Geographical classification

America > United States

Socio-cultural movements

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Feminism

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war literature > Experimental literature

Groups by dedication

Activists > Feminists (activists)

Humanistics > Feminists (intellectuals)

Educators > Teachers / Lecturers / Professors

Writers > in > English

Writers > Story writers

Writers > Essayists

Character
Joanna

Joanna Russ

New York 22-02-1937 ‖ Tucson 29-04-2011

Period of activity: From 1960 until 1990

Geographical classification: America > United States

Socio-cultural movements

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Feminism

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war literature > Experimental literature

Groups by dedication

Activists > Feminists (activists)

Humanistics > Feminists (intellectuals)

Educators > Teachers / Lecturers / Professors

Writers > in > English

Writers > Story writers

Writers > Essayists

Context of feminine creation

- Precursor women: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The yellow wallpaper (1892). 
- Contemporary women: Alice Sheldon (a. James Triptree) (1915), Ursula K. Le Guin (1929) and Margaret Atwood (1939). 
- Her work is widely taught in courses on science fiction and feminism in the English-speaking world.

- Russ is the subject of Farah Mendlesohn's book On Joanna Russ (2009) and Jeanne Cortiel's Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ, Feminism, Science Fiction (2000). Russ and her work are also featured in Sarah LeFanu's Drings Chinks in the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (1988).  

Review

American writer and essayist, Joanna Russ was known for her science fiction and fantasy novels and stories, as well as for her essays and social activism dedicated to feminism. As a professor at the University of Washington, Russ won through her career important prizes such as Hugo, Nebula, James Tiptree Jr., or Locus Award, among others. The Female Man is her most iconic book, considered today a masterpiece of feminist literature. 

Activities

English

Spanish

Catalan

Justifications

  • Joanna Russ is a reference in science fiction literature as one of the first women to enter that literary world.
  • She is an active feminist who shows in her works the oppression that women receive in artistic terms.
  • She was nominated for the 2013 Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Biography

Joanna Russ was born in The Bronx, in New York City. Her parents, Evarett I. and Bertha (née Zinner) Russ, were both teachers. She starts writing fiction at a very young age. Over the years, she fills countless notebooks with stories, poems, comics, and illustrations, often bound by hand. 
As a senior at William Howard Taft Institute, Russ was selected in the top ten of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. She graduated from Cornell University, where she studied with Vladimir Nabokov in 1957, and received a MFA from the Yale Drama School in 1960. After teaching at several universities, including Cornell, she becomes a full-time professor at the University of Washington. Russ became known in the science fiction world in the late 1960s, particularly for her nominated novel Picnic on Paradise. At the time, science fiction was dominated by authors writing for a predominantly male audience, but women were increasingly entering the field. 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Russ> Retrieved on 14/04/2022 

Works

She is the author of several works of science fiction, fantasy, and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983). 
Her most famous work is The Female Man (1970), a novel that combines satire and utopian fiction, which can be read either as a novel or as a theoretical text. 

Bibliography

Didactic approach

- Her texts can be used in English lessons.  
- She can also be used in Language and Literature lessons to work on the different literary genres. It is important to bring students closer to the reading written by women of a genre that has been constantly attributed to men and that, however, through figures such as Joanna Russ, has a female representative.  

Documents