Baba Yaga and Ryman's Air papers

• 140 Baba Yaga Abroad/A Postcolonial “Borders View” of Geoff Ryman’s Air

Academic Papers•Conference Room 3• Sunday, 10:00-11:15 a.m.

1) Baba Yaga Abroad. This paper considers both the traditional views of Baba Yaga, as well as her representations in the popular culture of the United States. Following a description of Baba Yaga’s complicated behavioral patterns and archetypes, Baba Yaga’s appearance in a wide variety of pop culture venues is examined. Among the materials discussed are Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Bill Willingham’s Fables. This presentation marks the culmination of the research that I did during a Fulbright Group Project Abroad to Russia during the summer of 2006.

2) A Postcolonial 'Borders View' of Geoff Ryman's Air. Ryman, like several other recent SF authors, has set his recent novel Air in a part of the world and a civilization that is not native to him, and one in which Western models of gradual technological advancement and cultural continuity are not relevant. This paper will make use of insights developed through post-colonial theory to examine both the conceptions of the plot and the pre-conceptions of the author with regard to oriental, in this case, Far Eastern cultures. Ryman's work makes an interesting case in that his focal culture is not a world power, and his focal characters exist at the edge of other, massive, hegemonic groups which must be negotiated both by these individuals in small villages and isolated towns and their policy makers who often have seriously ambivalent choices. Additionally, this work is a rich basis for expanding gendered and classed differences among characters and between groups, dealing as it does with a half-Chinese woman, Muslims, and Han Chinese, to name a few, and with extreme differences between the primary setting and the post-industrial, media-saturated worlds outside. Finally, the author's articulation of his characters' dilemmas can be examined from both a colonizing and a hybrid perspective in order to explore a nuanced, but nevertheless Western, codification of an Eastern, female, developing world, identity dilemma.

Janice Marie Bogstad, Catherine M. Schaff-Stump