Tag: women

My book on women in Frank Herbert’s Dune series has been published! Women’s Agency in the Dune Universe: Tracing Women’s Liberation through Science Fiction is the first major study of the female characters of the Bene Gesserit. Check out the press release and the virtual book launch (recording). If you’re interested in purchasing, please note that I do not make money from book sales on the Springer/Palgrave site or Amazon, due to the nature of the academic publishing industry. I only benefit if you purchase using an affiliate referral link (and accept cookies). Springer/Palgrave offers a much more generous referral link percentage to authors,

I’m pleased to have my piece on the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood in Frank Herbert’s Dune published on the science fiction and fantasy site Tor.com. The content is based on my forthcoming book on Bene Gesserit women in the Dune series, which takes an agency approach to analyzing these female characters.

I’ve been researching and writing about the women of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood of Frank Herbert’s Dune for a while, but haven’t had the opportunity to discuss it verbally much outside of conferences. So I was appreciative of Dune Talk – A Dune News Net Show for the chance to be interviewed on their podcast and talk about my favorite topic and aspects of analysis from my forthcoming book on Dune, based on my PhD research. We also talked about the new Dune film and our thoughts on how it will handle the characterization of key women in its adaptation. I hope people

Catholic nuns and the Bene Gesserit in Dune have much in common: from titles and clothing to discipline and influence – these are women with a mission. As sisters clothed in black, they are committed followers of their order who make a difference in their communities. Yet there is also a key difference in that the fictional Bene Gesserit do not answer to a male authority figure. This likely reflects author Frank Herbert’s interest in providing women with more agency than they had in the confines of real-world religions. According to his son Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert was responding in