{"id":19926,"date":"2014-08-30T11:33:35","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T18:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csws.uoregon.edu\/?p=19926"},"modified":"2018-08-06T09:39:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T16:39:08","slug":"le-guin-feminist-science-fiction-fellowship-interview-2014-fellow-kathryn-allan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/le-guin-feminist-science-fiction-fellowship-interview-2014-fellow-kathryn-allan\/","title":{"rendered":"Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship: An Interview with 2014 Fellow Kathryn Allan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kathryn<\/a>

Kathryn Allan (l) chats with Jen\u00e9e Wilde, then-CSWS development GTF, at the CSWS 40th Anniversary Celebration in Nov. 2013 \/ photo by Jack Liu.<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor\u2019s Note: The deadline for the 2014-15 Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is September 5, 2014. This interview appears in the 2014 <\/em>CSWS Annual Review.
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The Other Lives\u2019\u2014Locating Dis\/Ability in Utopian Feminist Science Fiction\u201d<\/h4>\n

CSWS interviewed Kathryn Allan, inaugural winner of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship, during her May 2014 visit to do research at the UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Allan immersed herself in the archives, reading the letters of Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and other feminist science fiction authors, seeking out conversations about disability and utopia, and delighting in her discoveries.\u00a0The Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society, Robert D. Clark Honors College, and University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). <\/em><\/p>\n

Q: How does it feel to be selected as the first winner of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship?<\/h6>\n

KA: It is the best honor I\u2019ve had in my academic career by far. Having left academia after I finished my degree in 2010, I didn\u2019t really think that I\u2019d have the same kind of opportunities to keep going with my research. But if I did, it was going to be out of pocket, which wasn\u2019t going to happen for a long time. The fact that the committee chose someone who identifies as an independent scholar was astounding to me.<\/p>\n

Q: You\u2019re doing research in UO Special Collections and University Archives. What materials are you exploring? How do you know where to look?<\/h6>\n

KA: I\u2019m going through Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s papers at my beginning. Most start in the late \u201960s. I\u2019m capping off discussion around \u201974\u2013\u201975, because there needs to be a cap somewhere, unless it\u2019s with another feminist author like Joanna Russ. I\u2019m interested in Joanna Russ and Sally Miller Gearhart and their correspondences with other writers. And if I have time, Suzette Haden Elgin. That\u2019s my main focus right now.<\/p>\n

The Le Guin collection is massive, with 250 boxes of information. All the archivists have been extremely helpful and patient. Yesterday, one of them helped me figure out which containers to look at. I started with Le Guin\u2019s letters to her agent, Virginia Kidd. I think it was nine boxes, and I made it through about one and a quarter in a day and a half, and that was only from about 1968 to 1973. The amount of material is overwhelming, and it has required self-discipline not to keep reading stuff that is interesting but not necessarily what I am here for.<\/p>\n

When I first conceived the project I thought I\u2019d look at manuscript notes. But that\u2019s not going to happen. I\u2019m probably going to spend the most time in Le Guin\u2019s archive, because she was a prolific letter writer. She must have been writing up to ten letters a day sometimes. They\u2019re not like, \u201cHey, it\u2019s raining.\u201d They\u2019re philosophical, political conversations that are really engaging. I\u2019m looking at correspondences, mostly, among the writerly community. And fan letters. I want to look at Le Guin\u2019s fan letters.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no sign in any of the material that says, \u201cHere, this is the research you want.\u201d It requires me to skim many letters, be as strict as I can with myself not to go down what one of the archivists called yesterday a rabbit hole, where I\u2019m just fan-girling. It\u2019s quite a challenge because it\u2019s my first time doing archival research. I was prepared for the non-linear nature, but it\u2019s still another thing to actually keep to a focus. I\u2019ve been writing reflection notes every morning from what I had looked at the previous day. Those help remind me of the most significant things I\u2019ve discovered, but also help me work out my feelings around the ethical implications of talking about a person\u2019s experience. I\u2019m basically trying to download and archive for myself as much information as possible and not worry about synthesizing that information until later, because it\u2019s not possible.<\/p>\n

Q: The title of your research project is \u201c\u2018The Other Lives\u2019\u2014Locating Dis\/Ability in Utopian Feminist Science Fiction.\u201d What are the goals of your research? What are some of the challenges?<\/h6>\n

