Catherine has her Ph.D. in 19th Century British Literature from Columbia University, and her J.D. from New York University. She is currently Director of the Writing Center at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She has taught at The Cooper Union, John Jay College, CUNY, and Yeshiva University, and has published on Lewis Carroll, Wilkie Collins, Steampunk, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Current research interests include writing center studies and science fiction. Phone: 973-596-3271 Address: Department of Humanities
College of Science & Liberal Arts
NJIT
University Heights
Newark, NJ 07102-1982
In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll's Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogame... more In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll's Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, the controlled menace of the original is transformed into outright violence, insanity, and sexual threat; Wonderland becomes unsuitable for children. In order to negotiate this hostile terrain, Alice must grow up; she is portrayed as a teenager or a young adult. The removal of the actual child from this children's classic demonstrate the anxieties that move from the margins to the centre of the narrative and suggest much about contemporary preoccupations surrounding the perils of growing up in the new century, but the motivations and outcomes are not always the same. I will examine this trend in representative works in various media including film (Tim Burton's 2010 Alice in Wonderland), videogames (the 2011 Alice: Madness Returns), and graphic novels (Raven Gregory's 2009-11 Return to Wonderland).
In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, t... more In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, the controlled menace of the original is transformed into outright violence, insanity, and sexual threat; Wonderland becomes unsuitable for children. In order to negotiate this hostile terrain, Alice must grow up; she is portrayed as a teenager or a young adult. The removal of the actual child from this children’s classic demonstrate the anxieties that move from the margins to the centre of the narrative and suggest much about contemporary preoccupations surrounding the perils of growing up in the new century, but the motivations and outcomes are not always the same. I will examine this trend in representative works in various media including film (Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland), videogames (the 2011 Alice: Madness Returns), and graphic novels (Raven Gregory’s 2009-11 Return to Wonderland).
Steaming into a Victorian Future, ed. Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller, 2013
In Victorian Britain, as novelists struggled with the relative lack of respect afforded to their ... more In Victorian Britain, as novelists struggled with the relative lack of respect afforded to their genre, the social problem novel helped to establish that prose fiction could have a serious purpose. As steampunk similarly finds itself dismissed as the latest fad, many of its most interesting manifestations to date can productively be categorized as steampunk social problem novels. In considering texts ranging from Gibson and Sterling's foundational <i>The Difference Engine</i> (1991), through China Mieville's <i>Perdido Street Station</i> (2000), to recent works by Stephen Hunt, Cherie Priest, and N. K. Jemisin, I will consider the elements that these disparate works have in common, and how these traits define the steampunk social problem novel. Through its combination of history and speculative fiction, steampunk is uniquely positioned to explore ideas that have their roots in our past, and to consider and critique social and technological solutions of past, present, and future alike.
In my analysis of Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> (1865) and <i>Through t... more In my analysis of Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> (1865) and <i>Through the Looking-Glass</i> (1871), I demonstrate that the law is all-pervasive in Victorian culture, even in such unexpected places as children's literature. The distortions in time, space, and logic in the two imaginary countries through which Alice travels echo the anachronisms and specialized reasoning of the legal system. In Wonderland, Alice negotiates her way through a random and chaotic world, where the rules of law is represented by the harsh ancient regime justice of the Queen of Hearts. The book ends with a trial, where legal procedure is twisted to the ends of absolute power, but Alice's increasingly confident logic is able to disrupt its Wonderland counterpart completely. The chessboard world of the Looking-Glass country, on the other hand, is a totally rule-bound reflection of bourgeois society, where, as J. S. Mill has famously contended, laws and social strictures have combined together to eliminate individuality. Instead, there is all-pervasive order. In this world, Alice plays by the rules in the forlorn hope that the social mobility afforded by the game, which will reward her by making her a Queen if she succeeds, will also help her to make sense of the world in which she has found herself. But in the panoptical world of the Looking-Glass legal system, justice operates backward, and crimes are punished before they are committed. She can gain no vantage of understanding and thus no ultimate triumph.
In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll's Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogame... more In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll's Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, the controlled menace of the original is transformed into outright violence, insanity, and sexual threat; Wonderland becomes unsuitable for children. In order to negotiate this hostile terrain, Alice must grow up; she is portrayed as a teenager or a young adult. The removal of the actual child from this children's classic demonstrate the anxieties that move from the margins to the centre of the narrative and suggest much about contemporary preoccupations surrounding the perils of growing up in the new century, but the motivations and outcomes are not always the same. I will examine this trend in representative works in various media including film (Tim Burton's 2010 Alice in Wonderland), videogames (the 2011 Alice: Madness Returns), and graphic novels (Raven Gregory's 2009-11 Return to Wonderland).
In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, t... more In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, the controlled menace of the original is transformed into outright violence, insanity, and sexual threat; Wonderland becomes unsuitable for children. In order to negotiate this hostile terrain, Alice must grow up; she is portrayed as a teenager or a young adult. The removal of the actual child from this children’s classic demonstrate the anxieties that move from the margins to the centre of the narrative and suggest much about contemporary preoccupations surrounding the perils of growing up in the new century, but the motivations and outcomes are not always the same. I will examine this trend in representative works in various media including film (Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland), videogames (the 2011 Alice: Madness Returns), and graphic novels (Raven Gregory’s 2009-11 Return to Wonderland).
Steaming into a Victorian Future, ed. Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller, 2013
In Victorian Britain, as novelists struggled with the relative lack of respect afforded to their ... more In Victorian Britain, as novelists struggled with the relative lack of respect afforded to their genre, the social problem novel helped to establish that prose fiction could have a serious purpose. As steampunk similarly finds itself dismissed as the latest fad, many of its most interesting manifestations to date can productively be categorized as steampunk social problem novels. In considering texts ranging from Gibson and Sterling's foundational <i>The Difference Engine</i> (1991), through China Mieville's <i>Perdido Street Station</i> (2000), to recent works by Stephen Hunt, Cherie Priest, and N. K. Jemisin, I will consider the elements that these disparate works have in common, and how these traits define the steampunk social problem novel. Through its combination of history and speculative fiction, steampunk is uniquely positioned to explore ideas that have their roots in our past, and to consider and critique social and technological solutions of past, present, and future alike.
In my analysis of Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> (1865) and <i>Through t... more In my analysis of Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> (1865) and <i>Through the Looking-Glass</i> (1871), I demonstrate that the law is all-pervasive in Victorian culture, even in such unexpected places as children's literature. The distortions in time, space, and logic in the two imaginary countries through which Alice travels echo the anachronisms and specialized reasoning of the legal system. In Wonderland, Alice negotiates her way through a random and chaotic world, where the rules of law is represented by the harsh ancient regime justice of the Queen of Hearts. The book ends with a trial, where legal procedure is twisted to the ends of absolute power, but Alice's increasingly confident logic is able to disrupt its Wonderland counterpart completely. The chessboard world of the Looking-Glass country, on the other hand, is a totally rule-bound reflection of bourgeois society, where, as J. S. Mill has famously contended, laws and social strictures have combined together to eliminate individuality. Instead, there is all-pervasive order. In this world, Alice plays by the rules in the forlorn hope that the social mobility afforded by the game, which will reward her by making her a Queen if she succeeds, will also help her to make sense of the world in which she has found herself. But in the panoptical world of the Looking-Glass legal system, justice operates backward, and crimes are punished before they are committed. She can gain no vantage of understanding and thus no ultimate triumph.
Uploads
Papers by Catherine Siemann