Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction.  Space for Women:  A Problem Deferred
Chapter 1.  It's About Time:  A Brief History of Women in Space
I. Arrows of Time
II. No Official Requirement
III. Astronauts on Display

Chapter 2.  Bottled Up:  Inner and Outer Space in I Dream of Jeannie
I. Screen Memories
II. Alienation and the Arab Body
III. There is Another Kind of Space Here

Chapter 3.  Staying Home:  Astronaut Wives and Domestic Engineering
I. Angels in the House
II. The Engineered Century
III. Mothers in Space
Chapter 4.  Chimpanzees in Space and Gorillas in the Mist
I. We are the Monkey
II. The Colonialist Imperative
III. The Old Lady Who Lives in the Forest Without a Man

Chapter 5.  The Astronaut's New Clothes:  Naked in Space in Nude on the Moon, Barbarella, and Alien
I. Dressing for Success
II. Cosmic Striptease
III. In Space No One Can See You Undress
Chapter 6.  Making Contact
I. First Contact
II. Contact in the 1990s
III. Kissing Cousins

Conclusion.  Black Holes and the Body of the Astrophysicist

Works Cited
Index

Promotional Information

A fascinating new perspective on the Space Race combining brilliant film scholarship with gender studies and feminist theory.

About the Author

Marie Lathers is Treuhaft Professor of French and Humanities at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She has published books and articles in the areas of feminist theory and popular culture, 19th-century French studies, and the relationship among women, art, and literature.

Reviews

Comprehensive, provocative, and sure to anger people who believe that the space movement has progressed beyond its early treatment of women as aliens in space. --Howard McCurdy, School of Public Affairs, American University and University of Washington, Author of Space and the American Imagination

"Marie Lathers' Space Oddities combines meticulous historical research of the US space program with trenchant feminist analysis of diverse material and media representations. Her account of our cultural romance with space and rocketry is incisive, witty, and engrossing in unpacking fictional and cinematic narratives connecting interplanetary space travel with ideologies of sexual difference. The book is a must read for anyone interested in the relations of gender, science, and technology." --Carol Colatrella, Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Women, Science, and Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology