“The President has been shot”: Reagan, Wounded Heroes and the Cyborg Soldier in American Science Fiction of the 1980s
Dr Sue Smith
Date: Wednesday 20 April, 2016
Time: 2.15pm–3.45pm
Place: Eden109, Liverpool Hope University, UK
In this paper, Dr Smith will discuss President Ronald Reagan, disability, and the cyborg soldier in 1980s American science fiction by focusing on Lois McMaster Bujold’s space opera novel, The Warrior’s Apprentice (1986) – a narrative featuring a young nobleman called Miles Vorkosigan, who is wounded, impaired, and altered by technology only to reinvent himself as an enigmatic and heroic military leader capable of rescuing and inspiring men overwhelmed by a rapidly changing environment. In the context of Reagan’s synonymity with the wounded hero and disability, and a neo-conservative’s appropriation of the Disability Rights rhetoric of ‘self reliance and independence’, Dr Smith will critically evaluate Miles as a Reaganesque figure, who evokes America’s anxieties about Reagan’s presidential leadership, while also epitomizing the emergence of the cyborg soldier in 1980s American science fiction as the ideal Republican hero.
Susan Smith’s research interests focus on the representation of disability and the cyborg in American science fiction. She has made a number of contributions to the work of the CCDS, including a chapter in Changing Social Attitudes Toward Disability(Routledge, 2014) and papers at seminars and the Symposium.
This seminar is part of the CCDS series, The Voice of Disability. Other dates include:
25 May 2016, Tales from the Crip: Narrative Reconstructions of the Storyteller’s Disabled Male Body in Contemporary Gothic Fiction, Alan Gregory.
29 Jun 2016, Voices of Becoming, Laura Waite.
For further information please contact:
Dr. David Bolt
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