Women, Art and Culture

Our Last Class! Analyzing Learning, in communities and personally

2008-05-13T10:58:00.018-04:00

Faith Ringgold, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles (1991)
Acrylic on canvas, tie-dyed, pieced fabric border, 74 x 80"
From the Series: The French Collection Part I; #4
(Private Collection)

"Needless to say I went to Arles and I sat in the square....The houses are over there. Part of composition is having the courage to do it and to see it and to change what you see so that you can do it. So I went there and sat in a cafe and put that composition together. But part of the reason for putting those women in this composition has to do with the discussion I had with Oprah Winfrey in which she was talking about her role models. She mentioned all of these women as role models and I had proposed to do this painting for her. The commission broke down at some point. It never happened but I liked the idea. And you know, I like ideas. So I put this painting together. Of course I added Van Gogh." (From Ringgold's website)

"a meeting of an imaginary group called the National Sunflower Quilters Society of America – African-American women who changed history. Included are: Madame C.J. Walker, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Ella Baker."

We are brought together today to celebrate our learning, our collective and individual

Sunflower Quilting Bee at UMD (2008):
voices and papers, performed 13 May, 90 or so people.
From the Series: Women, Art and Culture, Part Quadrillion
(State of Maryland)

STARTING FROM THE BACK OF THE CLASS, IN TURN EVERYONE WILL SPEAK. Each person will offer a piece for the quilt -- make it as uniquely yours as you can. Imagine yourself in our Women, Art and Culture knowledge quilting society, coming together to share our arts knowledges and meanings as we have pieced them together in our class.

Look over your paper and makes notes of the following. You will speak from something you've put down in these notes:

Find your favorite paragraph in the paper. Put a star next to it.
Write down what you are most proud of in this paper.
Put an arrow next to the place you best describe the argument of the course.
Write down your favorite reading and be prepared to say what made it special for you.

Add one of these:

Write down the moment in the course when things started to come together for you.
Write down a note about a moment outside the course when you found yourself using what you had learned.
Write down a note about how you found yourself included in the argument of the course

When it is your turn to speak, pick out one of these pieces to share in our quilt of the class. We will try to get everyone in, so be brief, but make sure your piece is special and unique.

And may we all keep running into each other, over and over, in friendship, connection, intellectual community, and joyful living!

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MUSIC: Alice Coltrane, from the Album "Translinear Light"

From: NPR Music: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3932130

The Tavis Smiley Show, September 23, 2004 - If jazz legend John Coltrane has disciples — musical or otherwise — chief among them would be his widow, Alice Coltrane.

Alice Coltrane, now 67, met her husband when they were both touring jazz musicians — she was a noted bebop jazz pianist and classically trained musician. She shared with her husband a passion for both music and the spiritual side of human experience. At one point, she joined her husband's famed quartet on piano, replacing jazz great McCoy Tyner.

When her famous husband died of liver cancer in 1967, Alice Coltrane became a fierce guardian of his vast musical estate. She was also left with the task of raising their four children. She continued with a string of well-received albums, but quit the jazz world in 1978.

Now, after a 26-year hiatus, Alice Coltrane is back with a new CD, Translinear Light. The title is a play on the Coltrane name, and also a nod to Alice Coltrane's deep spirituality.

"Look at what trance means," she tells The Tavis Smiley Show producer Roy Hurst. "It means to transcend... it means to become transcendental! So if we get a singular transcendental path of light, that could lead to such great dimensions of consciousness, of revelation, of spirituality, of spiritual power."

Heart, Self, Other

2008-05-03T21:21:00.022-04:00

Perez, p. 306: "The arts have the potential, in the Nahuatl expression, to create integrity between 'the face and soul' of their beholders, as well as in their makers. Likewise, they do indeed mirror the superficial, visionary, or conflicted soul of the societies we live in. As we understand them, and as they largely still function today, the arts optimally embody and facilitate the critical, truth-seeking, and daring consciousness that is necessary to both social and spiritual well-being."

Today we did our final readings:

• Perez, Ch. 6, 7

6: Face, Heart

p. 257: "...a difrasismo, that yokes together the Nahua concept of 'face' to that of 'divinized heart,' to express personhood as the attunement between inner and outer being, the person and the community, the earthly and the divine."

7: Conclusion: Self, Other

p. 298: "In the Chicana art studied here, what is explored, articulated, or deployed is a notion of spirituality whose effects matter socially and politically. In the work of these women, it is the day-to-day practices of spiritual consciousness and its material effects, rather than identification with the dogma and practices of religious organizations, that are brought to our attention as mattering individually, socially, and globally."

BLOWING THE STEREOTYPES OF EXPECTED BEHAVIORS WE KNOW DON'T FIT US

• Christian Virgins, Goddesses, and Superheroines

Alma Lopez, Our Lady, 1999. Digital Print.

Perez discussion pp. 264-7:

"Chicano nationalist activists and Roman Catholic clergy demanded the removal from the Cyber Arte show at the New Mexico International Museum of Folk Art in Santa Fe, because the artist had placed a defiant-looking woman clad in flowers within a mandorla and had bared the breasts of an equally amused female cherub.... In the artist's written response...Lopez astutely wondered what it is about women's nude bodies that seems inappropriate and sacrilegious to the men leading the protest to censor her image.... 'And what of it?' Lopez' Lady seems to ask. Perhaps the focus in male-dominant culture has remained on which bodies we are ostensibly permitted to love--or degrade--rather than how we should love them.... As patroness of the Chicana/o movement, and the symbol of the righteousness of other radical struggles for social justice, the Virgin has been promoted to goddess, queen, and super-heroine by the Chicana feminist movement."

Lopez Website (includes Lopez' responses to critics of this work in section "Our Lady of Controversy")

• Self-Portraits and Representations of the Body

"Must see! Alma Lopez's film is an unusually intimate portrayal of butch identity. On the surface, it's all about the hair - how to cut it, how to style it, how to stroke it - but, really, it's about gender, race, and the daily lives of those who push against the norms." -- Dr. Luz Calvo, Ohio State University

• Sacred and Divinized Heart (Yolteotl) Imagery

Maya González, The Love that Stains, 2000. Acrylic on masonite, 36 x 24 in. Collection of Gary Keller.

Perez discussion p. 292:

"González invokes the spirit of Kahlo's The Two Fridas. But in González, rather than conveying The Two Fridas's painful sense of being torn psychologically, the duality of the physical and spiritual sense is conveyed as a resource of strength, as the ghostly spirit embraces and comforts the living self, though it communicates precisely through the heart as the hummingbird which represents it, because it itself is the spiritual life blood of the heart."

González' website: "Painting is my healer, my teacher, my guide."

Perez p. 296: "Chicana feminist artists reconnect spirituality and social justice, spreading the message of hope for human dignity and integrity--for 'face, heart'--wherever their work appears.

"And where, finally does their work appear? Do we buy it, do we exhibit it, do we attend and support it if it is performative? Do we review it? Cite it? Allow it to transform us? Do we support its presence and dissemination in our schools, professional journals, mainstream art magazines, established museums, cutting-edge galleries, bank vaults, and living room walls? Do we study it in its differences and allow it to create a difference, an altar-like offering toward the greater good?"

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Generation Mex:
YouTube: Chicle Atomico was an obscure '90s Chicana riot grrl band from Montebello CA that only put out 1 song ever, "Generation Mex," which you can find on this rock/metal compilation CD called Spanglish 101. In English I guess their name means "Nuclear Bubblegum," which I took to mean that they felt like they were expected to be cute as an all-girl band, but they really intended to blow your mind with their radical politics.
Here are the lyrics in Spanish, followed by my English translation:

Siempre escucho lo mismo en la pinche radio --
¿Quien fregados es? ¿Qué es esto?
¡Chicle Atomico!
¿Chicle Atomico? -- ¡No mames!
A ver...

En Agosto 13 de 1521 Tlatelolco
A pesar de haber sido defendido por Cuahtemoc
Cayo vencido bajo las fuerzas de Hernan Cortes
No fue triunfo ni derrota
Pero resulto en el nacimiento doloroso de la gente mestiza de hoy
No solamente estan presente en el Mexico de hoy
Pero tambien dentro del corazon de los Estados Unidos
En el un rincon conocido como Aztlan...

Mi abuela fue violada
por los diablos de Cortés
Ahora soy mestiza
Rebelde esta vez
No quiero ser tu criada
Ni correarte los zapatos
Ni sudar en tu cocina
Lavándote los platos

Violada por Cortés -
¡Rebelde esta vez!
We're Generation Mex!

No permito que nos traten
Como una clase de bandidos
Ni que nos maten con la agonía
De ser seres oprimidos
No soporto que me beses
Con tus labios agresivos
Ni me gusta que me vistan
De tacones y vestidos.

No quiero ser víctima
De los malditos arpíos
Nos quitan la dignidad
Nuestro dinero es bienvenido
Mis manos han dado fruto
A gran parte de esta nación
Pero los sueldos miserables
No me alcanzan ni para un calzón
¡CABRON!

No permito que nos traten
Como una clase de bandidos
Ni que nos maten con la agonía
De ser seres oprimidos
Soy una dama de primera
Con mis botas y bastón
No me trates como perra
¡Yo soy la madre de esta pinche nación!

No permito que nos traten
Como una clase de bandidos
Ni que nos maten con la agonía
De ser seres oprimidos
Recuerda que mi abuela fue
Violada por esos diablos de Cortés
Y ahora soy mestiza
¡Pero rebelde esta vez!
Rebelde esta vez...

It's always the same thing on the goddamn radio --
Who the hell is this? What is it?
Chicle Atomico!
Chicle Atomico? Don't screw around with me!
Let's see...

On August 13 of 1521 Tlatelolco
Despite having been defended by Cuahtemoc
Fell to the forces of Hernan Cortes
It was neither a triumph nor a defeat
But it resulted in the painful birth of today's mestiza [mixed-blood] people
They are present not only in today's Mexico
But also in the heart of the United States
In a corner known as Aztlan...

My grandmother was raped
By Cortés' devils
Now I belong to the mestiza race -
But this time I'm a rebel!
I don't wanna be your maid
Don't wanna shine your shoes
Won't sweat in your kitchen, poorly-paid
Washing dishes that you use

Violated in Cortés' attack -
This time I'm fighting back!
We're Generation Mex!

I can't take how they fill us
With shame like outlaws to be run out of town
I won't stand for how they kill us
With the agony of living constantly beaten down
I won't let you mess with me
Stealing kisses by force
Don't you try to dress me
In a dress, high heels, and a purse

Victim is a part I refuse to play
For those goddamn vultures
Who rob us of our dignity
We sweat for our paycheck in my culture
It's my hands that built a lot of this country
But I earn pathetic wages for working so hard
The boss must think the clothes on my back came free -
Bastard!

I can't take how they fill us
With shame like outlaws to be run out of town
I won't stand for how they kill us
With the agony of living constantly beaten down
I'm a first-class lady
Boots, cane, and all, brother!
I'm not your dog so don't treat me that way
I gave birth to this nation - I'm your goddamn mother!

I can't take how they fill us
With shame like outlaws to be run out of town
I won't stand for how they kill us
With the agony of living constantly beaten down
Remember that my grandma
Was raped by those devils
And now I'm mestiza
But this time I'm a rebel!
===

Time to Rise and Shine

2008-05-03T19:26:00.025-04:00

For today we finished up:

• Goldbard, 9 & 10

9: Planning for Community Cultural Development

pp. 224-6: IMAGINE THIS

"What would life be like if cultural considerations, broadly defined, were as much a part of local and regional planning as are economic concerns?...

"If culture were given due consideration, the libraries would be open long hours every day, of course, with plenty of readings and storytelling hours and book group.... The computer room would be full of people who'd taken one of the city's frequent digital storytelling workshops, adding their own tales to the every-growning archive of ...stories. Our community centers would be thriving, with classes, workshops and exhibits for all ages, inviting everyone to appreciate...rich cultural diversity....

"When people gathered for holidays and specail events or at ongoing programs like the farmer's market, they would also have the chance to hear music, to learn about community events that might interest them and to sign up for classes....

"...town artists would have public service jobs helping people with whatever their communities need: designing a community garden, creating a mural or monument, turning public housing into someplace attractive, safe and distinct, creating a neighborhood newsletter or a holiday pageant.

"Our public high schools would have good working relationships with some of the cultural industries based in this region, so that local young people could get a head start on careers as engineers, sound recordists, animators and the like.... And if the state education department were to back funds for art and music classes, the entire community would mobilize, collecting signatures for an initiative campaign...

"Creative shame would prove so effective (and so conducive to TV and newspaper coverage) the the ...Cultural Coalition would start a trend. Then, when anti-immigrant forces tried to promote a ballot proposition to eliminate multilingual information at state offices...folks would spearhead statewide opposition...."

pp. 233-4: "a few examples of planning elements I might include:

• Offering people temporary use of digital or disposable still cameras or digital video to collect images of their own community...the resulting images to be edited into media that can be shared as part of the planning process.

• Using Forum Theater to enact situations brought forward from the community...and devise possible responses.

• Convening story circles to share thematic tales relevant to planning needs....

• Sending a video team to a local shopping street to interview people about community cultural life; transcribing and editing what's learned into an oral-history-based skit about what works and what needs work."

,FREEWRITE: p. 226: "Every community is different. What is your vision of the transformation of your own community?"

10: Conclusion, Time to Rise and Shine

p. 239: "The effort to counter the effects of globalization is not an equal fight. The forces of globalization have virtually unlimited capital and influence on their side. Yet on the other side we have the relentless resilience of spirit that characterizes human cultures...."

p. 240: "How we live depends to an astounding degree on the narratives we create to contextualize and interpret raw experience. People make art even under the most extreme conditions of deprivation and oppression: in refugee camps, prison wards, homeless shelters. Even without material resources, with only their bodies as tools, humans demonstrate wonder, agency, strength and creative power, giving meaning to the past and present, reimagining the future."

Arlene Goldbard's Blog
Community Arts Network
Community, Culture and Globalization
Cultural Development Corporation, Washington, D.C.

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Sitar Arts Center is an innovative community arts education and performance center founded on the belief that arts education coupled with high expectations can positively change the direction of young people's lives, particularly those from inner-city communities.

Serving over 500 inner-city Washington, DC residents a year, the Center offers affordable after-school, weekend and summer classes in visual art, music, drama, dance, creative writing, and digital arts to young people primarily from the Adams Morgan, Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights neighborhoods. Partnerships with leading arts organizations along with a network of more than 100 local artists and community volunteers provide first-rate teachers and programs.

The Center makes arts education accessible and affordable by subsidizing the tuition of its students, with most paying $15 per semester for unlimited classes. Named after beloved community activist Patricia M. Sitar and founded in 1998 by Rhonda Buckley, Sitar Arts Center serves as a successful model for like-minded organizations.
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How do strangers become neighbours? by G. Attili and L. Sandercock
for more information see: www.mongrel-stories.com

What you see here is a 3 minutes trailer from a 50 minutes documentary which received an Honorable Mention at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival (Oct 2006) and a Special Mention at the International Federation of Housing and Planning film competition (Geneva Sept 2006)

SYNOPSIS: Collingwood, a Vancouver neighborhood that, just 20 years ago was living important inter-ethnic conflicts, is now a welcoming place for everyone. How did this happen? How do strangers become neighbours?

