Bennett:  Feminism and Art

People speak of the feminist tendency in various art forms, especially literature and film, without asking about the value, from a feminist perspective, of the specific media as such.  (“The medium,” we recall, “is the message.”)  This course will ask, as far as possible, the whole question of the value of artistic media in a feminist sense.  Selections from the work of a number of high-powered feminist thinkers will be read (including Irigaray, Butler, Wittig), the history of the idea of the aesthetic will be studied, and theoretical possibilities will be tested on works of poetry, drama, and fiction (by authors including Robert Musil and Ingeborg Bachmann), and on several films (including “Thelma and Louise”).

Bennett:  Feminism and Art

People speak of the feminist tendency in various art forms, especially literature and film, without asking about the value, from a feminist perspective, of the specific media as such.  (“The medium,” we recall, “is the message.”)  This course will ask, as far as possible, the whole question of the value of artistic media in a feminist sense.  Selections from the work of a number of high-powered feminist thinkers will be read (including Irigaray, Butler, Wittig), the history of the idea of the aesthetic will be studied, and theoretical possibilities will be tested on works of poetry, drama, and fiction (by authors including Robert Musil and Ingeborg Bachmann), and on several films (including “Thelma and Louise”).