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This volume is a new collection of scholarly essays on the US science fiction and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold. The collection argues for the significant contributions Bujold’s works make to feminist and queer thought, disability studies, and fan studies. In addition, it suggests the importance of Bujold to contemporary American literature. The volume continues the establishment of Bujold as an important author of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. It argues that her corpus spans the distance between two full arcs of US feminism and has anticipated or responded to several of its current concerns in ways that invite or even require theoretical exploration. As well as papers on earlier work in the main series (the Vorkosigan Saga and the ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ novels The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls), the collection also presents work on recent publications such as The Sharing Knife sequence; the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ novellas; and the recent Vorkosigan Saga novel Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. The collection deepens feminist research in Bujold studies by incorporating queer and disability studies perspectives; and includes historiographic retracing of scholarship on Bujold’s work.

This book examines the representation of Wales and ‘Welshness’ in texts by French (including Breton) and German-speaking travellers from 1780 to the present day, focusing on key points in the period of Welsh modernisation from the Industrial Revolution to the post-devolution era. Since the emergence of the travel narrative as a popular source of information and entertainment in the mid-18^th century, writing about Wales has often been embedded and hidden in accounts of travel to ‘England’. This book seeks to redefine perceptions of Wales by problematizing the notion of ‘invisibility’ often ascribed to the Welsh context and by broadening perspectives outwards to encompass European perceptions. Works uncovered for the first time include travelogues, private correspondences, travel diaries, articles and blogs which have Wales or Welsh culture as their focus. The ‘travellers’ analysed in this volume ‘travellers’ feature those travelling for the purpose of leisure, scholarship or commerce as well as exiles and refugees. By focusing on Wales, a minoritized nation at the geographical periphery of Europe, the authors are able to problematize notions of hegemony and identity within the genre, relating to both the places encountered (the ‘travellee’ culture) and the places of origin (the travellers’ cultures). This book thereby makes an original contribution to studies in travel writing and provides an important case study of a culture often minoritized in the field, but that nevertheless provides a telling illustration of the dynamics of intercultural relations and representation.