Migration has always been an important feature of human history, but never more so than the past two decades. But what happens when increasing numbers of strangers move into a neighbourhood, bringing with them different histories and cultures, religions and social practices, and often, urgent needs for housing, language training, schools and jobs? How do newcomers, as well as members of the 'host' society, develop an everyday capacity to live alongside those perceived as different, strange?

Our story explores this contemporary global social issue by looking at one neighbourhood -- Collingwood -- in the City of Vancouver. 38% of metropolitan Vancouver, and 51% of the City's residents are foreign born. Collingwood, a predominantly Anglo-European community until the 1980s, has been transformed since then by the arrival of large numbers of East, South, and South East Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans. A neighborhood that, just 20 years ago was locking its doors, afraid of change, and telling immigrants to go back where they came from, is now a welcoming place for everyone.

How did this happen? How do strangers become neighbours?

This is the story of the transformation of one neighbourhood, over a twenty year period, from fear and hostility towards immigrants to a remarkably integrated and welcoming community. It is the story of how an integrated community was created, through the work of the Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH). The story is told primarily through the voices, and lives, of immigrant women (from Nigeria, Chile, Colombia, Taiwan, and India), who describe their feelings of isolation and invisibility on arriving in Canada and not being able to speak the language. 'You feel invisible. You are nobody.' These women first came to the CNH to use its language or childcare programs, and then became involved as volunteers, received training, and went on to find jobs in the city. Now their teenage children, who were once in the childcare programs, are volunteers at CNH in the Youth Buddy Program, for example, or youth counseling other youth about drugs, bullying, and so on.

The film begins with a portrait of this low income neighbourhood twenty years ago, a neighbourhood fearful of and antagonistic towards the newcomers. We then tell the story of the birth of the CNH in 1985, with its mission of diversity, of creating a place for everyone, and we follow the development of the CNH and of the community through a series of innovative social and community development programs such as the Arts Pow WoW (a community cultural development program in which thousands of local residents participated), MultiWeek, and the Community Leadership Institute.

This is now a very respectful community, but it wasn't always like that. A longtime Collingwood resident tells the story of the effort to build a Native housing coop in the neighbourhood, and the initial resistance to that, the stereotypes about 'Indians' and reservations, that had to be dispelled before the community could see that the Native population brought real assets to this neighbourhood, as well as needs. Various residents, newcomers as well as oldtimers, discuss the various forms of racism that have existed, and how the CNH works to combat this.

One of the most remarkable stories involves the reclamation of a local park that had been taken over by gang members and drug dealers. Through the local leadership of an environmental artist and a native elder, thousands of residents worked together to come up with a plan for making the park more attractive and hospitable to people from all cultures. Chinese seniors from a tai chi group worked side by side with African drummers and Native carvers to create, with their own sweat and artistic abilities, a place that everyone is proud of. During this lengthy participatory process, people worked together, had fun together, celebrated together, and got to know each other. Strangers became neighbours.

Our immigrant women interviewees describe the CNH as a 'blessed place' a place where everyone feels 'at home' and learns about other cultures. We explore what is so special about this place, how 'the Collingwood spirit' emerged, and what struggles it still faces.
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We must name ourselves as liberated free zones

2008-04-29T17:09:00.027-04:00

Alma Lopez: California Fashions Slaves, 1997 (Macrina Lopez)
Palm Desert Registry; Astrea; Boi Hair video

Perez, p. 169: "Lopez digitally layers a map of present-day northern Mexico that reaches the Los Angeles skyline and an image of a contemporary seamstress, behind whom stand rows of ghostly seamstresses from the past.

Running south on the map is a man pursued by a patrol car. The south and the west are the targets of a large red arrow, appropriately labeled 'Manifest Destiny.' Directly in the path of that trajectory of imperialist expansion is an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe standing over the date of annexation of the Mexican territories, 1848.

The Virgin may be appearing to the pursued undocumented laborer because, like the recently canonized Jan Diego to whom she originally appeared, he is un inocente, innocent, though he is pursued like a criminal for not having proper immigration papers. The man, like the seamstresses, symbolizes the oppressive conditions of many undocumented workers in the United States, publicly reviled yet desired by agribusiness, factories, sweatshops, hotels, and homes needing gardeners, servants, and nannies, though their 'illegal' status makes them more exploitable, that is 'affordable.'

An homage to her mother, who is a steamstress, and to other garment workers, Lopez's work juxtaposes the spectral seamstresses against the mute Los Angeles skyline, which hides garment industry sweatshops...."

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Celia Herrera Rodriguez (Sola, pero bien acompañada; Vibora)

p. 157: "Rodriguez's simple yet stunning observation -- that there is coherent continuity of the indigenous in mundane practices inherited from ancestors -- and her historical search for the traces of her own particular Native American ancestors lead her, for example, to place a nail surrounded by four grains of corn upon her altar during the performance. The nail, she explains, is sacred to her because it may have been made by one of her ancestors, relations, or neighbors in the mines of Durango, Mexico, where native peoples were virtually enslaved, forced to extract ore and other materials in order to provide the raw material for the fabrication of such things as nails, which in turn helped make possible the material foundations of modernity and the present."

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Yreina D. Cervántez (The Human Landscape of Mexican Migration)

p. 161: "Her lithographs act as memory chips, recording past and present histories from a spiritual vantage point that renders the ethnically hostile claims of ownership of newer inhabitants of Indigenous ancestral lands as what they are: colonizing, partial, and absurd from a historical perspective documenting and predicting the ubiquity among most peoples of some form of migration, or as the artist put it, 'the timelessness of movement.'"

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Consuelo Jiménez Underwood -- real time video; (FiberScene)

p. 164: "Underwood's most unforgettable signature has been the visually stunning and poignant weaving of barbed and other wire into her meditations upon the U.S.-Mexico border adn its dangers for those crossing from Mexico into a militarized, vigilante-atrracting, racially polarized U.S. 'frontier' culture."

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Celia Alvarez Muñoz (RCS Gallery; Stories Your Mother Never Told You)

p. 178: "...a project that closely explores the relations between the gendered and racialized garment inustry, the fashion industry that ideologically sustains it, and women's, particularly poor and racialized women's, lack of safety or 'homeland' within a so-called benevolent paternalistic, male-centered culture that, in the case of the young disappeared women of Juárez, shows itself capable of preying upon its 'daughters'...."

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Laura Alvarez (video)

p. 181: "...Alvarez's D.A.S. project nonetheless brings attention to the ways in which the social space of the home is inhabited, gendered, and racialized, form the perspective of the domestic servant. Fashioned around the central figure of a double agent posing as a domestic servant, it is at once a fantasy about social empowerment and an allegory of the artist as a provocateur within hegemonic culture's own 'home.'"

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Patricia Rodriguez (Galeria de la Raza)

p. 187: "Executed as part of the protest exhibitions during the quincentenary of the Spanish invasion, these box-constructions are conceptually built around the tension between Western scientific discourses and the truths, emotions, and beliefs that exceed these."

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Juana Alicia (Speaking Freely)

p. 192: "The concern with how we occupy public space and the social location of gendered and racialized bodies appears in a number of her most striking paintings, drawings, and prints as well. Her concern with reflection the emotional and spritual as part of the public landscape is conveyed through a distinctive technique and yellow-dominant palette that colors the visualized flow of energy and identity between people and objects."

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Kathleen Alcalá (The Girl in the Tree)

p. 196: "...the links that she makes between the hidden and exilic cultures of Jewish marranos, or secret Jews, and the recently dispossessed Indigenous peoples. The histories and the religious beliefs of both Jews and Native Americans, like those of their descendants, the Jewish mexicanos and Mexican Americans of the novel's plot, reflect the author's belief that literature tells the same archetypal stories, cross-culturally and ceaselessly, though it does so in specific ways...."

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Cherríe Moraga

pp. 203-4: "We are unwittingly dehumanized in the processes of consciously or unconsciously reproducing sexual, gender, ethnic, and class privileges. In Moraga's important play, Aztlán, mythical homeland of the Mexica and symbol of Chicana/o nationalism, is remapped beyond the territories of a patriarchal and homophobic imagination in a war of visions that goes to the heart of the vital political and spiritual function of what we are capable of imagining."

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THE FENCE: homeland, security?

p. 149: "...the idea that 'the border crossed us' literally, in the case of the borderlands-dwelling families divided by the newly imposed border after the U.S.-Mexico War...."

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How Not to Build a Fence
Binational Mural
Border Arts Project UCSB
The Great Wall of Music

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MUSIC: Laura Alvarez: http://www.lauraalvarez.net/music.html
"Double Agent Sirventa" Album. Produced by Evan Hartzell. Songs are by Laura Alvarez and (Sidro Music/BMI) and Thank you Chloe Jones and Dave Jones (SebastianO Music/BMI)
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From Generation to Generation

2008-04-28T19:47:00.029-04:00

The assignment for today: two ways to think about generations:
• Webbing: Girls/choose several links:

GIRLS, ARTS & GAMES, ACTIVISM, FEMINIST RESEARCH

Sister's Choice: storytelling and songs for girls
Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum
Prince Edward Island: Virtual Green Gables
American Girl: Games, Dolls, Stories
The Children's Music Network
New Moon, the Magazine for Girls and their Dreams

Stone Soup Magazine
The Children's Encyclopedia of Women

Just 4 Girls: Junior Girl Scouts
Welcome to Club Girl Tech!
Girl Power! Campaign
Websites for Girls

Ms. Foundation for Women & Girls
The Wellesley Centers for Women (Research on Girls)

A Girl Like Me

/www.mediathatmattersfest.org/6/a_girl_like_me/index.php?fs=action...girl like me family society gender women racial justice

7 min - May 4, 2007

another way to think about generations:

• Goldbard, Ch. 6 & 7

6: Theory from Practice: elements of a theory of community cultural development

• comprehending internalization of the oppressor • live, active social experience • expansion of dialogue • self-determination • expand liberty • redress inequalities

7: The State of the Field

Beyond the US community cultural development often receives reliable public funding,
while in the US the trend to "privatization" has reduced the kind of public funding available in the 60s and 70s.

"From Generation to Generation" makes two points:
• the importance of transmitting knowledge from the Baby Boomer arts activists to today's younger artists and organizers
• the different funding environments created by political changes over the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s: neo-conservative government and privatization, the culture wars

For other ways to conceptualize Feminist Generations, see:
Feminist Generations: the persistence of the radical women's movement
Nancy Whittier, Temple University Press, 1995

Preview this book

• Entry into activism: Whittier's 1995 model with micro-cohorts:
Whittier's model challenges age-stratification or stage in life cycle as definitions of generations, rather initial politicization during the same era define generations, which are internally volatile and divergent in micro-cohorts. Two large generations: the Second Wave and the Third Wave.
Second Wave micro-cohorts:
=initiators (1969-1971) [years refer esp. to study in Columbus OH]
=founders (1972-1973)
=joiners (1974-1978)
=sustainers (1979-1984)
Third Wave micro-cohorts (don't have names just descriptions): (AKA post feminist);
understood by Whittier to redefine meanings of "feminism" by conflict with Second Wave building new collective identities (mid 1980s and later):
= micro-cohort 1: reluctant to use term "feminist" because of media associations and initial belief that feminism had completed its political tasks; rethinks these assumptions over next ten years and becomes outspoken and pro-feminist
= micro-cohort 2: establishes earlier continuity with Second Wave & esp. with radical forms, disruptive social and cultural action.

In both Goldbard and Whittier the funding climate for activism plays a pivotal role in the experiences of feminist and other activist generations:

Wikipedia on "privatization":
"privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of business from the public sector (government) to the private sector (business). In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement."

Goldberg contrasts the countercultural generations of the sixties and seventies:
"was nourished by steadily rising hopes and expectations. In the very real achievements of the civil rights and anti-war struggles of that period, activists acquired a heady sense of their own agency.... The feeling that social arrangements were ripe for remaking was pervasive...." (167)

with the shock of change during the Reagan years and after:
"It is difficult now to grasp what a shock the election of Ronald Reagan was to this system of believe. The resulting demoralization was profound and has persisted.... (167)

and now with a shift from just surviving to sustenance:
"community cultural development...has increasingly been seen as addressing the new for greater social equity, dialogue and participation in shaping community life, some...groups have been quite successful in attracting support and expanding their programs."
"AS the old arts orthodoxies fray at the edges and the right's grip on cultural politics begins to loosen, as social activism in other fields expands, we once again begin to hear harbingers of resurgent activism and interest in community cultural development." (168)

from Cynthia Koch, the NEH and NEA funding crisis:
"The 1966 appropriation to the NEA was nearly $2.9 and $5.9 million went to the NEH. Funding and programming at the endowments grew throughout the 1970s, expanding to new audiences and dramatically increasing the arts and humanities presence in local communities and national institutions....

"...in late 1980, the criticism suddenly took a more ominous turn... the anxieties of cultural advocates.... Michael Joyce, executive director of the James M. Olin Foundation, had prepared a report for the Heritage Foundation that was called "highly critical" of both agencies. As part of a larger study of the federal government prepared as a 'blueprint for a conservative American Government,' the report found in both endowments 'a tendency to emphasize politically inspired social policies at the expense of the independence of the arts and the humanities' and called for 'redirecting the endowments toward the highest purposes for which they were intended.'"

"In the end both agencies did sustain cuts, which appeared at the time to be minor. In fact, the 1982 cuts were severe. The arts appropriation dropped from $158.8 million in fiscal 1981 to $143.5 million the next year. The NEH lost close to 14 percent of its $151.3 million budget in 1982 and would not regain its 1981 level of funding until 1989. In an era of double-digit inflation this represented a real dollar cut of approximately 50 percent over the course of the 1980s -- an amount consistent in the end with the Reagan administration's original objective. The NEA, which had a more effective lobbying network in well-known performing arts advocates and a large and dedicated institutional base of arts organizations, did return to (and exceed) its 1981 appropriation by 1984; however, even that did not keep pace with inflation."

Goldberg examines "The New Hybridity" in the US, required without public funds:
"in partnerships with social service agencies, schools, community development organizations, activist groups and other non-arts groups, even, less often, in specific initiatives undertaken by conventional arts organizations and institutions..."
"The result has been a number of vigorous, popular projects attractive to funders particularly because they straddle so many fields, the work's hybrid character earning it attention and legitimacy in better-resourced, more visible arenas, arenas less accessibel to creators of smaller scale, locally focused community cultural development work."

How do you put this generational story into your own sense of yourself as a historical subject? What time frames for politics do you know from your own experience? What stories can you tell about art in public meanings? What do you remember or know about congress and arts funding? What sort of arts have you taken for granted as part of your own histories?

The Art of Storytelling

Turn to a person sitting near you and come up with a story of art in your life, how these histories make any sense of what art you have come in contact with; for example what sort of arts learning did you have in school? Have you had any experiences yourself with what Goldberg calls community cultural development?

===

Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners) by François Millet, 1857
For the Story behind the picture....

