Presenter(s): Megan Schenk − English
Faculty Mentor(s): Forest Pyle, Casey Shoop
Oral Session 2O
Research Area: English (Humanities)
Funding: Presidential and Summit Scholarships
A post-apocalyptic setting is a particularly potent arena for sexist narratives precisely because such an environment allows the author control over depicting how people will naturally act when stripped of modern conventions in order to survive. “Masculine” traits often appear favorable if not necessary to survival in the midst of a futuristic wasteland, while “feminine” qualities like hysteria, sentimentality, and domesticity deem an individual submissive, weak, and utterly incapacitated. Within these exaggerated patriarchal structures, women are simultaneously linked to a failing, stagnant past while providing the only true form of creation: motherhood. My research focuses on how women writers like Megan Hunter, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Louise Erdrich confront and repurpose certain apocalyptic tropes to force readers to reevaluate preconceived notions about male dominance, femininity, and motherhood, specifically in interaction with a post-apocalyptic environment. By engaging with existing literature on gendered heroics in apocalyptic media, intersectional feminist histories in speculative fiction, feminist theory in futurism studies, and the representation of motherhood in popular film and literature, I illuminate how these authors demonstrate that the nurturing of motherhood, not masculinity, is the ultimate means of conquering a decaying world. My research contributes to the important and growing feminist criticism of popular media that works to reveal how we think about the world and how that might (and hopefully, will) change.