Book Reviews by Fran Bigman
In one of many moving, subtly observed scenes in Min Jin Lee’s sprawling family saga – the story ... more In one of many moving, subtly observed scenes in Min Jin Lee’s sprawling family saga – the story of four generations over eighty years – a fourteen-year-old boy celebrates his birthday at a fancy restaurant in Yokohama, Japan, in the late 1970s. A guest comments on how lucky he is: “American private schools, millions in the bank, and a chauffeur”. The attendees are the “sons and daughters of diplomats, bankers, and wealthy expatriates from America and Europe”, and the country’s most famous pop star makes a surprise appearance. Yet as the birthday boy cuts his cake – “a spectacular ice cream cake shaped like a baseball diamond” – his stepmother is upset to notice ink under his fingernails...
In this engaging study, Angus McLaren illuminates a discourse in interwar Britain both fearful of... more In this engaging study, Angus McLaren illuminates a discourse in interwar Britain both fearful of and hopeful for a greater level of intervention into that most "natural" of processes: human reproduction. To make the case that "'modern sexuality' was not so much the brainchild of sensualists as the product of a line of eugenically inspired rationalists," McLaren draws on both lesser and better-known fiction as well as work by biologists, sexologists, psychiatrists, and medical scientists to detail how wide-ranging discussions on robots, cars, hormones, test-tube babies, and even trees were underpinned by anxieties about the future of the British population on the part of pro-science optimists as well as conservative technophobes. Interwar Britain is often considered socially conservative, but this account convincingly argues that Britain had a rather modern discussion of sex in the 1920s and 1930s and illustrates how writers used the genre of futurology to license discussion on previously unspeakable issues of gender and sexuality.
Interviews by Fran Bigman
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Podcasts by Fran Bigman
Journal Contributions by Fran Bigman
Accounts that take Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) as representative of interwar reproduct... more Accounts that take Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) as representative of interwar reproductive dystopia fail to recognise that the novel expresses both an interest and an anxiety about the possibility of new reproductive technologies to transform sex, gender, and the family that were widely shared by writers in different genres and perhaps expressed best by those likely to be most affected: women. This article explores three earlier works—Charlotte Haldane's Man's World (1926), Vera Brittain's Halcyon, or the Future of Monogamy (1929), and Naomi Mitchison's Comments on Birth Control (1930)—in which pregnancy, instead of figuring as illness or debility, becomes a form of resistance to the status quo. These works engage with biomedicine, however, rather than abjuring it. Through a reading of these works, this article argues that the intersection of medical humanities and science fiction (SF) can enrich both: medical humanities can push SF to go beyond the canon, and SF can challenge any characterisation of literature in the medical humanities as purely fantastical by demonstrating how it responds to the hopes and anxieties of a particular time.
Media articles by Fran Bigman
I sketch the history of the male-centered anti-abortion plot from 1907 and the use of abortion as... more I sketch the history of the male-centered anti-abortion plot from 1907 and the use of abortion as a plot device in Hollywood film and argue that the 2014 film Obvious Child makes a refreshing departure from these invidious patterns.
Media Appearances by Fran Bigman
A new genre of film is here: the “abortion rom com.” While Hollywood has often been criticised fo... more A new genre of film is here: the “abortion rom com.” While Hollywood has often been criticised for skirting round the idea of abortion, the new film Obvious Child has been praised for treating it as something ‘ordinary’. Can you really have a comedy about abortion? How much has the portrayal of unwanted pregnancies on the big screen changed over the decades? Fran Bigman, who recently finished a PhD on the portrayal of abortion in film and literature, talks Jane through the history of abortion in movies.
Papers by Fran Bigman
Women: A Cultural Review, 2013
Women: A Cultural Review, 2014
Studies in the Maternal, 2014
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Book Reviews by Fran Bigman
Interviews by Fran Bigman
Podcasts by Fran Bigman
Journal Contributions by Fran Bigman
Media articles by Fran Bigman
Media Appearances by Fran Bigman
Papers by Fran Bigman