In Homemaking for the Apocalypse, Jill E. Anderson interrogates patterns of Atomic Age conformity that controlled the domestic practices and private activities of Americans. Used as a way to promote security in a period rife with anxieties about nuclear annihilation and The Bomb, these narratives of domesticity were governed by ideals of compulsory normativity, and their circulation upheld the wholesale idealization of homemaking within a white, middle-class nuclear family and all that came along with it: unchecked reproduction, constant consumerism, and a general policing of practices deemed contradictory to normative American life. Homemaking for the apocalypse seeks out the disruptions to the domestic ideals found in memoirs, Civil Defense literature, the fallout shelter debate, horror films, comics, and science fiction, engaging in elements of horror in order to expose how closely domestic practices are tied to dread and anxiety. Homemaking for the Apocalypse offers a narrative of the Atomic Age that calls into question popular memory's acceptance of the conformity thesis and proposes new methods for critiquing the domestic imperative of the period by acknowledging its deep tie to horror.

In Homemaking for the Apocalypse, Jill E. Anderson interrogates patterns of Atomic Age conformity that controlled the domestic practices and private activities of Americans. Used as a way to promote security in a period rife with anxieties about nuclear annihilation and The Bomb, these narratives of domesticity were governed by ideals of compulsory normativity, and their circulation upheld the wholesale idealization of homemaking within a white, middle-class nuclear family and all that came along with it: unchecked reproduction, constant consumerism, and a general policing of practices deemed contradictory to normative American life. Homemaking for the apocalypse seeks out the disruptions to the domestic ideals found in memoirs, Civil Defense literature, the fallout shelter debate, horror films, comics, and science fiction, engaging in elements of horror in order to expose how closely domestic practices are tied to dread and anxiety. Homemaking for the Apocalypse offers a narrative of the Atomic Age that calls into question popular memory's acceptance of the conformity thesis and proposes new methods for critiquing the domestic imperative of the period by acknowledging its deep tie to horror.

Shirley Jackson and Domesticity takes on American horror writer Shirley Jackson's domestic narratives - those fictionalized in her novels and short stories as well as the ones captured in her memoirs - to explore the extraordinary and often supernatural ways domestic practices and the ecology of the home influence Jackson's storytelling. Examining various areas of homemaking - child-rearing and reproduction, housekeeping, architecture and spatiality, the housewife mythos - through the theoretical frameworks of gothic, queer, gender, supernatural, humor, and architectural studies, this collection contextualizes Jackson's archive in a Cold War framework and assesses the impact of the work of a writer seeking to question the status quo of her time and culture.

Shirley Jackson and Domesticity takes on American horror writer Shirley Jackson’s domestic narratives – those fictionalized in her novels and short stories as well as the ones captured in her memoirs – to explore the extraordinary and often supernatural ways domestic practices and the ecology of the home influence Jackson’s storytelling. Examining various areas of homemaking – child-rearing and reproduction, housekeeping, architecture and spatiality, the housewife mythos – through the theoretical frameworks of gothic, queer, gender, supernatural, humor, and architectural studies, this collection contextualizes Jackson’s archive in a Cold War framework and assesses the impact of the work of a writer seeking to question the status quo of her time and culture.

Gender and Environment in Science Fiction focuses on the variety of ways that gender and "nature" interact in science fiction films and fictions, exploring questions of different realities and posing new ones. Science fiction asks questions to propose other ways of living; it asks what if, and that question is the basis for alternative narratives of ourselves and the world we are a part of. What if humans could terraform planets? What if we could create human-nonhuman hybrids? What if artificial intelligence gains consciousness? What if we could realize kinship with other species through heightened empathy or traumatic experiences? What if we imagine a world without oil? The texts analyzed in this book ask these questions and others, exploring how humans and nonhumans are connected; how nonhuman biologies can offer diverse ways to think about human sex, gender, and sexual orientation; and how interpretive strategies can subvert the messages of older films and written texts.

Gender and Environment in Science Fiction focuses on the variety of ways that gender and "nature" interact in science fiction films and fictions, exploring questions of different realities and posing new ones. Science fiction asks questions to propose other ways of living. It asks what if, and that question is the basis for alternative narratives of ourselves and the world we are a part of. What if humans could terraform planets? What if we could create human-nonhuman hybrids? What if artificial intelligence gains consciousness? What if we could realize kinship with other species through heightened empathy or traumatic experiences? What if we imagine a world without oil? How are race, gender, and nature interrelated? The texts analyzed in this book ask these questions and others, exploring how humans and nonhumans are connected; how nonhuman biologies can offer diverse ways to think about human sex, gender, and sexual orientation; and how interpretive strategies can subvert the messages of older films and written texts.

This book includes a collection of essays that explore the relationship between Disability Studies and literary ecocriticism, particularly as this relationship plays out in American literature and culture. The contributors to this collection operate from the premise that there is much to be gained for both fields by putting them in conversation, and they do so in a variety of ways. In this manner, the collection contributes to what Joni Adamson and Scott Slovic have referred to as a "third wave of ecocriticism." Adamson and Slovic attribute the rise of this "third wave" to the richly diverse contributions to ecocriticism over the past decade by scholars intent on including postmodernism, ecofeminism, transnationalism, globalization, and postcolonialism into ecocritical discussions. The essays in Toward an Ecosomatic Paradigm extend this approach of this "third wave" by analyzing disability from an "environmental point of view" while simultaneously examining the environmental imagination from a disability studies perspective. More specifically, the goal of the collection is to investigate the role that literary narratives play in fostering the "ecosomatic paradigm." As a theoretical framework, the ecosomatic paradigm underscores the dynamic and inter-relational process wherein human mind-bodies interact with the places, both built and wild, they inhabit. That is, the ecosomatic paradigm proceeds from the assumption that nature and culture are meshed in an ongoing and deep relationship that has implications for both the human subject and the natural world. An ecosomatic approach highlights the profound overlap between embodiment and emplacement, and is therefore enriched by both disability studies and ecocritical insight. By drawing on points of confluence between disability studies and ecological criticism, the various ecosomatic readings in this collection challenge normative (even ableist) constructions of the body-environment dyad by complicating and expanding our understanding of this relationship as it is represented in American literature and culture. Collectively, the essays in this book augment the American environmental imagination by highlighting the relationship between disability and the environment as reflected in American literary texts across multiple periods and genres.