Join us in congratulating Professor Kara McCormack on the recent publication of her article, “Women’s Work in the Dystopian West: The Colonies in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale,” by the Journal of American Studies, Cambridge University Press.

This paper examines the ways the region known as the Colonies in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale utilizes western myth to reimagine the American West as an entirely female space. Relying on popular understandings of the significance of the mythic West, traditional conceptions of the West as masculine, and the narrative function of the western, it argues that the Colonies offer regeneration and renewal for the women whose agency has been stripped in the hypergendered oppressive nation of Gilead. By reinstilling a sense of power and freedom in the women sent there, the Colonies operate much like the West of the imagination, allowing these women to escape the confines of Gilead and the chance to both return to their authentic selves and foresee a better world.

To read the article, visit the Journal of American Studies.