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Women's agency in the Dune universe : tracing women's liberation through science fiction / Kara Kennedy.

9783030892050 (electronic bk.)
3030892050 (electronic bk.)
9783030892043 (hbk.)
3030892042 (hbk.)

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2021]

English

1 online resource (xi, 225 pages)

10.1007/978-3-030-89205-0 doi

PS3558.E63 Z69 2021

813/.54

"This book undertakes the first large-scale analysis of women's agency in Frank Herbert's six-book science fiction Dune series. Kara Kennedy explores how female characters in the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood-from Jessica to Darwi Odrade-secure control and influence through five avenues of embodied agency: mind-body synergy, reproduction and motherhood, voices, education and memory, and sexuality. She also discusses constraints on their agency, tensions between individual and collective action, and comparisons with other characters including the Mentats, Bene Tleilaxu, and Honored Matres. The book engages with second-wave feminist theories and historical issues to highlight how the series anticipated and paralleled developments in the women's liberation movement. In this context, it addresses issues regarding sexual difference and solidarity, as well as women's demand to have control over their bodies. Kennedy concludes that the series should be acknowledged as a significant contribution to the genre as part of both New Wave and feminist science fiction."-- Provided by publisher.

Originally presented as: Thesis (Ph. D.), University of Canterbury, 2018.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on print version record.

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