“UNDER HIS EYE?:” WOMEN IN FEMINIST AND FUTURISTIC LITERATURE, FILM AND ART
As the titular citation from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale suggests, futuristic narratives, similarly to some earlier genres (i.e. dream vision), allow to transfer the content that, from a social, cultural or political viewpoint, might be considered as defiant, rebellious or subversive. Therefore, it is via this convention that gender issues, marginalised in the so-called mainstream, have been repeatedly channelled over the years. In her study, Worlds Apart?: Dualism and Transgression in Contemporary Female Dystopias, Mohr claims that “Feminist utopias significantly differ in terms of narrative content from male utopias. Thematically, feminist utopias shift the focus to female reality and to everyday life; they restructure the distribution of power within society andfamily and reject sex-segregated labour” (24). Among other issues, Mohr enumerates “gender equality, communitarian goals, decentralisation” as the key features of this genre (24). Furthermore, the feminist category focuses on the importance of distinguishing “biology” from the cultural and social notions of gender, reproductive rights and practices, motherhood, and women’s sexual identifications and roles (Mohr 24-25). In line with the above, the conference seeks to explore relevant instances of futuristic, feminist and women-oriented narratives in English-language literature and culture, film and visual arts. Peer-reviewed essays/articles will be published.