A community cultural development project by a friend of mine, Rusten Hogness; it just got its grant from the California Council for the Humanities:

The Gleaners of Salinas Valley: Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change
(project website):

Summary: We will collect the stories of those involved in gleaning post-harvest produce from the fields of the Salinas Valley and providing it to the needy. This is a multi-media project that will create audio archives, produce radio stories, and make written and audio stories available on the Web.

The Gleaners and Their Stories

We will collect the personal stories of the gleaners, who spend long hours gleaning fruits and vegetables in the fields to help fight hunger.... We will attend organized gleaning sessions and meet the gleaners. We will follow the gleaners and the food they harvest from the fields through the cleaning and bundling processes to the distribution of the food to the hungry. We will collect as diverse a selection of their stories as we can. We want to know their backgrounds; how and why they became gleaners; whether gleaning has changed their relationship to food, agriculture, and the hungry; and what gleaning means to them.

There are several hundred gleaners participating in organized gleaning programs in the Salinas Valley. While we will talk to many, we will collect extended stories from 12 to 15 of the gleaners whose stories highlight different motivation, different backgrounds, and different parts of our community. For each of these, we will present excerpts of their stories (in text and audio), along with their pictures, on our website. We will turn at least 6 of the stories into full audio portraits for airing on public radio and streaming broadcast on our website. If time allows, we will produce more audio portraits....

The practices of gleaning, broadly conceived, have achieved a particular salience recently. As a model for sustainability, gleaning has inspired all sorts of collection and re-use projects. As a practice, from dumpster diving to other sorts of scavenging, it has become a contentious element in local politics around the homeless, youth culture, and anti-authoritarian street action. Gleaning has also inspired local art, both as a subject and as a practice – in found-art and junk-art assemblages. Recent showings of the French documentary The Gleaners and I provided a particularly delightful and poignant example of gleaning as both the subject and the practice of documentary art. This new salience of gleaning practices generally increases the salience of our gleaners’ stories.

===

===
25 Docs You Must See Before You Die
Shot entirely on hand-held digital camera, legendary 72-year-old director Agnès Varda observes the historic custom of gleaning in an eye-opening journey. This magically inspiring documentary provides a unique social critique of human behaviour.
===

===
Trecho do filme "Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse" (2004) de Agnes Varda
===
From the Wikipedia:
"The Gleaners and I is a French documentary by Agnès Varda that features the practice of Gleaning. It was released as Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse in France in 2000.

The film tracks a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, and personal connection. Varda travels French countryside and city to find and film not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners. The film spends time capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive. It touches on things such as the teacher named Alain who is an urban gleaner who has a master's degree. He teaches immigrants. Varda's other subjects include artists who incorporate recycled materials into their work, symbols she discovers during her filming (including a clock without hands and a heart-shaped potato), and the French law regarding gleaning. Varda also spends time with Louis Pons, who explains how junk is a 'cluster of possibilities.'"

===

ARTS, COMMUNITIES, CULTURES, ACTIONS AND SPIRITS

2008-04-22T19:45:00.017-04:00

Art and Direct Action, Fight Like a Girl

• finish Seely

Fighting Back	185
Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, Clothesline Project

Like a Girl	218
Emily's List, Feminism, Mary McLeod Bethune
Building an Activist Kit 23 I	233
sound bites, Business Ethics, natural food stores
Appendix GrWhere to Donate Stuff	247
Alan Guttmacher Institute, Sweatshop Watch, UNFPA
Bibliography	263
U.S. Census Bureau, Women's Sports Foundation, World Health Organization

Some quotations from the reading:

pp. 185-6: "Why don't we hear more stories of the countless women who fight back in the streets, on our campuses, and in our homes? Why isn't the lead story about the women who apprehended her attacker and not about the woman who was brutally raped and murdered?... What would it be like for little girls if they grew up knowing their history as fighters? I wonder how this knowledge would have impacted our self-esteem when it came time to defend ourselves--physically but also emotionally. We need to reclaim our history as warriors, respect the fight within us, at the same time we seek peaceful resolution. We need to recognize and respect that women fight everyday for safety, self-determination, and freedom."

===
Seizing Power from 'The Woman Warrior' : NPR
Jun 18, 2007 ... Author Diana Abu-Jaber felt empowered by The Woman Warrior: "Hong Kingston's voice edges between poetry and barely controlled rage ...
===

B.R.A.V.E. People: dedicated to reducing violence

Toolkit to End Violence Against Women

Warrior Women: Indigenous Resistance and the Red Power Movement

p. 209: "Grass-roots activism is the cornerstone that serves as the foundation for political change. Not only do events like Take Back the Night create a safe place to heal; they also raise awareness about societal and governmental responsibility."

Art and Activism: NO to Violence Against Women

Suzanne Lacy: The Violence Series

• Webbing: Feminism, Political Activism/all the links

FEMINISM, POLITICAL ACTIVISM, AND FEMINIST APPROACHES TO CULTURE

Women's Studies / Women's Issues Resource Sites
Media and Communications Studies Site: Gender
T.V.Reed's Gender & Popular Culture Site
WomenWatch
Center for the Study of Human Rights
Human Rights Watch
Institute for Global Communication: PeaceNet, EcoNet, WomensNet, Anti-RacismNet
Sisterhood is Global Institute

Center for World Indigenous Studies
Women in Global Science and Technology

National Women's History Project
Feminist Bookstore Network

====
WMST 250: Women, Art & Culture, Spring 2008
Professor: Katie King
Office: 2101F Woods Hall
Office phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail)
Email: katking@umd.edu
Course blog: http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
(Links to section blogs in Resources on right side)

ASSIGNMENT FOUR: Learning Analysis

A synthetic evaluation of the course and your place in it; similar to a take-home final exam
DUE printed in class, posted to section blog (and to be presented in section and/or lecture)
TUESDAY 13 MAY

The learning analysis gives you an opportunity to talk about what the course has meant to you. It includes:

• your description of the "story" (or argument) of the course.

Examine the syllabus (course descriptions and requirements, the reading and writing assignments), notes from class, freewrites, journal entries, imagining this information as elements in a story about Women, Art and Culture, and the question What counts as Art? What is the story about? What are its parts, and how do they connect together? You will be trying to imagine how the course was constructed, and why it was put together in this particular way.

• put yourself into this story.

How are you a part of the story of the course? What was happening with you are different points in this story? What kind of knowledge did you make in your analysis of everyday life and creative project, your paper on assumptions about art and your freewritings, and how do they all connect? Use the freewrites you did in class, and your class notes to remember your thoughts, questions, ideas. How did these change? What changed them? What were your contributions to the class? If you missed any lectures or sections, account for your absences. What effects did you have on the course, on your group? How did your meetings in small group include you in the story of the class? What worked for you? What didn't work for you? How do you understand that? Connecting your experiences to the different sections of the course is the most important part here.

• discuss 3 readings from the course connecting you to the story of the class.

Choose readings which meant a lot to you. Demonstrate that you've kept up with the reading by showing how widely you've read in the books and the materials on reserve. The most important point here is to explore how these readings connect to the story of the class and how they affected you intellectually as well as in any other ways. What was meaningful and important about them? What did you learn from them? How did they change your relationship to the course, to ideas, issues, politics, feelings? You can talk about how your life was connected to these ideas and feelings. You can suggest relationships with other readings, other courses, other experiences.

This is an exercise in what is called synthesizing--putting things together in new relationships, making a whole shape. It requires imagination. Have fun with it. Good Luck!

===

===
Throughout women glory history, Every PERSIAN / ARYAIAN Parsi women warriors have fought and led troops into battle.
Parsi / Aryaian Warrior Queens, Princesses and other Aryaian women warriors runs from the legendary Persia land marks.
Sadly, we know too little about most of these brave warrior ladies who stood up to the powerful male leaders of their day because history is written by the victors.
Mostly have been real warriors from the Steppes written and told about.
===

EVERYDAY LIFE SEEN WITH NEW EYES

2008-04-21T19:42:00.005-04:00

• THE ANALYTIC INTRODUCTION (may be individual or collaborative)

This is an analytic essay (around 10 pages long PER PERSON, printed out) in which you come up with a conceptual map for where you see power located in your own everyday life. Your analysis should ultimately interconnect with the second part, your creative representation of everyday life.

...HOW THIS IS A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT: Each person should start off with their own analysis. However, as you share and edit your work with each other, you may want to alternate parts of each person's analysis, or put them together in some other kind of creative pattern in the final collaborative essay. You and your partner will function as a small writing group, helping each other come up with ideas for this analysis, reading each other's drafts, and editing and proof-reading the final product.

• THE COLLABORATIVE CREATIVE REPRESENTATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The conceptual map for where you see power located in everyday life should be crafted to interconnect with this second part, your creative representation of everyday life. This means you and your partner have to choose structures of power you can compare and contrast in both lives and both analyses. These should be evident as sections in both individual essays.

=======

What concerning Assignment 3 are you most proud of?

What did you learn the most from?

What does Assignment 3 tell you about the argument or story of the course?

Name 3 things you learned over the time you put together your analytic introduction.

Why did you choose the creative project you did?

Name something fun that happened when you and your partner worked on it together.

How did you and your partner help each other?

How did your ideas about Women, Art and Culture change from when you first started Assignment 3 to when you finished it?

===

===
Chelsea Steiner of the Stanford Spoken Word Collective performs a spoken word poem at Stanford University. The poem mocks conservative gender politics and the silencing of feminist voices.
===

===
Trecho do filme "Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse" (2004) de Agnes Varda
===

===
25 Docs You Must See Before You Die
Shot entirely on hand-held digital camera, legendary 72-year-old director Agnès Varda observes the historic custom of gleaning in an eye-opening journey. This magically inspiring documentary provides a unique social critique of human behaviour. (Her website.)

===
U-Md. Officials Approve Minor in Latino Studies

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 19, 2008; B04

Undergraduates at the University of Maryland at College Park can now graduate with a minor in U.S. Latino studies after school officials yesterday approved the first such minor at a major university in the Washington region.

Students and faculty members, some of whom have been promoting U.S. Latino studies at Maryland's flagship public university for a decade, said they were delighted by the move but said more needs to be done to meet the needs of historically underserved Latino students.

"This is a great first step in a series of bigger steps that need to happen," said Angel David Nieves, an assistant professor who has been working for years on creating a full U.S. Latino studies program at the university. "We need to move on and . . . develop the funding necessary to bring the major and the graduate certificate on line."

Latino studies focuses on the history, culture, literature and the social fabric of Latino communities in the United States. No college or university in the mid-Atlantic region has a U.S. Latino studies program, in part because of historical obstacles that include a lack of funding and debate about whether such content studies constitute legitimate scholarship.

Latinos represent 15 percent of the U.S. population and are projected to reach 25 percent by 2050. In Maryland, they account for about 6 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census, but they are 14 percent of the population in Montgomery County and 12 percent in Prince George's County. At the College Park campus, Latinos make up about 5 percent of 25,000 undergraduate students and about 3 percent of faculty.

The minor will become official in the fall, but two seniors who have fulfilled the requirements will be permitted to graduate this spring with minors in U.S. Latino studies.

"Wow!" said Evelyn Lopez, 21, who attended Northwestern High School in Prince George's County and who will be the first Latina to graduate with the minor. "I will be leaving a real footprint here. I'm so happy."

The minor in U.S. Latino studies will be the first at a major university in the greater Washington area. Loyola College in Maryland in Baltimore also has one. No school in the mid-Atlantic region has a full Latino studies program.

Lopez said she was with dozens of students and some faculty members outside a building where a University Senate committee was meeting to decide whether to approve the minor. When a school administrator walked out and announced the decision, there were shouts and applause.

"You don't know what this means to us," Lopez said.

===

What gets you to class? What gets you to read? Do you rely on coercion to do what you need to do?

2008-04-16T20:01:00.007-04:00

The teachers are talking in the office halls. They say, "Literally no one in my class read the assignment today." Another says, "I canceled class today when they hadn't read." Another says, "Do we have to punish students for missing class in order to get them to come?" Someone else says, "Well, I give them pop quizes to make sure they do their work."

Coercion? Persuasion? Loving the subject? Enjoying a teacher's style? Finding excuses? What makes us tick in all this? Are you someone who relies on EXTRINSIC incentives? Are you INTRINSICALLY motivated? Culivating intrinsic incentives is an important part of learning to learn in college.

From the Wikipedia: "Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

"There are two kinds of motivation:

Intrinsic motivation occurs when people are internally motivated to do something because it either brings them pleasure, they think it is important, or they feel that what they are learning is significant.
Extrinsic motivation comes into play when a student is compelled to do something or act a certain way because of factors external to him or her (like money or good grades).

Note also that there is already questioning and expansion about this dichotomy on motivation, e.g., Self-Determination Theory."

"Intrinsic motivation is when people engage in an activity, such as a hobby, without obvious external incentives.

"Intrinsic motivation has been studied by educational psychologists since the 1970s, and numerous studies have found it to be associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students. There is currently no universal theory to explain the origin or elements of intrinsic motivation, and most explanations combine elements of Fritz Heider's attribution theory, Bandura's work on self-efficacy and other studies relating to locus of control and goal orientation. Though it is thought that students are more likely to be intrinsically motivated if they:

* Attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control (e.g. the amount of effort they put in),
* Believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by luck),
* Are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.

Note that the idea of reward for achievement is absent from this model of intrinsic motivation, since rewards are an extrinsic factor.

In knowledge-sharing communities and organizations, people often cite altruistic reasons for their participation, including contributing to a common good, a moral obligation to the group, mentorship or 'giving back'. In work environments, money may provide a more powerful extrinsic factor than the intrinsic motivation provided by an enjoyable workplace.

"The most obvious form of motivation is coercion, where the avoidance of pain or other negative consequences has an immediate effect. Extreme use of coercion is considered slavery. While coercion is considered morally reprehensible in many philosophies, it is widely practiced on prisoners, students in mandatory schooling, within the nuclear family unit (on children), and in the form of conscription. Critics of modern capitalism charge that without social safety networks, wage slavery is inevitable. However, many capitalists such as Ayn Rand have been very vocal against coercion[citation needed]. Successful coercion sometimes can take priority over other types of motivation. Self-coercion is rarely substantially negative (typically only negative in the sense that it avoids a positive, such as forgoing an expensive dinner or a period of relaxation), however it is interesting in that it illustrates how lower levels of motivation may be sometimes tweaked to satisfy higher ones.

"In terms of GCSE PE, intrinsic motivation is the motivation that comes from inside the performer. E.g. they compete for the love of the sport. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the performer. E.g. The crowd cheer the performer on, this motivates them to do well, or to beat a PB (Personal Best). Another example is trophies or a reward. It makes the performer want to win and beat the other competitors, thereby motivating the performer."

FREEWRITE: Where in your life do you see yourself intrinsically motivated? How can you extend those meanings, experiences, and satisfactions into your classes in college?

===

Qualities of a suitable mate?

2008-04-16T19:42:00.008-04:00

Parents and Children at Odds In Defining Mr. or Mrs. Right

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2008; A07

...Do young people and their parents really disagree about the qualities of a suitable mate?

In a study involving Dutch, American and Kurdish students, psychologists in the Netherlands found that the cliche is, in fact, true....

