English 876: Studies in Critical Theory
Feminist Theory and the Problem of Aesthetics
Autumn 2003
Professor Marlene Longenecker
Office: Denney 405
Office Hours: TR 12-1 and by appointment
Phone 292-6114 (voice mail)
Course Description
“Rabdindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, composer of the Indian national anthem and compulsive world traveler, is said to have cried at the sheer ‘barbarian ugliness’ when he first saw the Parthenon.” Mary Beard, The Parthenon
In the last 25 years, much cutting edge critical theory (marxist, multicultural, postcolonial, feminist) has either avoided the problem of aesthetics or has deconstructed the aesthetic as always already patriarchal, reactionary, racist, elitist. But more recently, there have been attempts to reclaim the aesthetic, to reinvestigate its emancipatory potential. This course will be organized around both the critique and the recovery of aesthetic questions for feminism. This will necessarily involve us in a cluster of interesting questions: Are all of women’s efforts at (self) beautification inevitably implicated in patriarchal structures of desire? Is there anything useful to be learned from the 1970’s questions of aesthetics and identity (e.g.: is there a female/feminine/lesbian/or feminist aesthetic? Is there a “black” aesthetic”? A “white” aesthetic? ) Are aesthetic values always bound to class and class privilege? (Does “taste” always imply “rich”?) As we have stretched the canon, we have often excluded aesthetic criteria; do we have to? Why? What would happen if we didn’t? How has aesthetic theory affected the disabled body? Is sexist (or racist) art (e.g. pornography) evil? Can art be evil (theorists from Shelley to Sartre would say, no)? If women have appropriated the “gaze,” is it an aesthetic gaze, and if so, is this a good or a bad thing? Is it possible to reclaim the aesthetic in a feminist/postmodern context?
Required Texts and Technologies
There are two texts ordered at the bookstores:
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Penguin, 1972)
Isobel Armstrong, The Radical Aesthetic (Blackwell, 2000)
The rest of the reading assignments are available from the University Libraries On-Line Reserve Service. The good news is that this means the entire reading packet (around 500 pages) is free; the bad news is that it is in the form of PDF files which can take a long time to download and print if you have a slow modem. If you do this on campus, it will generally be faster. If you cannot be bothered, I have a copy of the reading packet available to be copied at your expense. To access the electronic reserves web page from off-campus: 1) Libraries Main Web Page at http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/ 2) Click on About Us 3) Click on Library Units 4) Click on Circulation Department 5) Click on Reserves 6) Click on Electronic Reserves. From any on-campus computer, you can get there much faster through Oscar. I have also put a link to the Library’s web page on the course web site on WebCT. Do note that many of the assigned essays for this course include visual images, which don’t always print well from PDF files, so take the time to look at them on the screen as well.
You will need to access WebCT for this course. For those of you new to Ohio State: you will need your OSU User Name (e.g. Longenecker.2) and your password (the one you use to access e-mail.) If you are enrolled in the course, your access to WebCT will be activated after the first class meets.
Course Requirements
1. Of course, you will read everything and come to class with scintillating and provocative comments and questions.
2. You will sign up to present a 2-3-page position paper and lead off the discussion for one day during the quarter. I need a list of your preferred dates (in order of preference) by Tues Sept 30. Presentations will be during classes on Oct 2 through Nov 6.
3. The last four full days of class time are devoted to your final projects. What I want you to do is to select a text (literary or visual) that you believe manifests a problem you would like to investigate related to the intersection of gender and aesthetics. For example: a literary text that has major aesthetic flaws but which you feel should still be part of the “new” canon. Or, one that presents us with major aesthetic challenges resulting from gender, cultural, class, and/or racial differences. Or, one that is aesthetically seductive but politically damaging. Or, one for which rather grand claims are now being made but which doesn’t quite seem worth all the attention. Or, one that was once considered fabulous and now isn’t. Or one that seems to demand some new sense of the boundary between high and low culture. Or, one that plays with aesthetics in a new way. Or. . . .you get the picture. I am assuming that most of you will find a text that matters to you in your various fields of expertise, but it can be anything that really interests you. You will assign the class some reading from it (or, if it is a visual text, I will post it on WebCT) by Thursday, November 6, and you will have half an hour to present it to the class. (Some of you will have to do this before Thanksgiving, but that just means you have less work to do at the very end.) I will talk more about this as we go along, but I encourage you to begin to think about it at the beginning of the quarter.
