Steampunk: Gender, Subculture and the Neo-Victorian [Paperback]

What is steampunk? Fashion craze, literary genre, lifestyle - or all of the above? Playing with the scientific innovations and aesthetics of the Victorian era, steampunk creatively warps history and presents an alternative future, imagined from a nineteenth-century perspective.

In her interdisciplinary book, Claire Nally delves into this contemporary subculture, explaining how the fashion, music, visual culture, literature and politics of steampunk intersect with theories of gender and sexuality. Exploring and occasionally critiquing the ways in which gender functions in the movement, she addresses a range of different issues, including the controversial trope of the Victorian asylum; gender and the graphic novel; the legacies of colonialism; science and the role of Ada Lovelace as a feminist steampunk icon. Drawing upon interviews, theoretical readings and textual analysis, Nally asks: why are steampunks fascinated by our Victorian heritage, and what strategies do they use to reinvent history in the present?

Claire Nally'sSteampunk: Gender, Subculture, and the Neo-Victorianis a welcome addition to a growing and dynamic field that has much to add to academic discussions around culture, gender, art, and history ... [Nally] lays a strong groundwork for steampunk to not only focus on its subversive potential but also to engage in its reestablishment of norms and mores. The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

Nally's valuable study makes clear that Steampunk is a popular culture phenomenon that, like punk, goth and metal has developed both conservative and progressive forms ... Having readSteampunk: gender, subculture & the neo-Victorian, I am inspired to get my students researching the genre, which is what a selc¦