American Literature
Young Adult Literature and Dystopia
Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” is a well-written series, complete with a well-thought-out setting, complex characters, and a compelling plot. […]
Professor Pamela Bedore
American Literature
“The Hunger Games” and Katniss’s Androgyny: A Queer Heroine
Katniss Everdeen absolutely knows that she cannot bring a child into a world structured by the power imbalances that characterize the Capital and the Districts. […]
Literature
“Oryx and Crake”: An Environmental Dystopia
“Oryx and Crake” is a dark book, but it’s also a wonderful example of utopian vision, of hope. The dystopian society is satirically horrific and leaves a deep message for us. […]
Literature
Margaret Atwood and Ustopia
Margaret Atwood strongly believes in the power of narrative. We write stories and they matter. To Atwood, they matter maybe more than anything else we do since they’re what we leave behind. […]
Literature
Margaret Atwood‘s “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Atwood provides an analysis of power in “The Handmaid’s Tale” that is nuanced and complicated. She suggests that it’s very hard for someone who holds power to accurately assess how that power functions. […]
American Literature
Octavia Butler: Ideas of Utopia and Dystopia and Humanity
Octavia Butler’s works are neither purely utopian nor dystopian, and they suffer from neither a lack of movement nor a lack of strategies. They talk about different ideas of humanity and being open to change. […]
American Literature
Octavia Butler’s Patternist Series: Types of Mutations
The Patternist series takes us to a distant future, probably on Earth, in which millions of people are connected together through telepathic links in a Pattern. […]
American Literature
Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Series: “God is Change”
Earthseed proclaims “God is change”. Repeatedly, Butler’s novels show that the future is change. Survival is change. Perhaps, even, utopia is change. […]
American Literature
Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” and the Human Contradiction
In the “Xenogenesis” trilogy, xenophobia is an uncontrollable fear in open-minded humans as they try to adapt to the aliens who have saved their species. […]
American Literature
Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild”
In “Bloodchild”, Octavia Butler presents a world where change and adapting ensures survival, and are not a matter of choice. […]