About the Author

The author is a researcher, columnist and critic based in Kolkata, India. She has been contributing to leading English dailies in India since 2012. Her scholarly work has appeared in English Studies, Women’s Studies, Journal of International Women’s Studies, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, and The Literary Encyclopedia.

Reviews

“Suparna Banerjee brings together the speculative and fantastic fiction of Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood in a wide-ranging and thoroughly researched study that is a pleasure to read. Rather than simply undertake a comparison of familiar texts—Frankenstein and The Handmaid’s Tale, The Last Man and Oryx and Crake—Banerjee juxtaposes the work of these very important writers in a way that respects historical difference while convincingly suggesting a tradition of ongoing socio-political critique in the work of women writers of the fantastic over the past two centuries. She offers fresh readings of Shelley and Atwood through the perspectives of contemporary feminist, postcolonial, and science studies, bringing out how the cognate values of technoscience and capitalistic imperialism work to foster oppressive gender ideologies, social inequity and environmental ruin. Her probe into the troubled intersections of science, gender and history results in a nuanced study of the ways in which Shelley’s and Atwood’s novels each take critical aim at some of the conventional oppositions—nature/culture, masculine/feminine, reason/emotion, art/science—that have for too long shaped our lives in western technoculture.” —Veronica Hollinger, Professor of Cultural Studies, Trent University; Co-Editor, Science Fiction Studies“Banerjee’s critical feminist analysis of four works of fantastic/speculative fiction by Margaret Atwood and Mary Shelley, in the first comparative conjunction of these two acclaimed writers, is simultaneously lively, creative scholarship and theoretically rigorous reading. Banerjee’s study sheds significant light on the ways in which Shelley and Atwood levy powerful critiques both of positivist, masculinist science and the politico-economic proclivities of their respective times. Readers come away not only with a richer appreciation of these works of fiction and the worlds they critique, but also with a renewed conviction in the transformative capacity of feminist thought as it continues, through Banerjee’s work, to be a creative force in the imagining of new conditions of possibility.”—Diana J. Fox, Professor of Anthropology, Bridgewater State University; Founder and Editor, Journal of International Women’s Studies“In her perceptive comparison of Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood, Banerjee reveals the afterlife of Shelley’s rich cultural critiques and brings out how powerfully these two influential writers speak to each other across centuries.”—Lorraine York, Senator McMaster Chair in Canadian Literature and Culture, McMaster University"Suparna Banerjee’s Science, Gender and History: The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood accomplishes more than what is usually expected from a comparative analysis. The author has made a valuable contribution to the discourse around the ‘science question in feminism’. Her study reflects a more complex polyphony than mere ‘dia’-logic exchanges between temporalities depicted in the chosen novels… Banerjee uses a vast canvas of history and gender to juxtapose the fragments of the socio-political life-worlds that Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood narrate."—Bini B.S., Academic Fellow, Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences; Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 23: 1 (2016)"Suparna Banerjee’s critical study manages to bring its various components into a refreshing degree of harmonious symmetry... The perhaps strange-seeming pairing of these two authors from dramatically different times and countries is implicitly justified in about as simple and elegant a fashion as one could hope for: the texts and concerns of the authors bear striking similarities. This simple fact holds this project together. The natural correspondences among the study’s three main concerns seem unforced and organic, allowing for nuanced close readings that unpack the most significant moments in the texts... [T]his is a rich and satisfying exploration of two powerhouse figures in science fiction and their best fictions. Anyone with an interest in these authors, these texts, or the topics that guide this study cannot help but find insight here. Like Victor Frankenstein, Banerjee has breathed new life into these novels and their critical conversations—Justin Cosner, University of Iowa; Science Fiction Studies, 43: 1 (2016)"Suparna Banerjee has scrupulously observed every detail in her penetrative comparative study of the four fictional works. [...] Science, Gender and History does contribute, quite convincingly, to our greater understanding of the two acclaimed feminists, Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood."—M S Nagarajan, The Hindu, 27.06.2015"Suparna Banerjee has produced a comparative study of apocalyptic and dystopian visions based on science and technology, Science, Gender and History: The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood. She concentrates on The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake."—Year's Work in English Studies, 95: 1 (2016)