About the Book
Employing a global approach to feminist theory, this book examines how scientific, popular, scholarly, and artistic imaginations of space have, since the 1950s, reflected and embedded Earthly hopes, anxieties, and futures.
Rather than simply a platform for imagining the future, it cultivates radical and alternative modes of inquiry around space through seeing space as a material reality that reflexively encodes humans’ self-perceptions of their planet and beyond. Bringing together essayistic reflections, artworks, and interviews with space scientists, engineers, and astronauts past and present in one volume, Space Feminisms inspects the transformation of terrestrially held notions of gender, race, class, and ableism as they migrate to the extraterrestrial, whilst drawing new connections between feminist thought and extraterrestrial power structures.
Space Feminisms makes a radical enquiry into how earthly power structures are already expanding into our skies, facilitating a collaborative and interdisciplinary platform for scholars, artists, and designers to imagine radical constructions of human futures beyond Earth. At the intersection of scientific, cultural, social, and artistic speculations, the book gathers leading scholars, scientists, artists, and designers to develop innovative tactics and disruptive participations to create generative, alternative, and radical futures of and in space.
Table of Contents:
List of Plates
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Part One: Diagramming Space Feminisms, Marie-Pier Boucher (University of Toronto, Canada) and Claire Isabel Webb (University of Southern California, USA)
Part Two: Space Feminisms, Humanities & Social Sciences
2.1 Black Planetary Feminism: Octavia E. Butler, Breath, Gaia, and Regulatory Connection, Alyssa D. Collins (University of South Carolina, USA)
2.2 Spectral Legacies: Cultivating Feminist Spaces in the Soviet Search for Life on Mars, Ana Maria Gómez López (Artist, The Netherlands), Luis Campos (Rice University), Ekaterina Lopatina (Independent, Russia)
2.3 The Troubles of Care Out There, Katarina Damjanov (University of Western Australia, Australia)
2.4 Revisiting Gender, Sex, and Reproduction in Outer Space, Monica J. Casper (San Diego State University, USA) and Lisa Jean Moore (Purchase College, USA)
Part Three: Space Feminisms, Space Sciences & Engineering
3.1 Space Feminisms Roundtable with Mazlan Othman, Jessie Ndaba, Susmita Mohanty, Jill Stuart, and Lucianne Walkowicz
3.2 In conversation with astronaut Jessica Meir (USA)
3.3 In conversation with astronaut Soyeon Yi (Korea)
3.4 In conversation with astronaut Nicole Stott (USA)
Part Four: Space Feminisms, Art & Culture
3.1 The Space Between Us: Art, Gender and Space Exploration in the 1990s and 2000s, Nicola Triscott (FACT Liverpool, UK)
4.2 Fragments of “TX-2: MOONSHADOW Mission Requirements Document,” Adriana Knouf (Artist, The Netherlands / USA)
4.3 Wohpe Wakan: Falling Star Woman Unravels Western Cultural Supremacy, Erin Genia (Tufts University, USA)
4.4 Decolonizing the Future in Outer Space: Feminist and Indigiqueer Slipstream on Film, Anne W. Johnson (Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico)
4.5 Ancestrofuturism: Two Stories of Women who Travel in Time and Space, Fabiane M. Borges (National Institute for Space Research, Brazil) and Maria Luiza Fragoso (Artist, Brazil)
4.6 Sounding Space Feminisms, in conversation with Anna Piva (Artist and Musician, Flow Motion, UK)
Part Five: Space Feminisms & Art Gallery
5.1 Space Artworks, an Introduction, Nahum Romero (KOSMICA Institute, Germany) and Annick Bureaud (Leonardo/Olats, France)
5.2 Kitsou Dubois, Analogies & Traversées
5.3 Frank Pietronigro, Astronaut Steffany
5.4 Larissa Sansour, A Space Exodus
5.5 Aleksandra Mir, First Woman on the Moon
5.6 Bettina Forget, Women With Impact / One Small Step
5.7 Liliane Lijn, moonmeme
5.8 Ale de la Puente, An Infinite & ...el primer deseo, (the first wish/desire)
5.9 Constanza Piña, Khipu // Electrotextil Pre hispanic Computer
5.10 Ani Liu, Olfactory Time Capsule for Earthly Memories
5.11 Empress Stah Power, Empress Stah in Space & Stargasm
Part Six: Space Feminisms, Architecture & Design
6.1 Building for Space, in conversation with LIQUIFER (Waltraut Hoheneder, Barbara Imhof and René Waclavicek)
6.2 Sleeping Bags to Sex Den: Bedrooms in Space, Eleanor S Armstrong (Stockholm University, Sweden) and Akvile Terminaite (The Design Museum, UK)
6.3 Could Commercializing Space Travel Influence Inequities Female Astronauts Face with Personal Protective Equipment?, Susan L. Sokolowski (University of Oregon, USA)
6.4 Going to Space with Universal Design: Why Space Travel Isn’t Accessible and Why It Should Be, Sheri Wells-Jensen (Bowling Green State University, USA) and Angelica Esquivel (Artist and Writer, USA)
6.5 In conversation with Nelly Ben-Hayoun (Tour De Moon, UK)
6.6 Space Architecture for the Last of Us: Reflections on Off-World Planetary Construction, Melodie Yashar (Art Center College of Design, USA)
Part Seven: Space Feminisms Anarchive
7.1 Two letters of Rejection sent from NASA to Women
7.2 Mercury 13
7.3 Hazel Fellows sews Playtex’s Apollo 11 Spacesuit
7.4 La Porte des Mondes (Serge Samyn) & Androgynous Peripheral Assembly System (Vladimir Syromiatnikov)
7.5 Pickering’s Harem at Harvard Observatory
7.6 First Detection of a Pulsar by Jocelyn Bell Burnell
7.7 From Barbarella to Barbie and Back, Annick Bureaud (Leonardo/Olats, France)
Epilogue
8.1 Feminists In [Space], Réka Patrícia Gál (McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, USA)
Index
About the Author :
Marie-Pier Boucher is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto, Canada. She is co-editor of Being Material (2019), Heteropolis (2013), and Adaptive Actions Madrid (2010).
Claire Webb is a Fellow at the Berggruen Institute and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Annick Bureaud is an art critic, curator and Director of Leonardo/Olats, Paris, France.
Nahum Romero is the founder of the Berlin-based KOSMICA Institute, and a Faculty member at the International Space University in France and at the transnational University of the Underground.
Review :
In a world where the exploration of outer space is becoming an increasingly prominent part of our collective future, Space Feminisms offers a timely and indispensable lens through which we can rethink our place in the cosmos.
Thought-provoking and transformative, it will undoubtedly be celebrated as a cornerstone in the ongoing discourse surrounding space, feminism, and the limitless possibilities that lie ahead. It is a must-read for anyone interested in reshaping our cosmic futures and its speculative and material forms.
Space Feminisms delves into the complexities of our relationship with space and addresses our future with a pluralistic, generous, inquisitive approach that allows us to envision new possibilities for existence and coexistence.
“This excellent book recontextualizes the future of space exploration and makes a radical enquiry into how earthly power structures are already expanding into our skies.
