Andrey comparte:

• James, Edward and Mendleshon, Farah - The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction

  Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is a literature which draws on popular culture, and which engages in speculation about science, history and all types of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from these different angles. After an introduction to the nature of science fiction, historical chapters trace science fiction from Thomas More to the present day, including a chapter on film and television. The second section introduces four

  important critical approaches to science fiction drawing their theoretical inspiration

  from Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory. The final and largest section of the book looks at various themes and sub-genres of science fiction. A number of well-known science fiction writers contribute to this volume, including Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford, Andy Duncan, James Gunn, Joan Slonczewski and Damien Broderick.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?utjizyzftzv

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• George, Susan Andre

  “¿Who Goes There?”

  Negotiating Culture, Identity and Anxiety 1950´s Science Fiction Invasion Films

  This dissertation examines a popular 1950s film genre that both supported and was critical of Cold War ideologies-science fiction films, in particular, science fiction invasion films. I am primarily concerned with examining what the films can tell us about the tensions in the U.S. at the dawn of the atomic age. The film's "us" versus "them" nature reveals a great deal about the concerns and conflicting ideologies circulating in 1950s society. Working from the assumption that "invasion" films provided important visual and verbal narratives for U.S. citizens' trying to understand and negotiate the social and political changes that followed the allied victory in WWII, I focus on Hollywood science fiction invasion films made in the U.S. From 1950 through 1960. Taking a cultural studies approach to the film texts, I seek to "read" these invasion narratives as performances of middle-class, primarily white U.S. citizens' anxieties about “boundaries" and crossings/invasions of those boundaries.

  Using the ideas of Mary Douglas, Susan Sontag, and others about the ways the human body and society become metaphors for one another, this analysis focuses on anxieties about three boundaries, invasions across those boundaries, and defense of the boundaries: I) the boundary between the individual and the group commonly represented as anxiety about individualism in a decade during which conformity was becoming highly valued; 2) the boundaries of women's bodies and their roles in the public and private spheres; 3) and the boundaries between "us" and "them," focusing on notions of "aIienness" and the racialized Other. Specifically, t want to examine how the films work to support other hegemonic narratives in 1950s culture. More importantly, however, I want to see if these films offer any ideological positions other than the dominant, hegemonic one. I am interested in examining the polysemic nature of these films to uncover the cultural tensions explicitly and implicitly evident in them.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mym1yjmjmzw

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  Smith, John – Men of the cold war: Warrior, Ethos and Domesticity in 1950´s America

• Typically, traditional histories of the United States consist of a series of narrative centered on significant male figures, usually military leaders or those with significant military backgrounds. Though this cultural focus on warrior males seems adequate for most Americans through the end of the Second World war, the advent of the Cold War brought this dependence upon traditional warrior models into question. The widespread dissolution of traditional familial bonds -occurring during a period when the nuclear family was touted as a bulwark against external aggression- the nascent civil rights and women's equality movements, along with major advancements in nuclear - weapons - and rocket technology, all call into question the validity and efficacy of the male warriors' dominant position in American society during the 1950s. A detailed examination of such disparate sources as war films, science fiction “B” movies, children's space literature, and popular magazines such as Life and Collier 's –alongside traditional poetry and fiction- presents a fresh, unique understanding of gender roles and social expectations in mid-Twentieth Century America. Focusing on the years 1945 through 1963- the period from just after the close of World War II - through the end of the Mercury space program - this dissertation helps to change the common perception that America's Cold War anxieties stemmed primarily from an external source: the threat of Communist expansion and aggression. In fact, what worried most white, heterosexual men in 1950s America was actually an internal threat to their traditional social status: pressure to abandon their warrior ethos in favor of domestication. Though the United States has made tremendous strides in recognizing the value of multiculturalism, such social advancements came only after much consternation by those who had to relinquish their traditional societal roles: the Warrior Males.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ny1nzmno1mm

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• Davis, Doug - Strategic Fictions: Crisis, Invention, and Discovery in the American Narratives of Nuclear Defense

