November 8, 2013
Eugene, OR – Canadian scholar and editor Kathryn Allan has been selected as the first ever recipient of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship. Sponsored equally by the Center for the Study of Women in Society, Robert D. Clark Honors College, and the UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives, the award supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, the papers of feminist science fiction authors housed in the Knight Library. The University of Oregon is home to the most important archive of feminist science fiction authors in the country. The Knight Library houses the papers of authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, and Jessica Salmonson along with Damon Knight, and is also in the process of acquiring the papers of James Tiptree, Jr. and other key feminist science fiction authors. For more about these collections, visit http://library.uoregon.edu/node/3524.
2013 fellowship winner Kathryn Allan is an independent scholar of feminist science fiction, cyberpunk, and disability studies. After completing her PhD thesis, Bleeding Chrome: Technology and the Vulnerable Body in Feminist Post-Cyberpunk (2010), she set off on her own and now runs Academic Editing Canada. She is editor of the interdisciplinary collection Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure (2013, Palgrave MacMillan). Her writing has appeared in both academic and creative publications, such as The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 7 (2013) and Outlaw Bodies (2012). Dr. Allan blogs and tweets as Bleeding Chrome.
The Center for the Study of Women in Society created the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship as part of its 40th Anniversary Celebration, and as a way of honoring the role that Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) played in the founding of CSWS. This year’s winner will be announced at the keynote event of the 40th anniversary celebration, “A Conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin.” The evening is devoted to a visit with this award-winning author.
