Johanna Laakso Livres

Young android Bliss is about to die, in a total reboot and recycle. Her owner Tess van der Holt wants her destroyed. Bliss doesn't understand why, but it might have something to do with her eccentric former master, the Doctor, who has gone missing. Forced to live under the shadow of her imminent demise, every morning is a gift for Bliss, and the youngling has a hunger for new experiences. Astrid Almquist is Bliss' stressed out attorney. The daughter of Asian, working-class immigrants, she has worked hard to climb the social ladder. Truthfully, Astrid finds androids rather creepy. To her, any attempt to ascribe human feelings to a robot is a clear case of antropomorphism. But she also must admit, on some level, her new client Bliss is different. For starters, she has cultivated tissue covering her sophisticated wires, and an actual human DNA. Does that mean that the android, who has a knack for seeing gold in the mundane, also can also be counted as a human being? A free-standing, lesbian sci/fi story, about Artificial Intelligence and the art of living, set in the same world as Kissing the cold-blooded. For more info go to jolabooks.com.

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are notoriously elusive concepts resting on partly controversial grounds. All too often, diversity is defined by "othering" certain groups, emphasizing their different or "exotic" characteristics. However, the diversity and dynamics of Uralic (Finno-Ugric) literatures deserve to be explored from the point of view of the interaction of multiple cultural and linguistic systems, structures, and networks. This book invites all interested readers and researchers to consider the potential of Uralic literary multiculturality in its entirety. (Series: Finno-Ugrian Studies in Austria. Schriftenreihe fur die Forschungsbereiche der Abteilung Finno-Ugristik (Institut fur Europaische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft) an der Universitat Wien - Vol. 8)

The year 2006 marked the centenary of the Finnish parliamentary reform, in which the Finnish women as the first in Europe were acknowledged as citizens with full political rights. In this volume, researchers of history, linguistics and literature explore the diverse connections between gender roles and nation building, ethnicity, language, culture and identity in Northern, Eastern and Central Europe.

Our Otherness explores the interface between Finno-Ugrian Studies - traditional research into the Finno-Ugric languages, their history and relatedness, as well as other approaches to the language, history, culture, and folklore of these peoples - and Women's Studies. How do gender and linguistic origins interact in the making of national identity? Can we speak about a "gendered Finno-Ugrianness"? How does gender express itself in languages lacking grammatical gender, and how are these questions dealt with in language description and language planning?