  In his dissertation, "Strategic Fictions: Crisis, Invention, and Discovery in the American Narratives of Nuclear Defense," Doug Davis examines the central, troubled, and surprising role that storytelling, and specifically future war storytelling, played within the Cold War policy of nuclear deterrence. Combining the science studies theories of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway with science fiction genre theory and the nuclear criticism of Jacques Derrida, Davis analyzes a diverse body of literature that concerns the future prospects of nuclear war, including national policy documents, scientific texts, journalism, pro- and anti-nuclear propaganda, and numerous works of literary fiction and film. Davis shows how these strategic fictions participated in the construction of an American narrative of nuclear defense, a future imaginary of a world at war that prescribed Cold War American global policy. However, as the practice of nuclear defense also meant imagining and writing about a future when that defense failed, the American narrative of nuclear defense engendered military and political crises and reversals with its every articulation. After detailing how this inherently contradictory narrative came to define Cold War American global policy, Davis explores how nuclear defense's contradictions were negotiated in film, literature, and science. First, he examines Hollywood films about the Air Force, focusing on Anthony Mann's Strategic Air Command (1955) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), to show how Hollywood participated in the cultural politics of nuclear defense by telling cyborg love stories. He then considers two postmodernist novels, Kurt Vonnegut´s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973), to show how literature about World War II worked upon the imagination of World War III. Finally, Davis analyzes the geoIogica1 science of impact-extinction theory (the Alvarez thesis), which posits that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid or comet impact, as a metaphoric

  product of the Cold War's state of nuclear defense. Davis concludes by considering how our understanding of Cold War America's strategic fictions of nuclear war may help us understand the strategic fictions of nuclear terrorism that are currently guiding the United

  States' national security strategy of preemptive war.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?i3nnmdzoyl3

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Etiquetas: andrey, andrey2, ciencia ficción, tesis

• 
  Taylor, Aaron – World without end: Historicity and the contemporary science fiction cinema.
  
  

  This thesis is an analysis of North American science fiction cinema, from 1985-1999, in which the role of history and historicity is evaluated. Time has always been a central preoccupation of SF, but the thematic importance of the past as temporality has long been undermined by critics. History plays a much more constructive role in contemporary SF than previous critics have allowed. The literal "presence" of signifiers of the "past" services narratives which are often fundamentally moralistic in nature. Science fiction's historicity is employed to prevent the alienation of "future shock" - the estranging tendencies of new technologies - which necessitate new modes of epistemological and ontological adaptation. In such films, history plays the vital function of conscience. Representations of familiar futures are not necessarily conservative, but are indicative of a development in SF that refuses to celebrate progress at the expense of history.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2dduyxmgdqh
  

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• Sanders, Steven (ed.) - The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film
  
  The essays in this volume explore some of the ideas and possibilities that science fiction films take as their starting points. Since the essays are philosophical, they aim to increase readers’ understanding and appreciation by identifying the philosophical implications and assumptions of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Terminator, and a dozen other science fiction film classics. The questions these films raise are addressed by philosophers, film theorists, and other scholars who take a variety of approaches and perspectives. No single method or school of thought predominates. Of course, there is a consensus among the contributors that intelligent and well-informed discussion of films can lead to greater appreciation and understanding of them. And each contributor would no doubt agree that it is desirable for readers to have a firsthand acquaintance with the film he or she has chosen to write about.
  
  
  Dirección de descarga:
  
  http://www.mediafire.com/?yoynm53lynm

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• Noonan, Bonnie – Representation of women in the “B” science fiction films of the 1950´s

  This project shows how central representations of women in science were to the “B” science fiction films of the 1950s and uses these films as valuable indicators for cultural analysis. I argue that the emergence of the modern American science fiction film in 1950 combined with the situation of post-W.W.II women in science to create a genre explicitly amenable to exploring the tension between a woman’s place in the home and her place in the work force, particularly in the fields of science.

