This podcast is the culmination of a semester of learning about who has access to the outdoors and adventure culture, challenging what it means to be a hero, and expanding the canon of heroes to include more female adventurers.

Throughout the semester, students in our Feminine Heroic class were asked to research female heroes and write part of their story. We asked our classmates to share short samples of their work to create a compilation of introductions to female heroes you may not have heard of before.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of noteworthy female heroes – we acknowledge that this proposed expansion to the canon suffers its own representation issues. There is work to be done to present the stories of adventurers of color and from the LGBTQ+ community. Additionally, we acknowledge the limitations of focusing our efforts on women and how this gendered lens still excludes genderfluid or nonbinary individuals.

With all of this in mind, we hope this podcast still provides a meaningful jumping-off point for further work in expanding the hero canon.

Feminize Your Canon