Abraham P. Buunk, Justin H. Park and Shelli L. Dubbs at the University of Groningen, who recently published their findings in the Review of General Psychology, said the consistency of the conflict across cultures suggests the hand of evolution: Parents and offspring clash, the researchers argued, because their genetic self-interests, while overlapping, are not identical.

The reason young people care so much about intellectual and physical attractiveness, the scientists suggested, is that these characteristics are markers of genetic fitness. By contrast, they said, parents care about group affiliations because parents are primarily interested in whether an incoming member of the family is likely to make a good parent -- and a good all-around team player.

When a potential mate has both sets of qualities, parents and young people are likely to agree on the appropriateness of a match. But often, the researchers said, the qualities don't go hand in hand....

While acknowledging the role of biology in shaping human behavior, historian Stephanie Coontz argues that the researchers did not draw a clear enough distinction between love and marriage. Evolution might play a big role in shaping the reproductive drive, she says, but it would be a mistake to think that the institution of marriage has primarily been about either love or reproduction.

Until very recently, Coontz contends, children and parents were rarely in conflict about whom to marry -- they both agreed that marriage was not about love, but about social and economic ties....

"Until the 1960s, marriage was the best way a woman could invest in her economic future," Coontz said. "Now marriage is a risky proposition, especially for a low-wage woman, given her pool" of potential mates. A woman who marries someone who is an economic and social drain, in other words, might be better off single today because she can earn her own living....

A feminist sexual politic, feminism is for every body

2008-04-14T18:28:00.055-04:00

Today's readings are passionate and opinionated accounts of many feminist issues around sexuality, relationships, marriage, abortion, contraception, sexual identities, women's health and more. Feminists are not monolithic in their approaches to these issues: they are the subject of much controversy among feminists. Passionate advocacy and a great sense of urgency create situations in which some feminists push their own agendas as THE feminist agenda. These are issues that connect and also divide women within feminism.

My first year in college a journalist lived in our dorm in order to write an essay for Mademoiselle magazine about our campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. The essay described these educational experiments in the 70s in interdisciplinary teaching and student life. One day she and I were casually talking and she asked me what I thought about abortion. I started to give her an answer and right in the middle of speaking I realized I was telling her what my PARENTS believed about abortion. All of a sudden I realized that I didn't yet know what I MYSELF believed. I'd never been in a situation in which I could so clearly see that these sets of beliefs might not be the same, and that I didn't yet know what I thought myself.

In a course like this one, we want to expose you to passionate opinion, not to get you to believe what these scholars and activists believe, but to ask you to think deeply about your own understandings, needs, histories, and questions. This is true for all aspects of feminism, but it becomes striking when we turn to the issues and readings for today.

FREEWRITE on coming to your own conclusions -- in what areas does this matter most to you?

For today we read:

• hooks, pp. 85-118

A FEMINIST SEXUAL POLITIC An Ethics of Mutual Freedom	85
heterosexual, sadomasochism, radical feminist
TOTAL BLISS Lesbianism and Feminism	93
homophobia, sadomasochism, bisexual
TO LOVE AGAIN The Heart of Feminism	100
Romantic love, self-actualization, consciousness-raising
FEMINIST SPIRITUALITY	105
sacred feminine, FEMINIST SPIRITUALITY, patriarchal religion
VISIONARY FEMINISM	110
anti-feminist, visionary feminist, visionary feminism

• Seely, Ch. 6

KnockEm Up KnockEm Down	147
emergency contraception, pro-choice, sex education

Some quotations from the reading:

Seely, p. 178: "A feminist health agenda says that all women have the right to health care and health information that is supportive, respectful, and nonjudgmental. We have to say 'no more' to limitations on treatment that are based on race, economics, class, sexual orientation, or age. No more to forced sterilization. No more to the denial of reproductive health information and services for young women. It is not enough to fight for women's rights to abortion or other reproductive health options. We must also fight for women's freedom to make these choices -- from abortion, to birthing, to adoption, to the decision not to have children -- without shame or blame. Women must have access to all their health information, from education about their bodies, to funding and support, to participation in decisions about what to research and fund. We can stand collectively and send the message that women will fight back, that we will not stand on limitations on our heathcare options and services, that our sexuality is ours, and that decisions about our bodies belong to us."

SIECUS: the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, works to create a world that ensures social justice and sexual rights.

Our Bodies, Ourselves: the famous feminist book from the Boston Women's Health Collective

Information on Women's Health & Sexuality - Our Bodies Ourselves
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective is a nonprofit women's health education, advocacy and consulting organization
www.ourbodiesourselves.org/

Our Bodies, Ourselves - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The cover of the 2005 edition, calling itself a "new edition for a new ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Bodies,_Ourselves

Betty Dodson: Seely calls her "the mother of sex education and empowerment in sexuality."

Good Vibrations: feminist sex ed and tools, famous San Francisco venue

Sistersong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health: community mobilization

Black Women's Health Imperative: education, training, advocacy, research

National Asian Women's Health Organization: public policy, social justice

National Abortion Rights Action League: legislative info and action

Choice USA: helps students and young activists

Third Wave: the March for Women's Lives

50 sec - Dec 6, 2006 -

"...health care, abortion, family planning, and the respect for global human rights. While conservative forces have galvanized around the evangelical Christian and anti-abortion agenda...."

===
hooks, p. 104: "the emotional well-being of women and men would be enhanced if both parties embrace feminist thinking and practice. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving. Mutual partnership is the foundation of love. And feminist practice is the only movement for social justice in our society which creates the conditions where mutuality can be nurtured. When we accept that love is rooted in recognition and accceptance, that love combines acknowledgment, care, responsibility, commitment, and knowledge, we understand there can be no love wihtout justice. With that awareness comes the understanding that love has the power to transform us, giving us the strength to opppose domination. To choose feminist politics, then, is a choice to love."

hooks, pp. 116, 118: "Feminist movement is advanced whenever any male or female of any age works on behalf of ending sexism. That work does not necessarily require us to join organizations; we can work on behalf of feminism right where we live, educating ourselves and our loved ones.... There is no one path to feminism. Individuals from diverse backgrounds need feminist theory that speaks directly to their lives.... For years many feminist women held to the misguided assumption that gender was the sole factor determining their status. Breaking through this denial was a crucial turning point for feminist politics. It enabled women to face the way biases of race and class had led to the formation of a women's movement that was not mass-based.... Feminist politics aims to end domination to free us to be who we are -- to live lives where we love justice, where we can live in peace. Feminism is for everybody."

Lesbian Art Project, An Oral Herstory of Lesbianism , 1979, slide projection, dimensions variable, courtesy Jennifer Sorkin and Lesbian Art Project; installation photo by Brian Forrest

===

===
bell hooks - "Communion: The Female Search for Love"
From Google Books: "Renowned visionary and theorist bell hooks began her exploration of the meaning of love in American culture with the critically acclaimed "All About Love: New Visions." She continued her national dialogue with the bestselling Salvation: Black People and Love. Now hooks culminates her triumphant trilogy of love with "Communion: The Female Search for Love." Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every female to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free. In her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were changed by feminist movement, by women's full participation in the workforce, and by the culture of self-help. "Communion" is the heart-to-heart talk every woman -- mother, daughter, friend, and lover -- needs to have."

MUSIC: "Push the System," Bitch and Animal, from What's that Smell? (1999)

===
Who was Dolores del Rio? We asked this question in the last class since Mesa-Bain constructed an altar in her memory. Why?

Take an altar-nate view

===

Altar, Alter, spirit and feminism in the everyday

2008-04-14T18:28:00.042-04:00

"as Chicana and other Latina/o art suggest, the cultural effects of increased globalization and cultural democracy include both the restructuring of religious beliefs and practices and the birth of hybrid forms." (96)

"Amalia Mesa-Bain's altar-installations are among the earliest and the most sustained explorations of the medium, spanning from 1975 through 1997, in more than thirteen major pieces." (97)

Venus Envy Chapter I: "semiotic oscillation between altar and desk, to which are now added vanity table and laboratory....the vanity table also functions...as a theatrical space that allows for potentially expansive refashionings of identity. Like the religous altar it is a place for the care of the self, and for the accumulations of objects imbued with personal meaning. In this sense, it is an altar where reverence for theotherwise devalued, gendered self, and what if important to the self, is cultivated." (100-1)

"In [Carmen] Lomas Garza's case, popular culture-based altars, drawings, and retablo-inspired monito (ie. cartoon-like) paintings were neither naive nor natural choices for a trained artist in the 1970s. They were a conscious political choice for a young artist repeatedly exposed to discrimination against Mexican-Americans in South Texas. To combine teh visual languages of high and popular arts constituted a de facto critical reappraisal of both...." (104) [her website]

Santa Contreras Barraza "recreates the votive tradition, correctly, as a pre-Columbian legacy as much as a Christian one, by framing her exvotos through the use of Maya-like glyphs and the Mesoamerican visual conventions of the codex....it is clear the artis has restyled traditional Maya and Aztec glyphs innto new glyphs of her own.... [These works] express hybrid spiritualities thriough the culturally hybrid media of the retablo as a specifically religious art form.

Trinity (1993), for example, refigures the cross, the Virgin, and the Christian trinity in feminist and indigenlous terms, surrounded by symbols of rebirth and fertility in nature. Although the mestiza women appear in Western guise, as contemporary women, and as the Guadalupe, they are three in one, as the barely visible hands of an outstretched body behind them suggests." (109-10)

Patricia Rodriguez
Patssi Valdez
Barbara Carrasco
Lourdes Portillo

P.O.V. - Senorita Extraviada . Behind the Lens | PBS

1 min - Mar 8, 2006

"...Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) Co-Presentation....Lourdes Portillo...Cara Mertes...Chris White..."

Frances Salome Espana
Rita Gonzalez
Christina Fernandez
Kathy Vargas
Delilah Montoya
Celia Herrera Rodriguez

"In Latin, the alter is literally 'the other.' ...The question of who or what the 'other' and alterity are depends on who is asking.... At the altar, conditions that appear in mutual opposition are mediated. Through altars and related forms, Chicana artists bring to visibility that which is disembodied for reasons of its alterity with respect to dominant cultural norms.... Through altar-based art, Chicana artists succeed in reminding us of a different approach to alterity, one that is in fact a perennial and cross-cultural concept, expressed in the Mayan as 'You are my other self,' In'Laketch." (143-5)

Christina Fernandez, Untitled (Man Tied Up), from Oppression series, 1989.

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Latina Pride Video
MUSIC: Lila Downs, "La Cumbia del Mole [English Version]" from La Cantina (2006), and "Simuna" from Global Transmissions (2000).
From her website: "I was born in a small pueblo in oaxaca, this is where my umbilical cord is buried, so according to tradition i will always return to this place. my mother is a mixtec indian from san miguel el grande and my father was a north american filmaker fromcolorado springs of scottish descent. I went to school in tlaxiaco and st paul minnesota , and to highschool in oaxaca city where I began studying voice at bellas artes and Rowland heights, california. I studied voice and anthropology at the university of minnesota and studied symbolism of the trique textiles woven by women from the trique nation in the mixtec region of oaxaca. I dropped out for a while and began writing songs about mixtec inmigrants who go to the u.s. to work in the fields and the kitchens. I met paul cohen around this time, and we started to write cumbias and other tunes together."
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FREEWRITE: what have you learned during this section of the course that matters the most to you?

Think of the syllabus as the table of contents to a book.

What is this book about?
What is the first section of the book about?
What is the second section of the book about?
What is this section of the book about?

Where are you today in the story of the class?

AN INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN, ART AND CULTURE
Getting Started by introducing our Books and Concerns
Prospective Immigrants: Introducing Ourselves as subjects in history
Women, Art, Culture: what counts as art?
Assumptions about Feminism & Art—ASS. #1 DUE

BUT IS IT ART? BILLBOARDS, MURALS AND SHADOWS RESHAPING POSSIBILITIES
Anyone can do it: activist imagination shapes how we define feminism
Processes of Transformation in communities
Billboard Utilization, Truth in Advertising, Subverts
Art Worlds, whose money, whose art?
Your group's event and definition of feminism—ASS. #2 DUE; presentations

ANALYSIS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES: EVERYDAY LIFE SEEN WITH NEW EYES
Your group's event and definition of feminism—presentations continued
Intersecting our various forms of movement, feminists and more
Intersectionalities and histories, the matrix of domination—ASS. #3a DUE
Is SF Art? Moving through Time and Making Worlds
Kindred and everyday life, who are we connected to and how?
Kindred and violence, what work does it do?
Spirit, Glyphs, and reading feminist scholarship
Passionate Politics, the personal, the political, the world
Is feminism fun? is funny fun? those Guerilla Girls

=>HERE NOW<=

Altar, Alter, spirit and feminism in the everyday
A feminist sexual politic, feminism is for every body
Your analysis of Everyday Life—Ass. #3b DUE

ARTS, COMMUNITIES, CULTURES, ACTIONS AND SPIRITS
Art and Direct Action, Fight Like a Girl
From Generation to Generation
Name ourselves as liberated free zones
Time to Rise and Shine
Heart, Self, Other
LAST CLASS—ASS. #4 DUE

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Is feminism fun? is funny fun? those Guerrilla Girls

2008-04-09T14:06:00.033-04:00

What's funny?
What's fun?
Is funny fun?
Is feminism fun?

Are feminists funny?

3 min - Sep 13, 2007 -

"...What are the Guerrilla Girls on tour doing before a show? To give you an idea look at Guerrillas at Women 's Arts International Festval 07 in Cumbria..."

Wikipedia: humor: "Humour can occur when an alternative or surprising shift in perception or answer is given, that still shows relevance and can explain a situation."

Wikipedia: fun: "Recreation or fun is the expenditure of time in a manner designed for therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active for the participant but in a refreshing and diverting manner.... Play is essential for the development of skills, the most basic of which are motor skills in young creatures."

Wikipedia: play: "Play is a rite and a quality of mind in engaging with one's worldview. Play may consist of amusing, pretend or imaginary interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions or interplay. The rites of play are evident throughout nature and are perceived in people and animals, particularly in the cognitive development and socialization of children. Play often entertains props, animals, or toys in the context of learning and recreation."

Wikipedia: satire: "Satire is strictly a literary genre, but it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with an intent to bring about improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humor in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit."

From the Guerrila Girls' website: DC poster: basement poster: interview and project with the Washington Post 2007

From Freeland, pp. 132-3: "By challenging the exclusion of women from lists of great artists or musicians, feminists are questioning the canon in these fields.... The feminist asks how canons have become constructed, when, and for what purposes. Canons are described as 'ideologies' or belief systems that falsely pretend to objectivity when they actually reflect power and dominance relations.... This second approach advocates a careful re-examination of the standards and values that contributed to formulation of the canon. What does the omission (or the exceptional inclusion) of women tell us about problems with the values in a field?"

From Freeland, p. 142: "A more recent strategy that some feminist artists employ...is deconstruction. They 'deconstruct' the cultural constructs of feminity by proposing that feminity is not real, but is the artificial product of images, cultural expectations, and ingrained behaviors, such as ways of dressing, walking, or using makeup."

