The Handmaid's Tale

Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders

Edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Janis Goldie - Contributions by Christina Barmon; Michelle Cubellis; Sarah Dodd; Cecilia Gigliotti; Susan N. Gilmore; Janis Goldie; Ellen Grabiner; Jessica Greenebaum; Rati Kumar; Kristine Larsen; Charisse Levchak; Kelly Marino; Jacqueline E. Maxwell; Kate McGrath; Aven McMaster; Beth Merenstein; Paul Moffett; Heather Munro Prescott; Karen A. Ritzenhoff; Eileen Rositzka; Theodora Ruhs; Sheila Siragusa; Katherine Sugg; Clementine Tholas and Dennis Tredy

The Handmaid's Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance across Disciplines and Borders offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, as well as its film and television adaptations, can be employed across different academic fields in high school, college and university classrooms. Scholars from a variety of disciplines and cultural contexts contribute to wide-ranging analytical strategies, ranging from religion and science to the role of journalism in democracy, while still embracing gender studies in a broader methodological and theoretical framework. The volume examines both the formal and stylistic ways in which Atwood's classic work and its adaptations can be brought to life in the classroom through different lenses and pedagogies.

Lexington Books

Pages: 334 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅛

978-1-4985-8914-7 • Hardback • June 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-8915-4 • eBook • June 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies, Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Social Science, Social Science / Women's Studies

The Handmaid's Tale

Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The Handmaid's Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance across Disciplines and Borders offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, as well as its film and television adaptations, can be employed across different academic fields in high school, college and university classrooms. Scholars from a variety of disciplines and cultural contexts contribute to wide-ranging analytical strategies, ranging from religion and science to the role of journalism in democracy, while still embracing gender studies in a broader methodological and theoretical framework. The volume examines both the formal and stylistic ways in which Atwood's classic work and its adaptations can be brought to life in the classroom through different lenses and pedagogies.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 334 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅛

978-1-4985-8914-7 • Hardback • June 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-8915-4 • eBook • June 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies, Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Social Science, Social Science / Women's Studies

Author

Karen A. Ritzenhoff is professor in the Department of Communication at Central Connecticut State University.

Janis L. Goldie is associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Huntington/Laurentian University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Handmaid’s Tale as a Teaching Tool for Engaging Students in Colonial American History and Puritanism

Chapter 2: Translation and Adaptation Matters: About the Differences Between a Story Called The Handmaid’s Tale or The Slave-girl’s Tale?

Chapter 3:Jezebel’s: Sex and Marriage in Early Christian Theology

Chapter 4:Literary Narration, Complicity, and Political Dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 5: "You don't know what we had to go through:" Feminist Generations in The Handmaid's Tale

Chapter 6: “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind you Down”—Again: Returning to The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 7:Consent, Power, and Sexual Assault in The Handmaid’s Tale: Handmaids, Sexual Slavery and Victim Blaming

Chapter 8:Advancing Student Understanding of Rape Culture: The Handmaid’s Tale as a Tool in the Primary Prevention of Sexual Assault on College Campuses

Chapter 9:Fertility and Fetal Containers: Science, Religion, and The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 10: “I’m Ravenous for News”: Using The Handmaid’s Tale to Explore the Role of Journalism

Chapter 11: Women’s Health in The Handmaid’s Tale and the Marginalization of Women

Chapter 12: Resist!: Racism and Sexism in The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 13: Erasing Race in The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 14: Women, Complicity and The Handmaid's Tale

Chapter 15:“Discards, All of Us”: Representations of Age in The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 16: No Light Without Shadow: The Question of Realism in Volker Schlöndorff’s The

Handmaid’s Tale and Hulu’s TV Series

Chapter 17: Shifting Perspectives and Re-accentuation: Adapting The Handmaid’s Tale as Film in 1990 and as a Hulu TV Series in 2017/2018

Chapter 18: The Handmaid’s Tale: The Optics of Dystopia

Chapter 19: Offred’s Journey Through Gilead: Subverting Oppositional Discourse Through First Person Performed Narrative

Chapter 20: The Artist and Her Art: An Examination of Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson and June Osborne through a Feminist Lens

Chapter 21: ‘The Magical Land of the North’: Anti-Americanism and Canadian Identity within The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter 22:Suffering Motherhood and Woman’s Empowerment: Comparing Metropolis (1927) and The Handmaid’s Tale (2017)

Chapter 23: ‘Topia’ Extended: “Historical” Judgment of The Handmaid’s Tale

Reviews

In an age where savage neoliberalism, climate change denial and lack of consideration for basic human rights seem bent on imposing their logic over the Western world, The Handmaid's Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders, edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Janis L. Goldie, is a staunch confirmation of the relevance not only of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale, but of dystopian fiction in general. Offering multiple entries into the novel and its two adaptations through a wide array of methodologies (adaptation studies, criminology, cultural studies, etc.), this book is an ideal companion for a class on The Handmaid's Tale or the relationship between feminism and popular culture.
— David Roche, Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès

Who would have thought that The Handmaid’s Tale would become a 'how-to' manual for contemporary existence? But if that’s where we are today, then this book is an essential 'how-to' manual for understanding not only The Handmaid’s Tale, but the dystopia that has become our reality.
— Dahlia Schweitzer, Author of Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World

A truly interdisciplinary, extremely timely and a thorough study of what has already become a canonical text about women’s visibility and voice. This book is a great addition to feminist television studies and an excellent volume on the teaching feminism as activism. The chapters in the volume cleverly situate The Handmaid’s Tale in the context of #MeToo and #timesup, and remind us once again that as academics, we are change agents.
— Eylem Atakav, The University of East Anglia

This anthology offers teachers a brilliant and brave resource that is vital to help students address challenging topics in the classroom. Taking The Handmaid’s Tale as its starting point – and interweaving analysis of narratives in literature, film and television – it tackles some of the most pressing social issues of our time with diligence, intersectional awareness, and ethical consideration. Throughout the book, readers will find a broad range of interdisciplinary approaches that encompass the past, as well as the speculative future, of The Handmaid’s Tale.

— Rebecca Harrison, University of Glasgow