorists, from Plato and Aristotle to those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, state that a female hero is impossible. This thesis argues that she is not impossible. Concentrating on the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, a heroic standard is proposed against which to measure both male and female heroes. This heroic standard suggests that a hero must be human, must act, must champion a heroic ethic and must undertake a quest. Should a person, male or female, comply with these criteria, that person can be considered a hero. This thesis refutes the patriarchal argument against female heroism, proposing that the argument is faulty because it has at its base a constricting male-constructed myth of femininity. This myth suggests that women are naturally docile and passive, not given to aggression and heroism, but rather to motherhood and adaptation to adverse circumstances, it does not reflect the reality of women’s natural abilities or capacity for action. Indeed, with the rise of contemporary feminist discourse the patriarchal myth of femininity is being demystified and, without the myth of femininity to constrain her, the female hero is now re-emerging in certain areas of cultural expression. The examples of female heroes discussed in this study are taken from speculative fiction, encompassing the genres of both science fiction and fantasy. Speculative fiction, which has a propensity for challenging the status quo and questioning common societal assumptions, provides the perfect platform for women writers to confront feminist issues and launch the female hero. The female hero challenges the patriarchal claim that all heroes must be masculine, she defies patriarchal power structures and she demands a re-evaluation of women’s capabilities. The female hero gives women an example of heroic activity to emulate, in place of the ‘angel in the house’ that women have had to bow to for so long. The works discussed in this thesis cover a range of authors, from those of outspoken contemporary feminist, Joanna Russ, to early speculative works like those of C.L. Moore. Lesser-known authors such as Vonda McIntyre and Tanith Lee are also discussed. / Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Modern European Languages / unrestricted

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