Freeland, p. 143: "Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #14 , 1978, multiplies images of the artist as if to convey that her essense can't be pinned down."

Freeland, p. 144: "...in this work she is a construct of the camera, elusive, a mystery. But the images do not convey a negative message. Rather they celebrate the female artist's ability to turn the tables on the men who have typically been empowered to show women and make them behave in socially approved ways."

Freeland, pp. 125-6: "The Guerrilla Girls' ads are published in magazines, pasted up as street signage or slapped onto bathroom walls in museums and theratres. Some ads lampoon prestigious galleries and curators. They satirized a 1997 still-life exhibit at MoMA which featured only four women among 71 artists.... The 'Girls' recently published their own art history, The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art (1998). It argues, with humour and satire, that more women should be included in standard art histories and in museums."

Humor and its surprising shifts 0f perception and assumption, satire and its corrective burlesques, play and its cognitive uses of props in alternative worldviews, irony and its grim realizations, all amid refreshments of body and mind, and of fun re-creating us.... All of these are part of the funny deconstructions of structure, domination, unmarked categories and institutional power performed and analyzed by the Guerrilla Girls, not to mention the corseting containment of women in images in popular culture and cultural versions of femininity.

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MUSIC: "Take Back the Night," from Harp: "Holly Near, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Gilbert, Pete Seeger. Historical 1984 live recording now expanded to 2 CDs, 26 songs and wonderful storytelling. After this recording came out as a record, the out-takes were tucked away. When Holly got ready to reissue this in CD, she remembered all the songs that didnt fit the first time out. This treasure is a beautiful slice of history, but it is also powerful and contemporary. Pete and Ronnie are at their spectacular best. Holly and Arlo, singing with their mentors, bring great humor and tenderness."

"We Won't Give it Back" and "Sisters in the Struggle," from Lesbians on Ecstacy's album We Know: "We Know You Know touches on similar themes to the band’s debut but delves deeper into some of the clichés and tropes of iconic lesbian music. This time around they blend much more melodic elements and hooks that might remind the listener of campfire sing-a-longs at some mythical womyn’s event in the 70’s, with several tracks featuring a chorus backing. However at the same time they have also managed to maintain the heavy beat aspect of their debut. The result is a danceable album that is at moments uplifting and at other moments very dark, but all with the sense of humor and fun that makes Lesbians On Ecstasy unique."
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Music video for Montreal-based band, Lesbians on Ecstasy. Sisters in the Struggle is the anthem for their new album, We Know You Know.
K8 Hardy was pleased to make this video for the LOE. She shot, produced, directed, styled, and edited the video, with great assistance from Mariev Robitaille. It's all shot on 1/2" tape for that added authenticity.
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Passionate Politics, the personal, the political, the world

2008-04-07T20:41:00.040-04:00

For today we read:

• hooks, pp. 44-84


GLOBAL FEMINISM	44
neocolonialism, female circumcision, decolonized
WOMEN AT WORK	48
White supremacist, male domination, masses of women
RACE AND GENDER	55
white supremacy, racially segregated, anti-racist
ENDING VIOLENCE	61
domestic violence, violence against women, patriarchal violence
FEMINIST MASCULINITY	67
men's movement, White supremacist, movements for social
FEMINIST PARENTING	72
anti-sexist, sexual abuse, violence against children
LIBERATING MARRIAGE AND PARTNERSHIP	78
marriage, heterosexual, sexual slavery

• Seely, Ch. 4 & 5


At the Table	93
Title IX, feminist, Wal-Mart
Good Enough	122
eating disorders, Jean Kilbourne, Sweatshop Watch

Some quotations from the reading:

Seely, pp. 122, 124: "For years I struggled with an eating disorder, bulimia, that consists of a cycle of binging and purging. I was bulimic for much of my activist life.... I worried about writing this in a book about third-wave feminism.... The fact that feminist women have eating disorders is evidence of the strength of a culture that continues to send the message to women that as we are is not good enough. The culture is what needs to change, not women and not feminism."

The Gibson Girl
The Flapper
Rosie the Riveter
Marilyn Monroe
Twiggie
Oprah Winfrey

hooks, p. 31: "Women stripping their bodies of unhealthy and uncomfortable, restrictive clothing -- bras, girdles, corsets, garter belts, etc. -- was a ritualistic, radical reclaiming of the health and glory of the female body. Females today who have never known such restrictions can only trust us when we say that this reclaiming was momentous."

Seely quotes Steele, p. 125: "'...the corset did not so much disappear as become internalized through diet, exercise, and [more recently] plastic surgery."

hooks, pp. 46-7: "A decolonized feminist perspective would first and foremost examine how sexist practices in relation to women's bodies globally are linked. For example: linking [female] circumcision with life-threatening eating disorders (which are the direct consequence of a culture imposing thinness as a beauty ideal) or any life-threatening cosmetic surgery would emphasize that the sexism, the misogyny, underlying these practices globally mirror the sexism here in this country."

Seely, p. 124: "...I realized there is a correlation between the social and political power we hold as women and the projection of an ideal body size fed to us through popular culture. This emphasis is so intense that it can, and does, detract from our quest for political, economic and social representation."

Seely, p. 94: "I never feel alone at the polls. In fact, my booth always feels so crowded, packed with the ghosts of the suffragists who fought for me to stand there, and heavy with the thought of future generations that my vote will impact."

Womens Suffrage Movement

3 min - Dec 2, 2006 -

"Enjoy Please Comment too...WomenRights Rights Women Female Suffrage Sad Vote Power"

hooks, p. 58: "Critical interventions around race did not destroy the women's movement; it became stronger. Breaking through denial about race helped women face the reality of difference at all levels.... The fact that participants in the feminist movement could face critique and chellenge while still remaining wholeheartedly committed to a vision of justice, of liberation, is a testament to the movement's strength and power. It shows us that no matter how misguided feminist thinkers have been in the past, the will to change, the will to create the context for struggle and liberation, remains stronger than the need to hold on to wrong beliefs and assumptions."

Seely, p. 139: "...what we must remember is that both governments and corporations are made up of, and rely upon, people. Their greatest success is not their money, or their prestige and recognition. Their greatest success is their ability to convince people that they exist in a vacuum and that their power lies within their structure and not with people."

From Personal to Political, layers of analysis in Seely, Chap. 5: Good Enough

• "For years I struggled...." -- "isolated by this secret."
• "reluctantly went to a group session..." -- "note that I was not alone."
• "Between 4 and 20 percent of college-age women are estimated...."
•"I realized there is a correlation between the social and political power we hold as women and the projection of an ideal body size fed to us through popular culture."
• history of female cultural icons in a politics of beauty
• family, friends, school, media and advertising
• individual ads and socio-economic uses of branding
• diets, diet pills, thinness & health, young girls' media socialization
• "those under 18 years of age made up 3 percent of the nearly two million American who had plastic surgery."
• Media showcasing of plastic surgery: Extreme Make-over
• "Rather than blaming ourselves and putting our bodies under the knife, I suggest we look at the larger institutional question of how American culture promotes and reinforces an unhealthy lifestyle."
• globalized fashion, women's labor, sweatshops: "How much profit is enough?"
• wealthy nations, host countries: environmental and labor protections
• livable wages: "the minimum wage is not a livable one."
• Sweatshop Watch: "If we could create a movement where it is 'cool' to be socially and globally aware.'"
• "human price tag" -- "we want to buy products that are the result of fair labor practices"
• boycott? or power to change corporate practices?
• Change the image: see New Moon Magazine for girls

In our next class we will think about such layers of analysis in terms of what sociologists consider the debate around structure and agency as we also return to notions of marked and unmarked categories and your projects for Assignment 3.

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Restorative Justice -- Knowing more about slavery in Maryland

2008-04-05T11:14:00.006-04:00

Today an article in the Washington Post offered a range of connections to issues we have been exploring in class. Here are some excerpts from that article. You can see the whole thing online too.

Md. Bill Looks at Business Of People as Property By Lisa Rein/Washington Post Staff Writer/Saturday, April 5, 2008; B01

An unsettling legacy of slavery hidden in the corporate archives of insurance companies that do business in Maryland would be unearthed by a bill moving through the General Assembly.

Property insurers that issued policies to protect slaveholders from the death, injury or even escape of their slaves would be required to disclose the names of the slaves, their owners and anything else their records reveal.

The policies, which are likely to have covered slaves on ships and on land once they were put to work on the tobacco farms of Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore, would have to be posted on the Web site of the state's insurance agency.

The slave-insurance bill passed the Senate unanimously last week, sponsored by a Baltimore Democrat who calls herself an amateur genealogist of her own family's slave ancestry....

Maryland would not punish insurance companies by requiring them to offer legal compensation to slave descendants. But scholars and lawmakers say the records that are likely to turn up, as spare as they may be, will further clarify how slavery figured in Maryland's economy before the Civil War.

"The question is, what's the value in knowing this," said Sen. Lisa A. Gladden (D-Baltimore), the bill's lead sponsor. An ancestor on her mother's side was born into slavery in North Carolina in 1857 and served three terms in that state's legislature.

Gladden called the effort to mine insurance records "non-confrontational" and a "natural progression" from the legislature's apology for slavery. "It's filling in the blanks of histories that have been neglected for centuries." She said that learning who owned the slaves is less important than who the slaves were.

In 1860, Maryland was home to 87,189 slaves, roughly 15 percent of the state's population, although free blacks may have been more numerous. The tobacco industry was declining and moving to more southern states, but slaves labored in shipyards, factories, on dairy and wheat farms and on plantations doing domestic work....

Slave insurance may have originated with merchants and traders in Europe who sought to protect themselves from the risks of transporting thousands of African slaves at once across the Atlantic Ocean -- including death or insurrection of the slaves aboard....

When California's insurance reporting law passed in 2000, activists in the fledgling black reparations movement hailed it as a tool that could create potential targets of lawsuits against industries that profited indirectly from slavery. The reparations movement has been largely unsuccessful since then, with courts across the country dismissing claims by slave descendants against corporations.

But many see the slave insurance bill as a form of reparation. Sherilynn Ifill, a University of Maryland law professor who has been teaching her students about reparations and restorative justice for many years, said activists should think of reparations more broadly.

"There are many forms of repairing damage," Ifill said. "Providing information, acknowledging your past and owning up to that responsibility is a form of reparation."
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PICTURE: "Insurance in the 19th century protected slaveholders from financial loss."
Photo Credit: Courtesy of New York Life
Related Article: Md. Bill Looks at Business of People as Property. page B01.

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HOW DO YOU READ DIFFICULT SCHOLARLY TEXTS?

2008-04-03T12:53:00.011-04:00

First off, reread the How to Read handout. This set of reading practices will help you enormously throughout your undergraduate, even into graduate, education. All the forms of active reading: writing back, knowing about the text including who wrote it and such, historicizing, biographizing, investigating the form, looking at words and rhetoric, voice and narrative and mood, compare it to other books.

Next, what we have been practicing in lecture all along: web active reading. Check out key terms on the web, follow up references and allusions, look for artworks and info on artists and projects. We will continue to do this in class as well.

Third, be willing to REread, many times. Don't assume any book can be understood in one reading, or that it is the author's job to make this book something easy to consume. Be realistic about how much one can understand on first reading a book, on first working with a book over several readings.

That means, don't be intimidated. Books of real importance introduce us to questions that no one has easy answers to. Think instead of being invited into the most interesting concerns that humans have had over long stretches of time. Now it's your turn to take up these issues and come to care about them, to add your bit to the range of collective human knowledge, to learn how to create knowledge, to share it, to show others how to use it, to be savvy in what you do with it yourself.

Work with the book in layers: notice what's easy and get that first. Take up the next level of difficulty or confusion and pick out the most interesting bit of it next. See what connects to that, and work out where this might take you. Add in bits and layers, reading, checking the web, talking to others, then re-reading.

If it is hard and confusing, swim around in the difficulty and the chaos a bit -- without that stage of engagement as well, you cannot really believe in why all this matters.

Enjoy the spaces of non-knowing and the excitements of learning yet to happen. Have some trust, as well as willingness to be in the spaces of not-yet-knowing.

This can be an intellectual, emotional, spiritual and political experience of importance. Check it out.

Ofrenda, Spirit Work, Cosmic Cruising

2008-04-01T16:21:00.021-04:00

Ofrenda (6): "transmutation of social or personal suffering into penetrating visions of the present and brave sightings of hopeful, better futures."

How this might look in other cultural traditions:
see Webbing: Art Museums/National Museum of African Art/Gawu/Artworks
A whole set of works based on transforming "huge piles of detritus from consumption."
Liquor labels and metal are transformed into kente cloth -- communicating philosophical, religious and political meanings -- in Versatility, conveying "the notion of adaptability and the twists and turns of human existence."

Pérez is teaching us how to see all this in a particular feminist art political tradition:

Chicana (12): "a term that artists identified with the ongoing, albeit shifting, shape of civil rights struggles have applied to themselves and their work, as artists decisively shaped in the United States, resistant to the racism against their Mexican and Native American cultures and the discrimination against a still largely pauperized, economically exploited, and culturally stereotyped and marginalized body of citizens."

post-1964 artwork (12): "I have focused on post-1965 artwork, especially that produced between 1985 and 2000, by women who identify themselves as Chicanas -- not as a synonum for Mexican American, Mexican, Latina, Hispanic, or Latin American, but rather in dialogue, if not complete identification with the concern for social justice of the Chicana/o, and other civil rights movements."

the first chapter summarized (15): "intellectual vindication of Indigenous epistemologies that characterized much of the thought and art of the Chicana/o movement, itself the heir in this respect to the great intellectual and artistic generations of the 1920s through the 1950s in Mexico." (For example, one major artist of this period of importance to feminists is Frida Kahlo.)

"feminist and queer idioms" traced in chapter one (15):

• glyphs --
some images from Google; Mayan writing; Wikipedia on Maya script

• codices

• the artist as tlamatinime --
Aztec philosophy; Indigenious or Ethnoepistemology and cognitive specialists

Why queer as well as feminist? Some of the artists Pérez discusses are lesbians, so that is one reason. Another lies in the various associations the word "queer" has politically: that is to say, calling into question the normative, the generic, the taken-for-granted dominant form, the unmarked. Queering these is an activity of creating other possibilities, meanings, and worlds.

writers and visual artists whose work is explored in chapter one of Laura Pérez, Chicana Art:

writers:
• Gloria Anzaldúa -- memorial web altar for Gloria Anzaldúa
• Cherríe Moraga -- her website
• Sandra Cisneros -- her website
• Ana Castillo -- her website

2412 Profile - Ana Castillo

4 min - Jul 26, 2007 -

"...2412tv latin television fun hispanic profile cultura culture bilingual music show belen ana castillo latino latina..."

visual artists:
• Frances Salomé España -- picture with Laura Pérez in online faculty magazine
• Yreina D. Cervántez -- artwork online Danza Ocelotl
• Ester Hernandez -- her website

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MUSIC: "Espiral," from Espiral (2003) by Santa Sabina -- their website
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About This Video "Vacio"/"Emptyness"
Directed by LEONARDO BONDANI (MalditaVecindad, Caifanes, TijuanaNo, etc.).
Shot on locations of Zipolite Oaxaca, Mexico.

