some ideas for your assignment
 

Please browse these questions and ideas and feel free to use any you like or to come up with your own question IN CONSULTATION WITH ME.

Whatever question you choose or formulate, remember that this is a module within a women's studies course, and you are expected to take account of feminist theory and gendered and or women's perspectives.

questions

• Is there such a thing as feminist web fiction?
• Why do women MOO?
• 'Contests for the meanings of writing are a major form of contemporary political struggle. . . Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other.' Donna Haraway, 1985. Discuss.
• Is web fiction literature?
• What kinds of connections does Winterson's The Powerbook make between desire and online personas?
• What metaphors and phrases does Winterson use to explore the concept of 'freedom' in The Powerbook? What kind of freedom does the book seem to extol? Is it women's freedom?
• What is the relationship between form and content in The Powerbook by Jeanette Winterson?
• Is cyborg writing a feminist task?
• Is the narrative of Winterson's The Powerbook convincing as a love story? Why/ why not?
• How can 'Patchwork Girl' by Shelly Jackson be read?
• How might Shelley Jackson's 'Patchwork Girl' be considered a feminist myth?
• What is the value and limitation of the weaving metaphor for thinking about women's digital writing.
• Does the fictionality of gender-play in virtual cities add anything to feminist understandings of gender? (In answering this question, use a critical evaluation of your own experiences in LambdaMOO alongside theoretical material and Winterson's ideas offered in The Powerbook and any other relevant novels you have read.)
• Write a critical assessment of 'Diner'. Follow link at Riding the Meridian

ideas

• Think about Jackson's 'My Body'. Could you produce something simple, but similar, of your own, that takes account of feminist undestandings of gender, sexuality, identity, race, bodies, auto/biography.
• Are you (more) interested in the cultural or the artistic production of meaning surrounding digital fiction? What aspect will you focus on?

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