Contributed essays.

Science fiction, as a literature of fantasy, goes beyond the mundane to ask the question: what if the world were different from the way it is? It often challenges the real, builds on imagination, places no limits on human capacities, and encourages readers to think outside their social and cultural conditioning. This book presents a systematic study of Indian women’s science fiction. It offers a critical analysis of the works of four female Indian writers of science fiction: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Manjula Padmanabhan, Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Vandana Singh. The author considers not only the evolution of science fiction writing in India, but also discusses the use of innovations and unique themes including science fiction in different Indian languages; the literary, political, and educational activism of the women writers; and eco-feminism and the idea of cloning in writing, to argue that this genre could be viewed as a vibrant representation of freedom of expression and radical literature. This ground-breaking volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literature. It will also prove a very useful source for further studies into Indian literature, science and technology studies, women’s and gender studies, comparative literature and cultural studies.

In her study of newly recovered works by British women, Kathryn Freeman traces the literary relationship between women writers and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, otherwise known as the Orientalists. Distinct from their male counterparts of the Romantic period, who tended to mirror the Orientalist distortions of India, women writers like Phebe Gibbes, Elizabeth Hamilton, Sydney Owenson, Mariana Starke, Eliza Fay, Anna Jones, and Maria Jane Jewsbury interrogated these distortions from the foundation of gender. Freeman takes a three-pronged approach, arguing first that in spite of their marked differences, female authors shared a common resistance to the Orientalists’ intellectual genealogy that allowed them to represent Vedic non-dualism as an alternative subjectivity to the masculine model of European materialist philosophy. She also examines the relationship between gender and epistemology, showing that women’s texts not only shift authority to a feminized subjectivity, but also challenge the recurring Orientalist denigration of Hindu masculinity as effeminate. Finally, Freeman contrasts the shared concern about miscegenation between Orientalists and women writers, contending that the first group betrays anxiety about intermarriage between East Indian Company men and indigenous women while the varying portrayals of intermarriage by women show them poised to dissolve the racial and social boundaries. Her study invites us to rethink the Romantic paradigm of canonical writers as replicators of Orientalists’ cultural imperialism in favor of a more complicated stance that accommodates the differences between male and female authors with respect to India.

The New Series Studies In Women Writers In English Is A Grateful Acknowledgment Of The Contribution And Public Recognition Of The Emerging Voice Of Women In The Arena Of Literature During The Last Few Centuries, And Especially In The Latter Half Of The Twentieth Century. Women Writers Across The Globe Have Made Their Distinctive Mark, With Their Own Perception Of Life Be It Feminine, Or Feminist Or Female.The Present Volume, The Fifth In The Series, Introduces Critique Of Work By Women Writers; It Bears Evidence To The Growing Critical Attention Towards Authors Writing Outside The Mainstream, In America, Canada, And Especially In India.The Eighteen Essays Included In This Fifth Volume Of The Series Cover A Wide Spectrum Of Women Writers Across Space And Time. The Women Writers Discussed In This Volume Include One From Britain, I.E., Mary Shelley, One From America, I.E., Toni Morrison, The Nobel Laureate For Literature In 1993, One From Canada, I.E., Margaret Laurence, And A Host Of Indian Writers, From An Early Pioneer Like Krupabai Satthianadan To The Partition Novelist Bapsi Sidwa, As Well As Contemporary Avant-Gardes Like Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai, Shobhaa De, Manju Kapur, And Arundhati Roy As Well As The Émigré Indian Writer Bharati Mukherjee.Since Most Of The Authors Discussed In These Articles Are Prescribed In The English Syllabus In The Universities Of India, Both The Teachers And The Students Will Find Them Extremely Useful, And The General Readers Who Are Interested In Literature In English And/Or Women Writers Will Also Find Them Intellectually Stimulating.

Papers presented at the National Conference on 'Dalit Literature : Contents, Trends and Concerns', held at Dehradun during 22-23 March 2009.