Santa Sabina is one of the most important cult-band from Mexico City, known for their dark & unusual tone. This is their first music video & their first album, produced by Alex Marcovich, at the time he was guitarrist of "Caifanes". Later the band got produced by Adrian Belew.
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The lyrics talk about "...nothing is going to fill the empty sea in his heart, maybe the Dead Sea will bring him back to life...". Check out the frame from where the photography of the cover of the album was taken, singer Rita's close up of her hand holding a book of astrology & alchemy.

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Other, Other: alternative worlds, social justice

2008-03-31T12:53:00.018-04:00

We are about to shift from Octavia Butler, Kindred, SF and violence to reading and thinking about Laura Pérez, Chicana Art, spirituality and altarities. We will create a bridge here with the notion of alternative worlds.

(See also parallel universe, multiverse, possible world.)

This is not the only thing spirituality can be about, but it is one thing. As Freeland helps us understand, art, violence, social justice and spirituality also have some affinities. Notice the term affinities -- perhaps another sort of "intertextuality."

Consider also the term ambivalence -- or ambi-valence -- having contradictory feelings and thoughts all at the same time.

This is the condition that Butler wants us to experience together with Dana as she tries so hard to act with integrity and honor in a situation that allows neither. In the end, when asked to collude with Alice's sexual exploitation and danger, she can only alter it with some self-conscious awareness of her complicity amid terrifyingly limited choices.

She cannot not be violated herself -- she contributes to violence even though she wants desperately to get outside this world of violence. She loses her arm, not in retribution, but in consequence. Octavia Butler says in a 1991 interview in Callaloo (498):

"I couldn't really let her come all the way back. I couldn't let her return to what she was, I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole."

Asked in the same interview about her own quite violent writing about violence (499):

"it probably comes from how young I was when I wrote it. I think it is a lot easier to not necessarily romanticize it, but to accept it without comment when you're younger. I think that men and women are more likely to be violent when they are younger."

Violence is something we generally want to have "out there" -- outside ourselves and our lives, if at all possible. When it is possible to forget it, we do our best, what some call a "willful ignorance." Butler refuses to let us forget violence, in others, around us, and in ourselves.

Rather than "othering" violence -- what Freud called "projection," in which what we find unacceptable in ourselves, we project onto others, making ourselves "innocent" of that which we then see only "out there," not in or with us -- rather than doing that, Butler creates worlds in which it is never possible to keep such "othering" up for long. It always falls apart, and usually it falls apart or ruptures in violent alterations, transformations and uses of power.

In feminist theory there are a number of terms that have simultaneously positive and negative meanings. Some folks will use them only one way or another, trying to keep their good and bad elements carefully managed and apart, while other theorists spend more time examining the problems with trying to pry them away from each other. At times prying them apart can be a form of "projection."

One of these terms is "The Other." It can be used to describe these processes in which projection occurs -- cutting off from oneself elements of humanity or animality one finds unacceptable and seeing them only in The Other. The complexities and ambivalences of these terms of projection are exactly what Butler explores in Kindred.

Or it can be used more respectfully, to honor in others that which one cannot understand, has not experienced, truly knows nothing about. In this sense, it acknowledges that humans and other sentient beings are not interchangable, that we each have depths and meanings that simple "understanding" cannot possibly encompass. Others are whole other planets, alternative realities in this sense.

And this sense can be deeply spiritual, or philosophical, or ethical. Sometimes used this way it is called "alterity." Pérez works at tracing out some of these uses in art forms and spiritual activisms in the subtitle of her book "the politics of spiritual and aesthetic altarities." Alterity -- altarity is her serious "joke" or intertextual engagement with these concerns.

Pérez also uses the "comma" to indicate difrasismo (15): "the coexistence of meanings, identities, and beings...the richness of signification as evocation rather than the literality of denotation." Two separate words are paired together to create meaning together, rather than apart. For example, in this Post's title I use the terms Other, Other to indicate the ambi-valent or possible worlds of meaning of the term Other; and pair alternative worlds and social justice to consider how these can work together in parallel, possible, multiple world meanings.

Each chapter in Pérez makes such pairings, in which parallel, possible, multiple world meanings can touch:

Invocation, Ofrenda
Spirit, Glyphs
Body, Dress
Altar, Alter
Tierra, Land
Book, Art
Face, Heart
Self, Other

We will be reading several of these for class. Please go ahead and read all of them, for yourself.

Class, yourself

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PICTURES:
at top of Blog: Yreina D. Cervántez: Homenaje a Frida Kahlo:

Courtesy of California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, Dept of Special Collections, Donald Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9010, cema@library.ucsb.edu, (805) 893-8563; http://cemaweb.library.ucsb.edu/cema_index.html

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb0199n6st/?brand=calisphere

next: Ester Hernadez, Mis Madres / My Mothers:
From http://www.esterhernandez.com/Gallery_main.htm

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In the Callaloo interview (1991) Butler also talks about how differently men and women understand her prize-winning short story "Bloodchild," in which, to live on another planet, humans have to become incubators for the eggs of another species (498):

"'Bloodchild' is very interesting in that men tend to see a horrible case of slavery, and women tend to see that, oh well, they had caesarians, big deal....I don't see this as particularly barbaric. I mean if human beings were able to make that good a deal with another species, I think it would be miraculous. Actually, I think it would be immensely more difficult than that."

Here is a little art fantasy built around Butler's "Bloodchild":

Bloodchild

4 min - Jan 25, 2008 -

"...Octavia E. Butler. It is also the newest release of fruit on fruit action from Reid. So enjoy. :-P...Bloodchild Octavia Butler...."

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MUSIC: La Barranca, "Ofrenda," from Tempestad (1997/2004); website.

VIDEO TRAILER: from TV Series (1980-1990) Alien Nation.

1989 TV show openings Part 6

10 min - Jan 17, 2008 -

Part 6...1989 TV shows openings. Alien Nation, and others....

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How we Read SF; Women in SF Histories

2008-03-26T21:14:00.017-04:00

BUTLER AND DELANY TEACH US HOW TO READ AND USE SF

Delany tells us that how we READ SF is different from how we read "mundane" fiction.

Reading to see: literalization, repetition and intertextuality, everyday life and power
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So first, we read it as a LITERALIZATION -- as when we see Princess Leia's World Exploding.

• What are some of the literalizations we see in Kindred?

Consider Nancy Hartsock's idea of a standpoint, and use it to think about the differences between what Dana sees at the Weylin Plantation and what Kevin sees:

From Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power (1983), p. 117:

...a standpoint carries the contention that there are some perspectives on society from which, however well intentioned one may be, the real relations of humans with each other and with the natural world are not visible.

8Freewrite on what's different about what Kevin sees and what Dana sees in their experiences of the past. How does Butler make LITERAL the theory Hartsock describes for us?

From the Washington Post, Monday 24 March, p. A3:
Unequal Perspectives on Racial Equality

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Second, when you read SF you are not reading it as something unique and original. Sound strange? Isn't that what makes art valuable? Well, high art, art world art, art after Romanticism is valued as the work of genius, unique, unmatched.

But in most cultures around the world, and most of history before 18th c. Romanticism, the cultural expressions most valued are usually in fact ones filled with rituals of REPETITION. And actually this is true in many ways of even so-called "high art." For example, you see the ballet "Swan Lake" over and over, and compare and appreciate all the dancers who have danced its top roles -- .

Let's look at one of the art works from our book, Perez' Chicana Art: Yolanda Lopez' Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe -- simultaneously a repetition of Virgins of Guadalupe -- a conventional form -- and this variation -- this artist self-portrait:

You do this in SF too: Kindred is a time-travel story and you compare and appreciate all the differences ways of making a time travel story if you are a habitual SF reader. You might compare this one to Woman on the Edge of Time, another feminist time travel story by Marge Piercy, for example. If you know both, the ways they are alike and different are something you think about as you read each, and your pleasure in each is increased in this comparison.

This is the form of repetition we call INTERTEXTUALITY.
(All these web links are a form of intertextuality: a network of associations and connections sometimes called hypertext).

• Forms of repetition and intertextuality we can see in Kindred:
=time travel itself, repetitions of the past, repetitions of movements between time
=any time travel stories also known add layers of rich association
=slave narratives become also intertextual resonances, as if SF too
=as an art form, we examined last time Kindred among artists' responses to slavery
=as a political intervention, we noted Kindred in the context of organizations working against slavery

(Wikipedia article on science fiction.)
===
In the course of telling its stories, Kindred is full of details of everyday life at the Weylin Plantation and how every bit of it is structured by power.

(For theory buffs, see Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. From the Wikipedia article on Certeau: "Certeau says that the tactic’s diffuse form does two things: it effectively deflects a strategy’s influence, and it renders its own activities an "unmappable" form of subversion. He pointed out that in its slipperiness lies a good deal of its power. This occurs through the unconscious ways people try to make things like books and city street systems "habitable" in their minds. Social science, or science in general, cannot hope to be able to map tactical activity, but it can try at least to make its formal discussion possible.")

• how might Kindred help us analyze power in everyday life?

8Talk to the person sitting next to you and make a list of some examples you remember from the book.
8Then take a couple of those examples and consider what noticing them does to help you notice power in everyday life today. Write down a couple of examples there.

===
Women in the history of SF

For how many people is this the first SF book they've read? Why? What makes it SF?
8Write down your understanding of SF.

===
Science Fiction and a History about Women Writers Telling Stories & Histories: HOW as well as What

It is true BOTH:

1) women have not been present in history as much as they should have been
ie. not allowed a share in social life that discipline history describes

AND

2) women have been part of all the important forms of life the discipline history *should* describe, more part of history than the official stories say.

=never notice history is only about men
=only notice how much women are absent
=esp. how absent in *important* parts
=women are active despite constraints on their presence

===
Strategic perversions of the generic masculine:

If you look at a list of SF writers, past and present, names won't tell you which are women:

Thirty-six of the women SF writers on one cheaklist of women SF authors, counting from the 40s to the 80s, used pseudonyms in their writing career.
Thirty of them changed from explicitly female names to male names.
Ten additional women used their own sexually ambiguous names or initials.

Pseudonyms were used most often during the 40's and the 60's, two time periods when women were moving into the boys club of SF in big numbers. Women writers knew there was nothing seriously challenging in women in SF within certain percentages, and especially in particular kinds of relationships.

But numbers combined with being outside the existing system of social relations especially resulted in women writing under male names, either on direction (in order to be allowed to publish) or in some personal accessment of the field and its conventions. Women writing under male pseudonyms is a strategic perversion of the generic masculine.

See Wikipedia articles:
Women in SF
Feminist Science Fiction
female science fiction authors
gender in science fiction
lesbian science fiction
slash fiction
sex in science fiction
SF TV series Alien Nation (1990)
L. Timmel Duchamp, "The Artist as a Young Girl"

JAMES TIPTREE, JR.
The most famous story of a woman using a male pseudonym in recent science fiction is that of James Tiptree, Jr. Tiptree is a writer who came to SF in the early 70's, winning the Nebula for a short story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" in 1976. (And since then winning three Hugos and three more Nebulas.)

As the complement to Harlan Ellison's comment on Joanna Russ (author of the amazing book The Female Man) in Again, Dangerous Visions--that "the best writers in sf today are the women"--Theodore Sturgeon commended Tiptree as the male counterpart to these innovative women writers. He wasn't the only one to celebrate Tiptree's masculinity. Robert Silverberg has to live down the introduction he wrote to a collection of Tiptree's short stories which he spoke of as being particularly masculine in a style no woman could duplicate.

Imagine his chagrin when in 1977 Tiptree was revealed to be Alice Hastings Sheldon, an experimental behavioral psychologist with a Hemmingway-esque past, who'd begun her SF career at the age of 52.

Alice Sheldon, working at the CIA and living in McLean, Virginia.
See a fabulous biography: Julie Phillips' Double Life of Alice Sheldon

====
See the official website of the Tiptree Awards:

"In February of 1991 at WisCon (the world's only feminist-oriented science fiction convention), award-winning SF author Pat Murphy announced the creation of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. (To read her speech go to PatMurphy.pdf.) Pat created the award in collaboration with author Karen Joy Fowler. The aim of the award is not to look for work that falls into some narrow definition of political correctness, but rather to seek out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. The Tiptree Award is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society."

from the Wikipedia Tiptree Awards:

"The award is named for Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By choosing a masculine nom de plume, having her stories accepted under that name and winning awards with them, Sheldon helped demonstrate that the division between male and female SF writing was illusory. Years after "Tiptree" first published SF, Sheldon wrote some work under the female pen name "Raccoona Sheldon"; later, the SF world discovered that "Tiptree" had been female all along. According to the Tiptree Award council, this discovery led to widespread discussion over which aspects of writing, if any, have an intrinsic gender. To remind audiences of the complicated role gender plays in both reading and writing, the award was named in Sheldon's honor."

===
To go with Perez' book and Lopez' art work, but sort of in the SF spirit, here is a video experience. Among our previews of Chicana Art:

Super Chicana

3 min - May 10, 2007 -

"Coalique, and transforms into the ultimate Chicana warrior fighting to defend the Chicana way of life......super chicana xicana coalique sexism racism warrior fight"

===

But is it Art? What is Science Fiction and why does it matter?

2008-03-24T08:34:00.024-04:00

Why is science fiction one of the "arts" in a class on Women, Art and Culture?

When is science fiction feminist? What work can SF do for feminist movement?

What about calling it SF? When is it science fiction, speculative fiction or fantasy? To whom does that matter?

These are some questions to explore in lecture, in section, talking to folks inside and outside of class, on the web and on your own.

• Webbing: Archives/Feminist SF, Fantasy and Utopia

Charlie Rose: June 1, 2000

57 min - Aug 28, 2007 -

"...Finally, a conversation with science-fiction writer and macarthur fellow Octavia Butler about her book "Parable of the Talents", currently nominated for a...."
[The Butler interview begins about 40 mins. into the show, and you can move the cursor on the YouTube clip there if you want to skip ahead.]

In this interview with Charlie Rose, Octavia Butler says that in learning to write SF "you got to make your own worlds, you got you write yourself in." "I write about people and the different ways of being human." Butler tells Rose that all the "horrible little jobs" Dana has had in Kindred are all the jobs she's done herself. She's says that her MacArthur grant resulted in people paying more attention to her work when before they thought "it was that science fiction garbage." She says that what readers bring to her work, what's important to them, is as important as what she puts into it. She calls learning new stuff "sending my mind off someplace it hasn't been before." "I'm not sure if I'm optimistic or pessimistic, I know we can do better than we have, because there are times we have done better... but I don't know if we will. I know I want us to do better...."

Making worlds is what SF, be it science fiction or speculative fiction, is about.

This is a conceptual map of relationships among various forms of fiction including science fiction and speculative fiction, together with magical realism, fantasy, horror, alternate history, metafiction, all within fiction, especially mimetic (representational) fiction. It was created by Claire Light, a writer and teacher of writing who blogs about mapping and geography at atlas(t), and in the post this image comes from, Map of Speculative Fiction, says this is a generally accepted version of these based on content.

In contrast, SF writer, critic and theorist Samuel R. ("Chip") Delany, another of the relative few famous black SF authors, says the difference between what he calls "mundane fiction" and SF is all in how you read it. This argument suggests that one reason some people don't like SF is that they haven't learned how to read it: you do this differently than the stuff you are used to. (See Delany's books The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine for essays about all this. A useful summary is Spencer's review "Vintage Delany," for Science Fiction Studies.)

For example: in "mundane fiction" you read a sentence -- "Her world exploded" -- and you know it indicates a woman in great anguish as she reels emotionally from something terrible.

mundane fiction: Her world exploded

But in SF, while this may be the case too, it means something more, something about an alternative world in which this sentence is not only metaphorical, it is also quite literal:

Here is Princess Leia in Star Wars, forced to watch her home world Aldaran destroyed by the evil empire's terrible weapon the Death Star, as a punishment for her refusal to divulge the location of those working against the empire at the Rebel Base:

sf: Her world exploded

====

====
Here is how Spencer summarizes Delany's argument, saying that SF

"emphasizes the object, the exterior world. As a result, we interpret the two sorts of texts according to two very different sets of assumptions.

[Quoting Delany]: Because the world of mundane fiction is fixed, at least in comparison with the multiple worlds of science fiction, when we read some distortion in the representation of the world in a piece of mundane fiction we are led to the questions, Why did the character (the fictive subject) perceive it this way? or Why did the writer (the auctorial subject) present it this way? (p. 145)

"By contrast, because of SF's characteristic focus upon the object world, when we encounter a detail which differs dramatically from our ordinary present, we ask instead, "How would the world of the story have to be different from our world in order for this to occur? " (p. 146)

"Science fiction is far more concerned with the organization (and reorganization) of the object, i.e., the world, or the institutions through which we perceive it. It is concerned with the subject, certainly, but concerned with those aspects of it that are closer to the object: How is the subject excited, impinged on, contoured and constituted by the object? How might beings with a different social organization, environment, brain structure, and body perceive things? How might humans perceive things after becoming acclimated to an alien environment? (p. 188)"

Maryland and Kindred

2008-03-20T11:37:00.014-04:00

Kindred takes place in LA in the "present" (late 70s) -- where Butler was living then -- and in Maryland in the pre-Civil War past. What did Butler want to know historically in order to write and think about Kindred?
Here she is in an interview discussing this question:

sfd: What kind of research goes into creating a book like Kindred?

OEB: Well, of course I did a lot of library research, and I went off to Maryland and did some on-the-spot research. I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black.

sfd: Is the book's location in Maryland a real place, or based on a real place?

OEB: Well, the eastern shore of Maryland is a real place. I didn't really make up any locations - except that particular plantation.

sfd: I my memory is correct, Alex Haley's Roots (at least the mini-series) came out about the time you were writing Kindred...

OEB: Actually, I don't think the mini-series had come out yet, but the book had come out and was a bestseller. When I was traveling around in Maryland, I kept running across little "Alex Haley was here" signs; you know, advertising that he had done research at that particular place. I was writing a completely different kind of book, so it didn't bother me. It at least let me know that I was in the right place to do research.

sfd: So it didn't have any specific influence on you?

OEB: I hadn't read it, no, because I really was doing a completely different kind of book. I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.

sfd: It's interesting to look at the different venues in which Kindred is studied. Science fiction fans read it. It's used in women's studies, as well as courses about African-American history.

OEB: I tried to convince my original publishers of this but I don't think they ever quite believed me. I knew that I had at least three audiences. My work before this had been all science fiction, and even then I felt that I had three audiences, but I couldn't get anyone to really pay attention.

Google Maps Eastern Shore Maryland

It makes sense to consider Kindred in the context of many responses to slavery artists have built upon. Here are some links to explore and ponder as or after Kindred has shaken you intellectually, emotionally and politically:

• In 2007 35 students from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Morgan State University produced the exhibition At Freedom’s Door: Challenging Slavery in Maryland which was exhibited at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture (RFLM) and the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS).

Were artists-in-residence. Commissioned artists were:

• the BBC's slideshow of images from 2007 of African Artists Remember Slavery

• MOMA's online images of Glenn Ligon's artwork, especially "Runaways" (1993)

• the Netropolitan's web museum featuring the artwork of Betya Saar

• an account of Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum exhibition in 1992 at the Maryland Historical Society, in which one could see household silver next to slave shackles, all from the society's collections

• links to online resources on Slave Narratives, the materials upon which much of Kindred is based

• at UVA's art museum a current exhibition is Landscape of Slavery, The Plantation in American Art

• Washington, D.C.'s Free the Slaves online organizing against modern slavery

Legacy of Slavery: Reparations

2 hr - Feb 29, 2008

slavery, the roles of governments and businesses in this enterprise, and the question of reparations for the descendants of slaves. This panel discusses the issue of reparations

As part of the 2001 UN World Conference on Racism the US National Public Radio offered a rich set of resources for considering this issue of reparations online.

===

Analyzing Everyday Life and Collaborative Creative Representations

2008-03-13T11:33:00.014-04:00

The next section of the course is about how power structures everyday life, about how art participates in our abilities to make things change and move; participates in our abilities to work with, around, through and against these structures in dynamic ways.

Feminist theorists call these ways we have impact on power's movements, on structures that regulate power, and on social change -- agency. We can and do shift power all the time. We are also shifted around ourselves by power in many forms.

Our next project is an exploration of these theories, claims, and insights into the world.

Experiment with seeing your worlds and your lives through these lenses. Analyze elements of your worlds that put you one up and one down. What we are working, struggling, to realize is how all these forms of power interlock, interconnect, intersect. We call this aspect "intersectionality."

From
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought
in the Matrix of Domination:
"A broader focus stresses the interlocking nature of oppressions that are structured on multiple levels, from the individual to the social structural, and which are part of a larger matrix of domination. Adhering to this inclusive model provides the conceptual space needed for each individual to see that she or he is both a member of multiple dominant groups and a member of multiple subordinate groups. Shifting the analysis to investigating how the matrix of domination is structured along certain axes--race, gender, and class being the axes of investigation for AfricanAmerican women--reveals that different systems of oppression may rely in varying degrees on systemic versus interpersonal mechanisms of domination.

"Empowerment involves rejecting the dimensions of knowledge, whether personal, cultural, or institutional, that perpetuate objectification and dehumanization. African-American women and other individuals in subordinate groups become empowered when we understand and use those dimensions of our individual, group, and disciplinary ways of knowing that foster our humanity as fully human subjects.... Using one's standpoint to engage the sociological imagination can empower the individual. 'My fullest concentration of energy is available to me,' Audre Lorde maintains, 'only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.'"

Audre Lorde was a West Indian Black American feminist lesbian poet and activist who died of cancer in 1992. She was a founder in the 1980s of Women of Color Press. Here is one poem she wrote on interlocking systems of oppressions:

Who Said It Was Simple, by Audre Lorde

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

Adrienne Rich, another poet and friend of Audre Lorde, a white Jewish woman lesbian activist and theorist whose poetry, like Lorde's, was an inspiration for the Women's Liberation Movement wrote also about the contradictions of power.

Power by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

====
HERE IS THE DESCRIPTION OF THE ASSIGNMENT WE WILL BE WORKING ON THROUGHOUT THIS SECTION OF THE COURSE
====

WMST 250: Women, Art & Culture, Spring 2008 – http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
Professor: Katie King; email: katking@umd.edu
Office: 2101F Woods Hall; Office phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail)
TAs and TR: Maren Cummings (mabcummings@gmail.com); Carissa Liro-Hudson (calirohu@gmail.com); Genevieve Page (genevievepage@yahoo.com); Ana Perez (ana.amperez@gmail.com); Maria Velazquez (maria.i.velazquez@gmail.com)

ASSIGNMENT THREE-B: THE ANALYSIS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Individual and paired analysis on creative forms – DUE handed into TA in class TUESDAY 22 APRIL AND POSTED ONTO YOUR SECTION'S BLOG; YOU WILL PRESENT YOUR WORK IN SECTION
AND DON'T FORGET: you will also turn in early drafts of essay and creative assembly, with comments made for each other's work, to document your collaboration.

Your next assignment asks you to work with a partner, investigating where power is located in your everyday life and how art forms can analyze this. We will be spending much time in class preparing for this assignment, with freewrites, with class discussion and lectures, with readings. We will take as primary models for the assignment the kinds of analysis offered by bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins and others. The ideas of marked and unmarked categories and the matrix of domination should be the anchor for your analysis of everyday life. You won't fulfill the assignment if you do not use these ideas as the focus of your analysis.

There are two parts to the work you will turn in:

• THE ANALYTIC INTRODUCTION (may be individual or collaborative)

This is an analytic essay (around 10 pages long PER PERSON, printed out) in which you come up with a conceptual map for where you see power located in your own everyday life. Your analysis should ultimately interconnect with the second part, your creative representation of everyday life.

Use both the notions of power as, on the one hand, choices, influence, optimism but especially privilege, and on the other hand, as constraint, limits, necessity, but especially oppression. YOU MUST DISCUSS THE MATRIX OF DOMINATION IN WHICH YOU ARE LOCATED: BOTH YOUR OWN PRIVILEGE AND YOUR OWN OPPRESSION. This is not about analyzing your blessings and being thankful for them, even though such examination can matter, but about something perhaps more uncomfortable and less often thought about: how our privileges are the effects of systematic structures in which others are oppressed. This is not about personal issues of blame and guilt, but about coming to be curious and concerned about what it takes to understand various systems of power honestly, and is a prelude to addressing issues of social justice very broadly.

Some conceptual maps we will be discussing: bell hooks' "railroad tracks" story and the idea of a standpoint; the problems with the conceptual map that charts "progress" (which arranges differences in a false hierarchy, always ending with "US": the most privileged group). Thinking of yourself in terms of the marked and unmarked categories you embody is another kind of conceptual map. We will continue to discuss conceptual maps in class while you are working on this assignment. Attendance in class will be crucial for your best performance in this assignment, as will regular close collaboration with your partner.

You can approach the essay from either one of two viewpoints: a) putting yourself in the center and looking at power in your everyday life, in the activities and structures you move through, say, during the week; or b) you can think rather of where you fit into various international systems of power and how they are represented in your everyday life: for example in the shirt you wear as you learned about its journey from Sweet Honey in the Rock.

HOW THIS IS A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT: Each person should start off with their own analysis. However, as you share and edit your work with each other, you may want to alternate parts of each person's analysis, or put them together in some other kind of creative pattern in the final collaborative essay. You and your partner will function as a small writing group, helping each other come up with ideas for this analysis, reading each other's drafts, and editing and proof-reading the final product.

• THE COLLABORATIVE CREATIVE REPRESENTATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The conceptual map for where you see power located in everyday life should be crafted to interconnect with this second part, your creative representation of everyday life. This means you and your partner have to choose structures of power you can compare and contrast in both lives and both analyses. These should be evident as sections in both individual essays.

Partners have important choices about what creative representations they will draw upon. Some ideas: photos, either taken now for this assignment or from your own collection of photos of your life, or of the collectivities of people you come in contact with, or see your self in the world with. Or consider other sorts of pictures – with the exception of magazine pictures and other ads. Instead use pictures you draw or are drawn by others, maps, and such. Or consider poems, songs, stories – ones you write or ones you collect from other places; your own work or an anthology of other people's work, or a combination. Or come up with other creative representations you can think of. BUT NO MAGAZINE COLLAGES! In our experience magazine collages are rarely able to draw out your best creative potential, or inspire your most careful, thoughtful and sophisticated efforts. So do something else instead.

Each partnership will turn in:
(1) 1 creative project
(2) 1 20 page collaborative analytic essay (10 pages per person) OR 2 separate analyses (10 pages per person)
(3) evidence of collaborative work (drafts, blog posts, etc)

Your grade will be determined by
(1) the essay; how well you understand marked and unmarked categories and the matrix of domination, how well they are presented in this written form (you can use different dialects of English, not only formal written English, but if you do, you must show your own creative understanding of the powers of that particular dialect),
(2) the quality of the entire project; how well it fulfills the assignment, its persuasiveness as a representation of everyday life, its thoughtful analysis in creative work, and
(3) how much you helped each other, as demonstrated in your turning in early drafts edited and commented upon by each other.

=====
Adrienne Rich accepts the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Risk Taker Award and reads Audre Lorde's poem "A Litany for Survival" and her own poem "Transparencies":

=====
We will be reading Kindred over Spring Break. Here is Octavia Butler discussing "Science Future, Science Fiction" at UCLA in 2002.

International Women's Day

2008-03-09T09:34:00.007-04:00

"Labor unions, religious communities, political groups and social reform organizations assembled to mourn the lost lives and demand real progress in worker protection. At times their differences in methods and priorities threatened to take back gains made in public awareness and the commitment to act." Photo and caption from the Triangle Factory Fire website presented by The Kheel Center, Catherwood Library, ILR School at Cornell University.

International Women's Day, memories of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and other forms of women's exploitation and vulnerability, histories of progressive activism in the U.S. and elsewhere, and SPRING TIME come together this month around the world! The whole month of March is woven through with connections among these, with attention to inequality and commemoration as well as attention to celebration and new visions, of what has happened and what can happen!

International Women's Day

2 min - Mar 7, 2008

Women's Day...watchmojo looks at the history of International Women's Day...women rights international day

Women Speak on International Women's Day

2 min - May 4, 2007 - (3 ratings)

Women's Day...Delegates at the Beijing +10 conference discuss women's issues on International Women's Day. Credits: Producer:Chris Niles...news women

Explore these links and videos for International Women's Day and note all the forms its celebration takes and for whom. Consider your own possible forms of celebration and commemoration and join with others to shape and share these.

Everyday life seen with new eyes

2008-03-08T10:22:00.019-05:00

Faith Ringgold in her studio (her website)

ANALYSIS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES: EVERYDAY LIFE SEEN WITH NEW EYES

Tu 11 Mar—Intersecting our various forms of movement, feminists and more
• Read bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody, pp. 1-43
• Freeland, Ch. 3
• Handouts in class
• help with Ass. 3 experiences

Alice Neel in her studio (official website)

Th 13 Mar—Intersectionalities and histories, the matrix of domination—ASS. #3a DUE
• Goldbard, Ch. 5
• Handouts in class
• Read Butler, Kindred over the break

Tu 18 Mar—SPRING BREAK—read Kindred
Th 20 Mar— SPRING BREAK—read Kindred

Freeland pp.63-4: "Can art break down barriers among cultures?"
ways around and critical of "mystifying our experience of art as direct, wordless appreciation" and around and critical of "a universal formal quality of Beauty."
Freeland likes instead art as "the expression of the life of the community," but she points out we need to know more about these communities than just our engaging the art: "I do not comprehend their social meaning without understanding additional facts about why and how they were made" and "information adds considerably to our experience." (66)

This is a project that is on-going: one begins somewhere and continues, in good faith and with both labor and pleasure to know more about cultures, art and their interconnections. You cannot know what you don't know: Beginning matters as does real learning and engagement.

