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Familiar Forms, Unfamiliar Containers: A Formal Examination Of The Body, Mind, And Community In Black Women’S Science Fiction And Fantasy, Cameron Clark Bauserman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Black Women’s writing is ultimately a study in intersectionality and, as such, formalism provides a productive ontology for parsing the intersections of various forms. Using formal theorists Anna Kornbluh and Caroline Levine’s works as a starting point, this thesis examines the formal treatment of the body, mind, and community in Black Women’s Science Fiction and Fantasy (BWSFF), specifically in the works of N.K. Jemisin and Octavia Butler. The act of defining genre is a historically informed act. As such, this thesis demarcates BWSFF as its own distinct genre because of its treatment of the aforementioned forms. Furthermore, the works within …