KA: I\u2019m reading with two different goals, which is part of the challenge with my project. The first overarching goal is to read with disability studies in mind. That means I\u2019m reading for any kind of conversation with the awareness of bodily difference, whether it\u2019s cognitive or physical\u2014where there\u2019s advocacy and discussion about, \u201cWe need to start including people with disabilities.\u201d One challenge with that line of inquiry is that the writers talk about their personal ailments. I don\u2019t necessarily record these, because I don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s ethically responsible, for example, to write, \u201cOh, by the way, in 1971, this person was suffering from this ailment.\u201d But I do pick up on conversations where, say, they\u2019re talking about Phillip K. Dick and his kind of situation with mental illness. That\u2019s something that is interesting because it\u2019s reflected in his work.<\/p>\n

And the other, secondary aspect that I\u2019m reading for are conversations around utopia. Much of the conversation Le Guin is having with people when she\u2019s writing The Dispossessed<\/em> focuses on what a feminist utopia looks like. I found excellent conversational threads with her and Joanna Russ. And this morning I\u2019m going to return to a philosophical conversation that Le Guin is having with Darko Suvin, the great SF theorist.<\/p>\n

Q: What inspired you to do research at the intersection of disability and science fiction?<\/h6>\n

KA: Personal experience was one factor. I became quite ill during the second year of my dissertation. I realized that the project I had then was not speaking to me. I changed supervisors, and I started focusing on science fiction. Star Trek, actually, was a big inspiration. I thought, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on here with all these cures and these weird things about who gets to be gendered in what ways just because they are aliens dealing with technology?\u201d I started getting excited. Then my committee began giving me materials dealing with feminist theorization of embodiment and the vulnerable body. I began reading people like Margrit Shildrick and Rosemary Garland Thomson. I thought, \u201cWow, this is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

My PhD ended up being on feminist post-cyberpunk. It was definitely a feminist project, and I was reading for the idea of the vulnerable body. I was starting to look at disability studies, and there was nothing really published about reading disability and science fiction, which is quite shocking. There was an article maybe here and there, but an absence of that discussion within science fiction studies.<\/p>\n

\"Allan_bookcover_WEB\"<\/a>When I finished my conclusion to my dissertation in 2010, I figured, this is a gap that somebody needs to address. That really resonated with me, and I thought, I cannot wait for somebody else to do it. When you\u2019re in the academy, there\u2019s a lot of pressure on you to do something marketable, or something that\u2019s going to get you funding. Because of the marginalization of disability studies and science fiction studies, I knew it would take a long time for those two things to come together. In disability studies, while there is some science fiction or genre text studied, academics are still looking at what would be considered high literature. That propelled me into doing it on my own. I still wanted to be a researcher; I went to graduate school for seven years, and I feel strongly about maintaining that part of my life. That led me to put out a call for papers to do a disability and science fiction collection of essays, which ended up in a project called Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure<\/em>, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. That\u2019s really the first book-length work that is investigating disability in science fiction.<\/p>\n

Fans that I\u2019ve met were really supportive of me in the early days before I got anything going. I went to a Worldcon [World Science Fiction Convention] in Reno, and told people, \u201cHey I\u2019m thinking about doing a collection on disability and science fiction.\u201d People were telling me, \u201cDO it.\u201d I\u2019ve had a lot of support from the fans, and from actual science fiction writers, and from various academics. I found a community while doing this work.<\/p>\n

I knew that my next task, after an essay collection, would be to write a book on my own. And why not? We should set challenges for ourselves. People are excited about thinking about disability, since they haven\u2019t really before in the academic science fiction community.<\/p>\n

Q: Why is feminist utopian science fiction important to your current book project?<\/h6>\n

KA: I came to science fiction kind of late. I literally started reading science fiction when I was changing my project in my second year of my PhD to science fiction. When I was reading the feminist utopias, things like The Dispossessed<\/em> or Sally Miller Gearhart\u2019s The Wanderground<\/em>, those were really the first works where I was seeing disability, or disabled characters, being taken up in a way that is not necessarily to cure them, or to erase them. I\u2019m thinking of Octavia Butler\u2019s Kindred<\/em> as well; that story starts with a woman losing her arm. The way in which disability was taken up in those books in that period of literature, which is so invested in talking about sexuality, and talking about gender, there was already that idea of a spectrum of ability. In utopian SF there\u2019s a growing awareness that all people need to be included, without this idea of being forced into, \u201cThis is what is normal.\u201d That\u2019s part of what impelled me to propose this project.<\/p>\n

