Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

This thesis aims to examine Afghan literature and feminism through the works called On Half from the East by Nadia Hashimi and Roya by Shaina and Nadia Pakrawan. For a couple of years, the Taliban has controlled Afghanistan's literature on women and feminism to silence and squash Westernized notions of freedom and rights for women. However, feminist authors continue to publish and produce many works like On Half from the East and Roya in retaliation. This thesis argues that to them, the pen is mightier than the sword, and their literature will be able to tackle the situation much better than physical retaliation, which only aggravates the situation. Through writing, women in Afghanistan can create their own identities and no longer struggle while doing so. As more and more people become aware of their situation, they hope the world will be able to provide the proper assistance they need to save them while respecting their cultures and religions carefully.

In this thesis I examine two Afrofuturist, feminist pieces of speculative fiction: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin and The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I analyze the two novels together and separately using a Black feminist framework to extract sustainable solutions for environmental justice. In close readings of the novels, I utilize multiple frameworks in my analysis, including Afrofuturism, Black Feminism, Intersectionality, and Ecofeminism. Applying Afrofuturist theory shapes the examination of how the oppressive systems within each novel’s society resemble that of the past and how they inform the future. This oppression is seen in the mistreatment of marginalized groups in both novels, including women, racial minorities, and orogenes and sharers. I further explore how these groups are suppressed and how this influences their interactions with the environmental crisis using Back feminist theory. Then, an ecofeminist lens is used in conjunction with Black feminism to uncover sustainable solutions from the novels to solve and mitigate the environmental crisis. My proposed solutions taken from these novels include empathy and embracing change.

Robocop, Logan, and War Girls all present dystopian futures where technology, and more specifically cyborg augmentation, unleashes the worst of humanity. Within these texts, the cyborg, when produced for military use, allows humans to indulge their most harmful impulses in armed conflict. The government-produced cyborg facilitates the domination of outgroups by forcing characters to shed empathy and to “other” perceived enemies. The cyborg in this situation works within the militarized masculine framework described by Cristina Masters in Cyborg Soldiers And Militarized Masculinities. This is the cyborg individual’s transformation into a weapon with a singular use. This transformation is facilitated and encouraged by dominant military power structures, and allows these structures with the help of the cyborg to execute brutal violence against any group unlucky enough to find themselves on the wrong side of a conflict. The solution to such exploitation, then, is for the cyborg to assert its humanity and reject this transformation into a weapon. This thesis argues that doing this will involve abandoning the military structure, rejecting the subjectivity of militarized masculinity characterized by empathy loss and “othering”, and refusing to remain a soldier of the dominant corporate or governmental power structures. Even though this cannot bring down the entire system that perpetuates injustice and bloodletting, it does free the cyborg and hinder the military structure’s ability to execute this injustice. In the uncomfortably plausible dystopias my primary texts reasonably predict, the solution to the cyborg’s exploitation and transformation is to firmly oppose the military-industrial war machine characterized by hyper capitalist and imperialist ambitions.

This thesis examines the three films of the most recent Star Wars trilogy (2015-2019) through a feminist lens, investigating the following question: is the trilogy’s leading woman, Rey, a feminist character throughout her arc? This thesis finds that while the telling of Rey’s story certainly has its feminist moments, it fails in several ways to truly abolish the patriarchal frame/attitude that was ingrained from the first two trilogies, leaving the character of Rey feeling incomplete. As the first female to be the primary protagonist in a Star Wars film, Rey’s strength and light certainly make her a positive female role model for young audiences. However, she is held back by the patriarchal society in which she exists and thus is ultimately reduced to being second-best in her own trilogy to the all-powerful older white men who came before her.

Speculative fiction and fantasy media have abundant power to portray alternative realities or imagined futures for minority groups. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the late 1990s-early 2000s, and Wynonna Earp, from the late 2010s, are two fantasy television shows that produce this often-progressive, impactful representation, particularly for lesbians and bisexual people. Drawing on Queer and Monster Theories from Susan Stryker, Marilee Lindemann, Harry Benshoff, and Alexis Lothian, this thesis examines queer representation in these TV shows and how it contributes to the normalization of LGBTQ+ individuals whilst simultaneously honoring the shows’ queer fans. Normalizing non-cishetero genders and sexualities helps rewrite the narrative of LGBTQ+ people being considered “deviant” and threatening societal order; and holding true to queer roots of challenging social norms prevents the power of the queer community from being influenced by the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality.