111-444 Making Gender: Art, Film and Spectatorship in the West 1850-1995

Note

No student may receive credit for both this subject and 111-344/444 Gender and Artistic Practice in Europe, America and Australia 1850-1980.

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Subject Description

This course investigates the formation and representation of gendered subject identities in Western Art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in the context of theories of spectatorship. A range of media are considered including, film, academic painting, photography, television, performance, postmodern art and modernist painting. The representation of female and male subjectivities are considered in relationship to ideals of respectability and deviance. The problems which black women face within white narrative structures are examined. Female agency, the configuration of women within the phallocentric regimes of the modernist project, and the representation of oedipal narratives within cinema are studied. The representation of intellectual women and the themes of alienation and madness are examined. Masquerade, cross-dressing and the crisis in categories of gender are considered.

Assessment

Written work which may comprise class papers, essays, visual tests or take-home examinations totalling about 5000 words for 3rd year and 6000 words for 4th year.

Prescribed Texts

• Gross, E, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. Indiana University Press 1990.
• Donna J Harraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, The Re-invention of Nature. Routledge, 1992.
• Hoorn J, Strange Women, Essays in Art and Gender. MUP 1994.
• Patricia Erens, Issues in Feminist Film Criticism. Indiana University Press, Indianapolis 1990.