Reading Assignments
Thurs Sept 25 Introductions
Tues Sept 30 Definitions
Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Perceptions, Pleasures, Arts: Considering Aesthetics” (from Philosophy in a Feminist Voice) [22pp]
George Levine: “Reclaiming the Aesthetic” (from Aesthetics and Ideology) [24pp]
Thurs Oct 2 Feminism and “Traditional” Aesthetics
Mary Poovey, “Aesthetics and Political Economy in the Eighteenth Century: The Place of Gender in the Social Constitution of Knowledge” (from Aesthetics and Ideology) [19pp]
Naomi Schor, “Gender: In the Academy” (from Reading in Detail)[10pp]
Regenia Gagnier, “A Critique of Practical Aesthetics” (from Aesthetics and Ideology) [18pp]
Tues Oct 7 Gender and the “Picturesque”: The Legacy of Landscape Aesthetics
Christine Battersby, “Gender and the Picturesque: Recording the Ruins in the Landscape of Patriarchy” (from Public Bodies, Private States) [16pp] Janet Brettle: Images on WebCT
Elizabeth Bohls, “Landscape Aesthetics and the Paradox of the Female Picturesque” (from Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics) [11pp]
Ann Bermingham, “The Picturesque and Ready to Wear Femininity” (from The Politics of the Picturesque) [32pp]
Thurs Oct 9 Theorizing the Gaze
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, as much as possible but
especially Chapters 3 and 5
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (from
Visual and Other Pleasures) [13pp]
bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” (from Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics) [16pp]
Tues Oct 14 Institutionalizing the Gaze: The Museum
Carol Duncan, “The MoMa’s Hot Mamas” (from Aesthetics: The Big Questions) [11pp]
Donna Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936" (From Cultures of United States Imperialism) [37pp]
Timothy Luke, “Memorializing Mass Murder: The United
States Holocaust Museum” (from Museum Politics) [28pp]
Thurs Oct 16 Femininity: The Domestic Aesthetic
Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers” [17pp]
Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” [7pp]
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (images on WebCT)
Michele Barrett, “Feminism and Cultural Politics” (from Imagination in Theory) [16pp]
Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt (images on WebCT)
Griselda Pollock, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity”
(from Aesthetics—the Oxford Reader) [9pp]
Tues Oct 21 “Feminine” Shopping: The Aesthetics of Consumer Culture
Kathy Peiss, “Making Up, Making Over: Cosmetics, Consumer Culture, and Women’s Identity” (from The Sex of Things) [21pp]
Diana Fuss, “Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look” (from Critical Inquiry, 18) [24pp]
Angela Davis, “Afro Images: Politics, Fashion, Nostalgia” (from The Angela Davis Reader) [6pp]
Caren Kaplan, "'A World Without Boundaries': The Body Shop's Trans/National Geographics" (from With Other Eyes) [13pp]
Rosalind Coward, “Naughty But Nice: Food Pornography” (from British Feminist Thought) [4pp]
Thurs Oct 23 The Aesthetics of Othering: (Neo) Colonialism and Tourism
Anne McClintock, "The Lay of the Land: Genealogies of Imperialism” (from Imperial Leather) [52pp]
Cynthia Enloe, “On the Beach: Sexism and Tourism” (from Bananas, Beaches, and Bases) [10pp]
Judith Williamson, “Woman is an Island: Femininity and
Colonization” (from Studies in Entertainment) [17pp]
Christopher Steiner, "Authenticity, Repetition, and the Aesthetics of Seriality: The Work of Tourist Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (from Unpacking Culture) [15pp]
Tues Oct 28 Aesthetics, Multiculturalism, Identity Politics
Michele Wallace, “Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Problem of the Visual in Afro-American Culture”
(from Aesthetics: The Big Questions) [12pp]
Sarah Ramirez, "Borders, Feminism, and Spirituality: Movements in Chicana Aesthetic Revisioning" (from Decolonial Voices) [16pp]
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, “End of the Failed Metaphor” (from Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner) [8pp]
Gargi Chatterjee and Augie Tan, “Is There An Asian American Aesthetics?” (from Contemporary Asian America) [9pp]
Gail Sweeney, “The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis
Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess” (from White Trash) [14pp]
Thurs Oct 30 Is it Art? Pornography
Catherine MacKinnon, “Frances Biddle’s Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech” (from Feminism Unmodified) [33pp]
Wendy Steiner, “The Perfect Moment” and “Conclusion” (from The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism) [54pp]
Kobena Mercer, “Just Looking for Trouble—Robert Mapplethorpe and Fantasies of Race” (from Studying Culture) [12pp]
Tues Nov 4 Body Matters
Peg Brand, “Bound to Beauty: An Interview with Orlan” (from Beauty Matters) [22pp]
Anita Silvers, “From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Beautiful Things Can Be Made” (from Beauty Matters) [22pp]
Janice Boddy, “Violence Embodied? Circumcision, Gender Politics, and Cultural Aesthetics” (from Rethinking Violence Against Women) [28pp]
Thurs Nov 6 Feminist Aesthetics?
Marilyn French, “Is There a Feminist Aesthetic?” (from Aesthetics in Feminist Prespective) [8pp]
Sue-Ellen Case, "Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic" (from Camp) [15pp]
Josephine Donovan, “Everyday Use and Moments of Being: Toward a Nondominative Aesthetic” (from Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective) [11pp]
Tania Modleski, “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas” (from Feminist Television Criticism) [11pp]
Rita Felski, “Why Feminism Doesn’t Need an Aesthetic (and Why It Can’t Ignore Aesthetics)” (from Doing Time) [15pp]
Tues Nov 11 Veteran’s Day—No Class
Thurs Nov 13 Where Are We Now? Feminist Aesthetics/Postmodern Aesthetics?
Isobel Armstrong, The Radical Aesthetic, Parts I and II
Tues Nov 18 Feminist Aesthetics/Postmodern Aesthetics, continued
Armstrong, Parts III and IV
Thurs Nov 20 Student Presentations: Case Studies
Tues Nov 25 Student Presentations: Case Studies
Thurs Nov 27 Happy Thanksgiving
Tues Dec 2 Student Presentations: Case Studies
Thurs Dec 4 Student Presentations: Case Studies