Women in Science Fiction reading club anyone?

[sajbrfem]

I am really inspired by eng592: Women in Science Fiction, a course being taught by Dr Sharon Collingwood at Ohio State University. She also teaches Women Culture and Society--a course that takes place in Second Life.

I am not really in a position to go to Ohio Uni at the moment, but I thought it might be fun to go through the sylibus and have a monthly discussion on each of the texts.

The required texts as listed on the units webpage are:

Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy (Fawcett 0449210820)
The Female Man, Joanna Russ (Beacon 0807062995)
Les Guerillieres, Monique Wittig and David LeVay (University of Illinois Press 0252074823)
Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin (The Feminist Press at CUNY1558612467)
The Door Into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski (Orb 0312876521)
Lilith's Brood , Octavia Butler (Grand Central Publishing 0446676101)

Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century
ed. Justine Larbalestier. (Wesleyan University Press 0819566764)

My suggestion is that,beginning with June, we read one per month in the order listed and then in the last week of the month I will open up a discussion page on this journal for anyone interested to discuss the text.

What do you think?
 

Comments

[lauredhel]

I'm interested - are the books fairly readily available in Aus public libraries?

[sajbrfem]

Actually that is starting to look like a flaw in the plan. they are mostly pretty famous texts so I thought they would be available, but so far I have not found them in my city library, and the curtin library has books with commentary on some of the works, but haven't found any of the works themselves as yet. I may need to come up with an alternate list.

[lauredhel]

Bother.

[sajbrfem]

Well, not one of them was available throughout the entire city library system, so I have emailed my library to ask if they can get any of them in. That will at least tell me if they are readily available in Aust. I am a bit surprised actually, I would have thought at the very least they would have the Joanna Russ and the Octavia Butler.

[lauredhel]

Update on availabilities: I have the Female Man, and should be able to get hands on these through ILL if not locally:

Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy (Fawcett 0449210820)
Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin (The Feminist Press at CUNY1558612467)
The Door Into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski

Can't see any opportunities to borrow Les Guerilleres (wait - it may be in the University library) - or Daughters of Earth, though. UWA does have 2 copies of Larbalestier's "battle of the sexes in science fiction".

I'd consider buying Daughters of Earth and Lilith's Brood; not sure about the others yet.

[were_duck]

Hello! I am a stranger who heard about your book club through jesse_the_k . Would you mind if I join? I coordinate a face-to-face book club loosely based on WisCon (feminist science fiction) books, so there's some parallel. I also used 3 of these books in my undergrad thesis!

[sajbrfem]

Hello! Glad to have you along! I would love to hear about your book club--and your thesis!