Handmaid's Tale

Karen A. Ritzenhoff is professor in the Department of Communication at Central Connecticut State University.Janis L. Goldie is associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Huntington/Laurentian University.

In an age where savage neoliberalism, climate change denial and lack of consideration for basic human rights seem bent on imposing their logic over the Western world, The Handmaid's Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders, edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Janis L. Goldie, is a staunch confirmation of the relevance not only of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale, but of dystopian fiction in general. Offering multiple entries into the novel and its two adaptations through a wide array of methodologies (adaptation studies, criminology, cultural studies, etc.), this book is an ideal companion for a class on The Handmaid's Tale or the relationship between feminism and popular culture.

• Chapter 1: The Handmaid’s Tale as a Teaching Tool for Engaging Students in Colonial American History and PuritanismChapter 2: Translation and Adaptation Matters: About the Differences Between a Story Called The Handmaid’s Tale or The Slave-girl’s Tale?Chapter 3:Jezebel’s: Sex and Marriage in Early Christian TheologyChapter 4:Literary Narration, Complicity, and Political Dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 5: "You don't know what we had to go through:" Feminist Generations in The Handmaid's TaleChapter 6: “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind you Down”—Again: Returning to The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 7:Consent, Power, and Sexual Assault in The Handmaid’s Tale: Handmaids, Sexual Slavery and Victim BlamingChapter 8:Advancing Student Understanding of Rape Culture: The Handmaid’s Tale as a Tool in the Primary Prevention of Sexual Assault on College CampusesChapter 9:Fertility and Fetal Containers: Science, Religion, and The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 10: “I’m Ravenous for News”: Using The Handmaid’s Tale to Explore the Role of JournalismChapter 11: Women’s Health in The Handmaid’s Tale and the Marginalization of WomenChapter 12: Resist!: Racism and Sexism in The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 13: Erasing Race in The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 14: Women, Complicity and The Handmaid's TaleChapter 15:“Discards, All of Us”: Representations of Age in The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 16: No Light Without Shadow: The Question of Realism in Volker Schlöndorff’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Hulu’s TV SeriesChapter 17: Shifting Perspectives and Re-accentuation: Adapting The Handmaid’s Tale as Film in 1990 and as a Hulu TV Series in 2017/2018Chapter 18: The Handmaid’s Tale: The Optics of DystopiaChapter 19: Offred’s Journey Through Gilead: Subverting Oppositional Discourse Through First Person Performed Narrative Chapter 20: The Artist and Her Art: An Examination of Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson and June Osborne through a Feminist LensChapter 21: ‘The Magical Land of the North’: Anti-Americanism and Canadian Identity within The Handmaid’s TaleChapter 22:Suffering Motherhood and Woman’s Empowerment: Comparing Metropolis (1927) and The Handmaid’s Tale (2017)Chapter 23: ‘Topia’ Extended: “Historical” Judgment of The Handmaid’s Tale