Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 158
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-78660-765-2 • Hardback • August 2019 • $153.00 • (£119.00)
978-1-78660-766-9 • Paperback • August 2019 • $53.00 • (£41.00)
978-1-78660-767-6 • eBook • August 2019 • $50.00 • (£38.00)
Kat Deerfield is a Research Associate at the School of Social Science, Cardiff University
Introduction: Heavenly Bodies / 1. Space for Women / 2. Locating Women in Space Art and Interstellar Messages / 3. Taking Feminist Geography into Orbit / 4. Sex in Space / 5. Sexual Culture in Space / 6. Retro- and Reproductive Futures / 7. Queering Space, Queering the Future / 8. Critical Optimism for Space Culture
Gender, Sexuality and Space Culture offers a distinctive, insightful investigation of space culture, interrogating its gendered and heteronormative underpinnings. It explores how problematic understandings of gender and sexuality have informed the structuring and organisation of spaceflight and the broader culture it sustains. In a rich examination of the spatiality and temporality of space culture, Deerfield uses the resources of feminist and queer theory to illuminate this crucial, but largely neglected, sphere of gender and sexual normativity. She also suggests how critical encounters with this domain may, in turn, enrich queer and feminist theory, helping to re-orientate towards more utopian futures. Deerfield’s book is a valuable contribution to and extension of the critical gaze of cultural studies.
— Maureen McNeil, Emeritus Professor, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University