Anti-feminism, both practical and theoretical, is often connected with questions of representation.  The manner in which women are represented—in all forms of communication, from advertising and pornography to philosophy and poetry—has a great deal to do with the oppression of women in practice and with the misunderstanding of gender issues in theory.  Attempts to remedy this state of affairs by suggesting a revised image of women have as a rule not been successful, because an anti-feminist bias is inherent in the institutions and practices of representation itself, not in the specific images that are produced.  The present course, however, will explore the question of the dramatic theater in Western culture, and of the anomalies in its status as a technique of representation.  Has the dramatic theater, in its history, opened representational possibilities that avoid the feminist dilemma—possibilities that must be sought in the very nature of the institution, even when there is no feminist intent on the part of the specific practitioners?

            Readings for the course will include a few plays from antiquity to the eighteenth century (Euripides, Shakespeare, Kleist) plus ten plays or so from the modern period (Ibsen, Yeats, Genet, Shaw, Brecht, Cixous, Anouilh, perhaps others).  Assignments will include two papers (6pp., 12pp.) plus a short exam on the reading.