  Out of a context of 114 “B” science fiction films produced between 1950 and 1966, I offer substantial readings of seven films that feature women in science. Using changing gender roles after W.W.II as an analytical focus, each chapter explores relationality within films, among films, and between films and the culture in which they were produced, distributed, and consumed in order to make visible overall gender patterns, kinship systems, and possibilities for imagining change. The conclusion to the project uses the conceptual framework that has been established to suggest possibilities for a more thorough analysis of the American science fiction film genre, in particular as that genre resonates with concerns relevant to feminist theory.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zxoznzr2ti2

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• Girard, Theresa – Alternate futures

  Science fiction, for many decades, was dominated by male writers writing

  about past, present, and future patriarchal societies, and these authors became

  visionaries about the direction human society was taking. As women became

  more interested in science and science fiction, some male authors attempted to

  incorporate this "new" woman into the futures about which they were writing.

  Because society has changed so drastically in the decades since the 1960´s, it is important to analyze the characterization of women in mainstream science fiction novels and visual media. As women are reflected in various stages of visionary or cautionary modes, it may be possible to determine how women can or should prepare themselves for the twenty-first century.

  This study will be a comparison which will focus on four science fiction

  novels and their visual adaptations by means of formal critical works and

  personal analysis. In comparing and contrasting science fiction novels and

  visual adaptations, it is of great benefit to be able to look at the filmic

  interpretations of the novels in question. In the filmic versions, the influence of

  society is seen more clearly because filmmakers adapt novels in such a way as

  to draw the largest possible audience. When one determines what society views as important, intriguing, and/or interesting, the findings can be extrapolated to show that the influence of a specific segment of society on a specific author at a specific time can be very different than on society as a whole. It is also possible to see how societal views may differ from the author's view. In this way, a determination can be made as to the validity of the visionary or cautionary aspects of each work. The hypothesized results will show that the films are skewed in terms of the filmmakers' views on society's stand on patriarchy versus feminism, rather than, the author's presumed intent.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zymg12myiln

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• Thomas, Anne-Marie - It Came From Outer Space (The virus, cultural anxiety, and speculative fiction)

  This study seeks to explore and interrogate the “viral reality” of the 1990s, in which the

  virus, heavily indebted to representations of AIDS for its metaphorical power, emerged

  as a prominent agent in science and popular culture. What becomes apparent in both

  fictional and non-fictional texts of this era, however, is that the designation of “virus”

  transcends specific and material viral phenomena, making the virus itself a touchstone

  for modern preoccupations with self and other. As constituted by the human body’s

  interaction with pathogenic agents, the binary of self and other may be deconstructed by

  an interrogation of the virus itself, a permeable and mutable body that lends itself to any

  number of interpretive possibilities. A uniquely liminal agent, the virus refuses

  categorization as either life or non-life. However, it is not the liminality of the pathogen

  that allows for this deconstruction, which serves to frustrate such boundaries in the first

  place. Rather, the notion that viruses are (always) already a part of who we are as

  human beings, and that “self” is not necessarily a self-enclosed autonomous entity,

  suggests that the binary cannot hold. A virus is unique; an insider/outsider that crosses

  artificial boundaries, it destabilizes the boundaries themselves, and thus the traditional

  framework of self and other. Examining viral accounts in popular science writings, film,

  television, advertisements, philosophy, science fiction, and naturalistic fiction, this study

  examines the ways in which science and popular culture have characterized both the

  virus and its psychological and material effects, and suggests that the pathogen-assignifier

  may be read in ways that point to the virus’s utopian potential as a theoretical

  category.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/?zdyya4m1omw

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• Leslie, Christopher – Social Science Fiction (.pdf)

  Through a cultural history of social science fiction, I consider one of the

  permutations of the “golden age” of science fiction, social science fiction. It is born

  in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and becomes increasingly prominent in the

  aftermath of World War 2 as a literature that can excite a moral response in

  engineers and scientists and help individuals adapt to change. Social science

  fiction uses mass media to encourage a public-sphere debate about the

  interaction of technology and society.

  Dirección de descarga:

  http://www.mediafire.com/?lddyogtm2zj

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Etiquetas: andrey, andrey1, años 50, ciencia ficcion, inglés, tesis