Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity: The Birth of the Monster in Literature, Film, and Media

Andrea Wood and Brandy Schillace

Much has been written about gender and the monstrous, but sustained engagement with textual manifestations of cultural and unconscious fears and anxieties about “unnatural” reproduction has been limited. This book expands the current discourse and analyzes how fears about unnatural reproduction and monstrous offspring—and their frequent connections to the feminine—have proliferated and propagated across the very texts which are repetitively created and consumed.

Black Women as Custodians of History: Unsung Rebel (M)Others in African American and Afro-Cuban Women’s Writing

Paula Sanmartín

This book is an essential addition to the study of comparative black literature of the Americas; it will also fill the gap that exists on theoretical studies exploring black women’s writing from the Spanish Caribbean. This book examines literary representations of the historic roots of black women’s resistance in the United States and Cuba by studying the following texts by both African American and Afro-Cuban women from different literary genres.

Ooku, The Secret World of the Shogun’s Women

 Cecilia Segawa Seigle and Linda H. Chance

“A wonderfully detailed history of the shogunal harem … and it does not shy away from discussion of the sex—or lack of it—at the heart of the Ooku’s raison d’être … Many of the primary sources consulted by the authors are still in manuscript form and exceptionally difficult to decipher, let alone interpret. The authors thus deserve high praise for their dedication to locating, making sense of, selecting, and translating a vast range of material for a scholarly audience.” – Gaye Rowley, Waseda University

Contemporary Chicana Literature: (Re)Writing the Maternal Script

Cristina Herrera

Despite the growing literary scholarship on Chicana writers, few, if any, studies have exhaustively explored themes of motherhood, maternity, and mother-daughter relationships in their novels.Mother-daughter relationships have been ignored in much literary criticism, but this book reveals that maternal relationships are crucial to the study of Chicana literature; more precisely, examining maternal relationships provides insight to Chicana writers’ rejection of intersecting power structures that otherwise silence Chicanas and women of color.

Black Medea: Adaptations for Modern Plays

Kevin J. Wetmore

The plays in this volume reflect recurring themes and approaches to adapting Medea to modern contexts. Numerous modern adaptations see the play as painting a picture of the struggle of the powerless under the powerful, of women against men, of foreigners versus natives. The play has been adapted into colonial and historical contexts to lend its powerful resonances to issues of current import.

#NSWA2014 #WomensStudies

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