For the book that I am working on, I plan to do a survey about disability and the idea of temporality and cure, in terms of, \u201cDo we have a future that is utopic because there is no more disability; or do we have a dystopia because it is rampant?\u201d Of course, disability is socially constructed, so it can be anything. Maybe blue eyes in the future will mark you as being other and undesirable. There\u2019s something going on in the \u201970s, and to some extent in the early \u201980s, with the works of Marge Piercy, where these kind of conversations are coming up. That\u2019s what I\u2019m really interested in, seeing if I can find the awareness that the body suffers, and that it differs in multiple ways. A lot of this is ignored in masculine-driven SF, where if a body suffers, it\u2019s because that person is evil, or they deserved it from some kind of moral wrong-doing. Or they are kind of a monstrous thing that needs to be cured. There are not a lot of positive depictions. When I\u2019m reading feminist utopian SF from that era it doesn\u2019t seem to be quite as much. There is of course genetic engineering, but the possibility of a more productive and positive discussion of disabled embodiments is coming to the forefront.<\/p>\n

Q: How do you think the Le Guin award will make a difference in your research project?<\/h6>\n

KA: It\u2019s going to definitely inform an article, maybe several articles, and it\u2019s basically helping support me write the monograph that I have planned, and honestly, it\u2019s probably going to help me in ways I haven\u2019t conceived of yet. I haven\u2019t had time to synthesize it. But I know that being awarded as the inaugural Le Guin Fellowship winner has made me far more popular at conferences. As an independent scholar I don\u2019t have a university affiliation. And sometimes in the academic community when people just see an independent scholar, they\u2019re like, \u201cuhhh\u2026.\u201d There are more conversations that I am able to have with people. I think it\u2019s going to open up opportunities in the future and that it\u2019s an honor that will last, not just something useful only in 2013-2014, but something that is going to be useful in my life as an academic, or, as a scholar. Kind of a nice feather in my cap, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Q: Would it have changed your book quite a bit to have not been able to come?<\/h6>\n

KA: It would be a different book. Even now there\u2019s so much background that I know about the writers. How can you really ignore all this personal experience that I\u2019ve been reading? It\u2019s impossible. It\u2019s going to definitely change and inflect the way I write about The Wanderground<\/em>, or the way I write about The Dispossessed<\/em>. The book still would have happened, but it would not be the same book. I wouldn\u2019t have had the same opportunity to write different kinds of articles and write on my blog.<\/p>\n

I have a bunch of places where I want to disseminate this information. I want to let people know that the fellowship is there; not only to apply for it, but I hope that people will put money into it, to sustain it, because I want to be able to give back. I\u2019m on Twitter as my social media outlet. My followers are about half academics and half people who are involved in the science fiction community, which is its own thing. I\u2019ve been trying to advocate through there. I\u2019ve been tweeting this whole time. In the morning and afternoon I send out some tweets, just about the research in general, not about my direct findings. I\u2019ve been sharing, for example, the working titles for things.<\/p>\n

Q: You described your project as a monograph, which I think of more as an academic kind of book. But as you describe it, it sounds like you are working on more of a crossover book.<\/h6>\n

KA: I say monograph because that\u2019s one way to say a book and make it clear that it\u2019s not a collection. I keep going back and forth about how academic I want to make the voice, because I would really like it to be accessible to fans. When I did the collection on disability and science fiction, I tried to keep it accessible to all readers. If I talk about theoretical concepts, I want to make sure that they\u2019re accessible.<\/p>\n

One of the things I\u2019ve been doing in preparation for the trip is reading and rereading texts I haven\u2019t read in disability studies for a few years. I revisited Susan Wendell\u2019s The Rejected Body<\/em>, which was published in 1996 originally. I read it when I was doing my dissertation studies\u2014but when I was rereading it, just before I came, I was saying, \u201cThis is what I need to emulate for my writing voice, if I want people who aren\u2019t trained by the university to read it.\u201d Wendell talks about very difficult concepts of feminist disability theory and embodiment, and it\u2019s so accessible. She\u2019s kind of my road map for language. I definitely want fans, and other people who are interested, to read it. I don\u2019t like inaccessible writing. Theoretical language, I think, can be accessible. \u25a0<\/p>\n

\u2014Alice Evans, CSWS research dissemination specialist and <\/em>CSWS Annual Review editor, interviewed Kathryn Allan in May 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The deadline for the 2014-15 Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is September 5, 2014. This interview appears in the 2014 CSWS Annual Review. \u201c\u2018The Other Lives\u2019\u2014Locating Dis\/Ability in Utopian Feminist Science Fiction\u201d CSWS interviewed Kathryn Allan, inaugural…<\/p>\n

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