Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale had an enduring cultural effect well before various cultures around the world began so uncannily to reflect it. A hallmark of its resulting renaissance has been Bruce Miller’s television adaptation, its second and third seasons moving us a few years away from Gilead as an established dystopia, as depicted in the body of the novel, toward its eventual downfall, as acknowledged in its concluding “Historical Notes.” Shortly after the third season’s conclusion, Atwood’s long-awaited sequel, The Testaments, comes to us, moving us away now by roughly fifteen years. By springtime, we will be a little over six months into coming to grips with the intersection of the three storylines, and looking forward to a fourth season in the summertime, and to the moment in the fall when the United States decides whether to remain on an apparent slippery slope to a real-life Gilead, with a growing cohort of nations similarly precarious. The moment begs pondering from related literary, cinematic, historical, philosophical, political, and generally societal perspectives. Selections from the proceedings, together with materials solicited in addition, will be collected to appear in early fall of 2020, in the context of presidential and congressional elections in the United States, and domestic and international reactions and realities.