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PERFORMING
GENDER:
CULTURAL
STUDIES, LITERARY THEORY
AND
VISUAL ARTS IN EAST CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE FORMER
SOVIET
UNION
30 June - 11 July, 1997
Course Directors:
Kim Lane Scheppele
(CEU and University of Pennsylvania)
Mindy Roseman (CEU)
Resource Persons:
Jasmina Luki
(Women's Studies Center, Belgrade)
Juliet Mitchell
Irina Novikova (Latvia)
Renata Salecl (University of Ljubljana and New School for Social Research, New York)
Kim Lane Scheppele (CEU and University of Pennsylvania)
Anna Wesseley (ELTE University)
The Program on Gender and Culture offers
a two week course consisting of two segments. In the first week we
will offer an introductory course on cultural studies and theories. The
course will meet in the mornings, and occasional afternoons and be obligatory
for all students. A late afternoon series of public lectures and
workshops in psychoanalysis will also be offered during the first week.
In the second week, we will offer
one course on "Literature in Transition: Reconstruction of Gender Roles"
and another on "Visual Arts and Theories of Representation, both of which
will be required for all participants. While the two courses will draw
from several different fields (psychoanalysis, literature, visual arts,
film) both will be centered around issues of interpretation.
In light of the events in the
region during the "transition", the differences and specificities concerning
the issues comprising representation have proven to be extremely
rewarding for gender studies. It is not too bold to venture
that "representation" is THE most revealing arena in which to observe the
complex processes by which whole sets of given and inherited values have
been fundamentally altered.
It is worth noting that artistic practices
have had to face critical re-evaluation of their position within society,
both pre and post transition. Within the power structures of totalitarian
regimes, artistic practices had been marked out very specifically; either
they were protected by the regime as a "supportive intellectual practices,"
or they were recognized as alternative spheres for rebellion.
In both cases however "art" was recognized as a practice of
non-marketable value.
The artist was often presented
as a mythical figure, transcending everyday interests and participating
in eternity. Such a figure was encoded as male (often as the father of
the nation or having a similar stature.) Despite rhetorical equality
between sexes, women rarely were able to be so similarly situated.
The changes brought by the transition
have forced artists to reckon with the market, and to sell her or
his products in the same manner as any other kind of goods. This new development
has required artists to reflect anew on the public, on consumer culture
and on their position as commodity producers. This new reality has
caused artists themselves, through their work, to develop a new kind of
gender awareness in coming to terms with these changes.
The intention of this 1997 SUN
seminar in Gender and Culture will be to illuminate some of the ways in
which gender is represented within the new artistic practices in the region,
to asses the degree to which changes in gender representation are
a result of a more general re-evaluation of some basic cultural myths and
vice versa.
It will be examined through artistic
texts, in literature (with particular attention to those texts which are
sensitive towards both feminine and masculine gender roles, like short-story
books from the Sarajevo war), as well as in visual arts and film productions.
Course Description
Week 1 (June 30-July 4): Cultural
Theories/Cultural Studies
Resource Persons: Kim Lane Scheppele,
Anna Wesseley
This will be a compulsory one week course,
which will meet twice per day for 2 hours each session (4 hours/day),
for all the course participants. The course will stress recent developments
in cultural studies, particularly feminist cultural studies, with approaches
such as psychoanalysis and post modernism. Special workshops will be organized
for two afternoons.
Week 1 (June 30-July 4): Psychoanalysis
and Interpretations (Workshops/Public Lectures)
Resource Persons: Juliet Mitchell
and Renata Salecl
These will be a series (4) of late afternoon
workshops and public lectures organized around relevant themes in psychoanalytic
interpretation and creativity.
Week 2 (July 7-11): Literary
Theory
Resource Persons: Jasmina Lukic,
Irina Novikova
This course will meet from 9am to 12pm
each day for this week. Its particular focus will be representations
of war and gender in recent literary works from the region.
There will also be poetry readings and other opportunities for individuals
to present their own creative works.
Week 2 (July 7-11): Visual Arts
This course will meet from 1pm to 4pm
each day this week. It will study the place of visual and performance
arts in the post- transition region. Particular attention will be placed
on gender theory and feminism in the arts. Films will be screened,
as will other performance arts (plastic etc.).
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