The Handmaid’s Tale and the Tautology of the Dystopian Patriarchy

Ecosense & Ecosensibility: Addressing Climate Change through Literature

Ana Mendiola

MIRANDA ALARCON BENITEZ

ARMANDO BOCANEGRA OSUNA

MAXIMILIANO LOPEZ CORDOBA BARRERA

XIMENA VAZQUEZ RAMIREZ

RENE GERALDINE AGUILAR RAMOS

MICHELLE ALENCASTER ROCHA

MARIANA GRACIELA DIAZ CUEVA

OLIVER SCHLAMPP BORJA

Rodrigo Jalal

Miranda's 2nd email

Julie Ricard

RODRIGO JALAL HERNANDEZ PADILLA

FRANCISCO EMILIANO RAMIREZ LLANO

FRANCISCO GABRIEL GUZMAN ZARAGOZA

SABRINA OCAMPO YANEZ

REGINA MILAN PERALTA

EMILIANO CASTRO AMADOR

SANTIAGO ORTIZ TAMAYO

Sara Pineda Gómez

MARIA ANGELICA PONCE VILLA

ANGELICA YAMAMOTO GONZALEZ

Nuevas Justicias

Viri Bam Bam

La sociedad del cansancio

Género y violencia, un ciclo de EQUIS Justicia para las Mujeres

F-club

El capitalismo de las redes: adicción, desinformación y violencia

Ser Agua

Geordanis Baño Vega

Cat Person

Modern Masculinity (docuseries)

In the struggle for an ever more equitable and just society, we must lean on literature for the experience of worlds imagined. These may serve as beacons, whether welcoming or warning, to light the path we as a community want to take. In utopias we find the ideal, the prototype, the horizon on which our values and dreams converge. In dystopias, the opposite, the nightmare we wish to wake from. In this sense, science fiction in general and dystopian fiction in particular can help us better understand our world and how to improve it by showing us the inherent dangers within it.
In her award-winning novel, The Handmaid&rsquo;s Tale, Margaret Atwood offers us the vision of a future gone completely astray. In the Republic of Gilead society is puritanical, oppressive, unfair, unjust, unforgiving. But not unrealistic. In imagining this possible future for us, Atwood shows us precisely what is wrong with our present and the logical extension of it should we continue to indulge the patriarchy. As a work of dystopian fiction this proves that to imagine better worlds we must move away from the one we have inherited, and to create worse ones is as easy as keeping it the same.
This course will consist of a collective close reading of Atwood&rsquo;s novel, as well as a look into complimentary intertextual material that will hopefully inspire a critical contemplation of our society and propose new and challenging calls to actions. We will consider not just new ways of experiencing femininity and masculinity, but also the entire panoply of gender. Literature can help us think and feel in deeper and more extensive ways, and thus make us more sensitive to the pressures we face as a community. This course is aimed at building upon that foundation to inspire change, because the endless pursuit of utopia demands the participation of all.

This cycle is part of the class “EngLit 604”, so everyone is expected to participate and share their opinions with the group.

Participate!

Take the opportunity to imagine our future and consider how the book and complementary materials apply to the current context.

Expand upon the materials.

Remember that navigating the ‘data age’ requires attention and discernment when choosing sources of information, thus avoiding adding fire to the viralization of disinformation.

Use reliable sources of information.

This means seeking to understand each others’ perspectives, and not looking for opportunities to escalate a heated discussion.

Engage in real dialogue.

Be respectful, sensitive and always remember there are humans behind the screen.

Keep this space safe.

 Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

The Handmaid's Tale

Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, this series is set in Gilead, a totalitarian society in what used to be part of the United States. Gilead is ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state, and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate. In a desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world, the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual servitude. One of these women, Offred, is determined to survive the terrifying world she lives in, and find the daughter that was taken from her.

The Handmaid's Tale (TV Show)

What do we want?

In this groundbreaking collection, more than fifty cutting-edge voices, including Melissa Harris-Perry, Janet Mock, Sheila Heti, and Mia McKenzie, invite us to imagine a truly feminist world. An abortion provider reinvents birth control, Sheila Bapat envisions an economy that values domestic work, a teenage rock band dreams up a new way to make music, Katherine Cross rewrites the Constitution, and Maya Dusenbery resets the standard for good sex. Combining essays, interviews, poetry, illustrations, and short stories, The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given—and inspires us to demand a radically better future.

 The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future

For me, chapter three was the most melancholic chapter. Here we get a glimpse of the character's past life. We learn about her friend Moira, and her normal back at college. We as a reader cannot help but wonder what happened. The values in the past and present show no sign of correlation, so we are missing a piece of important history, and somehow it seems that the narrator does too. In some way we feel that everything happened so suddenly, she was not able to process it. For her, the past almost seems unbelievable. And at the end of the chapter, she is trying to reach out, to be able to be heard. Maybe by doing this she is making sense of the madness she has to endure. On another note, I think her mother will play an important part in the story. The moment when her mother and the others were burning magazines, they were trying to cleanse something. Also, she mentions her mother in a white dress, and white is the color of purity.&nbsp;

Chapter 3