Freeland pp. 70: "Cultures in conjunction. Despite gaps between cultures, intercultural contact is age-old."
"Indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australia are not culturally isolated and homogenous." (82)
"There is a new impact of diasporas on the production of art, partly because of global communications.... As people are forced (or choose) to move around the globe, their decendants emerge with a new, hybridized identity." (84)
"The 1980s raised consciousness about identity politics, as many younger people with hybrid or 'hyphenated' identities used art to explore issues of racism and cultural assimilation." (85)

Depicting power as it organizes and shapes everyday life is one of the forms of analysis many artists practice both intentionally and inadvertently. Making art is done inside structures of power, as is understanding and using art.

Our next set of experiences culminating in Assignment 3 will work to interconnect such art with feminist theories of power and empowerment, of domination, privilege and intersectionality, and of social change and social movement, especially "feminist movement" as described by bell hooks.

Unmarked categories in feminist analyses of power: specious (false) generics:
not actually standing for all humans:
• the generic masculine
• whiteness
• middle class
• heterosexual
• able bodied
• (in US) English speaking
• (in US) (Protestant) Christianity

standpoint theory and the matrix of domination
intersectionality
oppositional and differential consciousness
transnational subjectivities

bell hooks' Railroad Tracks story of a segregated town.

View Larger Map

From Feminist Theory, from margin to center.
Angie Reed Garner's art "for bell hooks"

From the Wikipedia, "Power (Sociology)":
"Unmarked categories

"The idea of unmarked categories originated in feminism. The theory analyzes the culture of the powerful. The powerful comprise those people in society with easy access to resources, those who can exercise power without considering their actions. For the powerful, their culture seems obvious; for the powerless, on the other hand, it remains out of reach, élite and expensive.

"The unmarked category can form the identifying mark of the powerful. The unmarked category becomes the standard against which to measure everything else. For most Western readers, it is posited that if a protagonist's race is not indicated, it will be assumed by the reader that the protagonist is Caucasian; if a sexual identity is not indicated, it will be assumed by the reader that the protagonist is heterosexual; if the gender of a body is not indicated, will be assumed by the reader that it is male; if a disability is not indicated, it will be assumed by the reader that the protagonist is able bodied, just as a set of examples.

"One can often overlook unmarked categories. Whiteness forms an unmarked category not commonly visible to the powerful, as they often fall within this category. The unmarked category becomes the norm, with the other categories relegated to deviant status. Social groups can apply this view of power to race, gender, and disability without modification: the able body is the neutral body; the man is the normal status."

hooks, Feminism is for Everybody (2000) p. 7:

"Feminists are made, not born. One does not become an advocate of feminist politics simply by having the privilege of having been born female. Like all political positions one becomes a believer in feminist politics through choice and action."

Feminist epistemology, that is, feminist ways of thinking about how humans come to know their worlds, calls such choice and action "struggle," that is to say, making and being made in and together with the planet, its processes and beings. Donna Haraway calls this "worldliness."

===
MUSIC: "Which side are you on?" by The Freedom Singers, from Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (1997)

See "American Roots Music" on PBS:
"THE FREEDOM SINGERS

"The Freedom Singers were originally formed in 1962 to raise money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and their songs and music played an important role in the Civil Rights movement. One of the group's key founders was Cordell Hull Reagon, known for his many nonviolence training workshops and anti-segregation efforts in the Albany, Georgia area. Other founding members included Bernice Johnson (who later married Reagon), Charles Neblett and Rutha Harris. They traveled widely and won new fans at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. In 1964 the group reformed as an all-male quartet with another Nashville native, Matt Jones."

What is feminism? Event, flyer and process

2008-02-28T19:16:00.009-05:00

Tuesday and Thursday, section presentations I & II -- these take place in the lecture part of the course -- Be sure you are there -- it's part of the assignment

Everyone must say something, so as soon as you get to class, get together with your group and plan what each person will say.

First everyone in turn will introduce themselves to the whole class.
Tell us both your first and last name, slowly and clearly.

Someone will read the group's definition of feminism.
Someone will name the event the group came up with.
Someone will describe the flyer and its design.
Someone will characterize who the flyer and event is directed to, their audiences and distribution.
One or more people will describe some relationships between the definition and the event.
One or more people will talk about the group process, esp. how work was divided and how disputes were resolved.
One or more people will discuss how the process of the assignment helps us consider what is feminism.

Posting to your section blog:
One or more people will post for the whole group the text of the flyer with priority to the definition of feminism.
One or more people will post for the whole group the description of the event, audiences, distribution and such. Rationale for the design would be nice too.
Your individual description of group process is not posted to the blog, but printed out and handed in to your TA.

====
MUSIC (Tuesday): Bitch and Animal, albums: Sour Juice and Rhyme (2003), and What's That Smell? (1999)
Wikipedia bio, their website
Bitch's new website

MUSIC (Thursday): Albita Rodriguez, music video "Ta' Bueno Ya" (1997)

Albita Rodriguez-Ta' Bueno Ya

...Albita Rodriguez Ta' Bueno Ya (C) 1997 SONY BMG MUSIC ...
4 min 10 sec -

her Wikipedia bio, her website

And also:
Le Tigre, music video "TKO" (2005)

TKO - Le Tigre

Le Tigre...TKO oh oh !
3 min 22 sec -

their Wikipedia bio, their website

Art Worlds, whose money, whose art?

2008-02-28T12:19:00.007-05:00

Leslie Rankow, right, an art consultant based in Manhattan, discussed a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat with a client at Van de Weghe Fine Art, a gallery in Chelsea.

From the New York Times:
Spending: The Art of Buying Art, With the Help of an Adviser

By Julie Bick, May 27, 2007

Th 28 Feb—Art Worlds, whose money, whose art?
• Webbing: Art Museums/National Gallery of Art
• Webbing: Art Activist/Art in the Public Interest
• Freeland, Ch. 4
• Goldbard, Ch. 3 & 4
• complete work with event group
Tu 4 Mar—Your group's event and definition of feminism—ASS. #2 DUE; presentations

=====
Contrast the Art Worlds, Markets and Money of elite and prestige arts projects analyzed by Freeland with the community cultural development work described by Goldbard

art history // community studies
end products // process, interdisciplinary, wide social impact

===
WHAT'S A POOR ARTIST TO DO?
Wanting in on the Art Worlds -- as artist, as investor, as supporter, as public, as education, as "culture"
Wanting to escape the Art Markets -- how to (not) make money

Museums -- from royal collections and rich people's stuff to public institutions and national, local and community pride

Taste and Priviledge -- class matters: vulgar, popular, mass, marketable, kitsch, reproductions

Public Museums -- national prestige, tribalized collections, civilizing intentions, capitalist accumulation

Philanthropists and Corporations -- taxation, privatization, image and public relations

What should be the mood of a museum visit?
What should be the public of art?
====
Goldbard describes a "Matrix of Practice"

structured learning experiences
public dialogs rather than debates
records of suppressed or denied events
self-created public spaces, institutions, facilities, resources, amenities
the "town artist" -- resident arts

Histories: contrast:
=Official history
=mainstream history
=oral histories
=living memories
=folktales and storytelling

Cultural Identities and Cultural Infrastructures
pp 27-73: casting selves as history makers; alternative economic structures

Goldbard p. 75:
"In contrast to elite arts activity, which asserts the primacy of 'art for art's sake,' community cultural development is undertaken in aid of the larger goals of social transformation and personal liberation. In some cases, arts activity provides a sort of lab or rehersal for social action."

Goldbard, Chap 4, describes the "details" of a particular set of projects, so you can see how these intentions work out in a particular setting.

===
MUSIC:
Zap Mama, "Bandy, Bandy," from Ancestry in Progress (2004), Wikipedia bio
their website

Laurie Anderson, "O Superman" (1981), Wikipedia bio
Official website

Some "Critical Thinking" Maps

2008-02-27T09:13:00.003-05:00

Here are some interesting "Maps" for different meanings of "critical thinking":

What about the DETAILS? asking a google map...

2008-02-27T08:54:00.006-05:00

What about those pesky DETAILS? In class and lecture? Or even in the presidental debates?
What details do we need for deciding, evaluating, action, thinking?
What about "levels of detail, " and "grain of analysis"?
What about synthesis -- bring it together? or putting things in perspective?
Whose "details" are these? What counts as "evidence"?
What information and analysis is TRUSTWORTHY?
Especially if it is either NEW or DIFFERENT, alters one's assumptions, or challenges them?

Think of a Google Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Note the various points of view: Street, Traffic, Satellite, Terrain
How do these differ?
How can you shift what is included and at what grain of detail?
How can you alter perspective and which things matter?
What sorts of "scoping" and "scaling" are involved?

Freewrite:
What does a Google map suggest about the questions of detail and analysis in your estimation?

Some possibly differing assumptions?
=pov Teacher: how can we engage the DETAILS unless the students do the reading and preparation for class? assumes: Details emerge in the course of interactions in which students describe what they understood from the readings and how they might use what they learned.
=pov Some Students maybe? how can we understand the reading unless the teacher lectures in detail about it, so that we can read it AFTER the lecture, or see what we still need to know AFTER a REAL lecture that paraphrases the reading? assumes: Details are pinpointed as important after being summarized by the teacher in lecture; the reading doesn't matter until the teacher lectures on it in detail.

Is it Critical? Does critical thinking mean throwing it away?

2008-02-27T08:11:00.004-05:00

What are your associations with these words?

• Critical thinking
• Critical engagement
• Critique
• Criticism -- note differences in meaning in everyday language where often negative, and in, say, "literary criticism" where it means analysis, evaluation, explanation

Write down some of your associations.

Do you know the term "denaturalizing" What might it mean?
What does it mean for feminists? Why would they care about that?
Denaturalizing -- no longer "taking it for granted"
Uncovering Assumptions -- how do I know what I think until I see what I say?

Opening a space between:
Me and my assumptions -- a space for reflection, analysis, re-vision
Questions and immediate answers -- a space for wondering, complexity, creating new knowledge

When do we need to do these?
Deauthorizing -- when authority is misused; when power need redistribution
Debunking -- when it urgently matters to change NOW

When do we need instead:
To denaturalize WITHOUT deauthorizing or debunking?
To not take something for granted while also not deciding yet what happens instead?
To see how it all works, where the power lies, without knowing how to make it different?
To put things in perspective, to shift things around, to see with new eyes.
To be critical about something so complex it will take a long time to see it and fix it.

Keeping open the space for re-vision -- seeing again -- seeing more -- wondering and building

What about the edgy jokes or outright ridicule that may accompany "critique"?
Enjoying a "critical" edge; seeing the humor in the hierarchies of power; pointing out unfairness with humor or even ridicule.
Creating a sense of urgency; uncovering inequality.
Making friends with whom to work together to make things better: us vs. them?
Does "working together with" some have to mean "working against" others? When?
Trying to find places from which to evaluate what is ethical, to be accountable.

What about public speech and polarization?
Are there really two sides to every question?
Why only as few as two?
Who gets to name what the sides are?
What money, power, alliances, people do they need to be heard, paid attention to?

What are your thoughts here? Freewrite.

How do you locate any readings, discussions, lectures or experiences we've done so far in these concerns?
What do you know, understand, believe about any of these issues?

Where does inspiration, hope, and new energy for change figure in all this?
Where do we need the "details," the nitty-gritty info, the specifics and proposals?
Whose job is it to supply the details? How do we create them together?

Subvertizing

2008-02-23T10:09:00.022-05:00

Tu 26 Feb—Billboard Utilization, Truth in Advertising, Subverts
• Links: See new Post for Subvertizing Links and explore
• Webbing: Art Activist/International Shadows Project Show
• Webbing: explore 5 more sites you choose
• continue work with event group: Ass. 2 MUST BE DONE WITH GROUP, Due 4 March

Links mentioned above:
Subverts
Past Subvertizements
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
Smashing the Image Factory
Fighting Guerrilla Graffiti

Do your own searches too and come to class prepared to share them. Print out a page or two of the sites you find to share around.

Song lyrics for download on PDF: "Are My Hands Clean?"
Are My Hands Clean? Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985. Performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Sweet Honey's own website
Wikipedia bio

I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of
Dupont

Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela Where oil
riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador

In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric
for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse

It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount

Are my hands clean?

Sweet Honey in the Rock

4 min - Jan 6, 2008

...Interview...Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBWWcNBoHx0

=====
Transnational Feminist Explorations

Wikipedia entry: transnational feminism
Affinity Project's link for transnational feminism

For a door into one knowledge world of a particular kind of scholarly marxist feminism concerned with transnational movements for social justice check out this essay online:
Transnational Feminism and the Struggle for Global Justice
Johanna Brenner [from New Politics, vol. 9, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 34, Winter 2003]

=====
From English Professor UMD Martha Nell Smith, whose scholarship and teaching is in Poetry and its Powers:

In the vein of Lily Tomlin, I pass along a video of this spoken word poet, Alix Olson. This is "America's On Sale," which sure seems apt for this election season (and is hilarious, by the way):

Alix Olson - America's On Sale!

2 min - Dec 3, 2006 - (18 ratings)

Sale!...Alix Olson: a red-hot, fire-bellied, feminismo-spewin' volcano. Plus she rhymes.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=epIEnFu4w_o

Olson has an even better one called "Dear Diary" (about breaking up with her country), but I've been unable to locate a YouTube performance of that one.

Both she and Alicia Ostriker are participants in the Split This Rock Poetry Festival (featuring Poems of Provocation & Witness), which will be held in Washington, D.C., March 20-23.

Don't you hear this hammer ring?
I'm gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
- Langston Hughes

To learn more about the Festival, which celebrates our great tradition of poetry of witness and resistance and is an anti-war, visit http://www.splitthisrock.org/.

I hope to see you there!
--mn

--
Martha Nell Smith
Professor of English, Founding Director of MITH
University of Maryland
http://www.mith.umd.edu/mnsmith
Executive Editor and CoordinatorDickinson Electronic Archives
http://emilydickinson.org
301.405.8878 / 301.314.7539 FAX

"If you give us a chance, women can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." - Ann Richards

What can Art Do?

2008-02-20T16:22:00.012-05:00

Th 21 Feb—Processes of Transformation in communities
• Webbing: Art Museums/Hirshhorn
• Webbing: Art Activist/SPARC After Google Search: here
• Goldbard, New Creative Community, Forward, Intro, Notes, Ch. 1 & 2
• continue work with event group

Is it a bit "dry"? How do you cultivate an interest in reading stuff that is:
=new to you?
=addressed to a different audience that might not appear to include you?
=is more detailed or professional or technical than you prefer?
=is nothing you ever would have have picked for yourself?

ACTIVE READING! HOW DO YOU DO THIS?
CHECK OUT THE "HOW TO READ" HANDOUT.
THEN LET'S ADD TO THAT: WEB ACTION!

Judy Baca, founder SPARC
The World Wall
The Great Wall of Los Angeles

art and social justice
What can Art Do?
Goldbard, 13: "Whether in dreams or in daylight, many artists hope our work will awaken conscience and awareness."
14: expressing truths in the language of our own creative imaginations
wish that those in power will be reached by these

"community-based arts work holds great promise because people can bring all they are and all they value to the work: their minds and bodies, their histories and relationships, their deepest meanings and beliefs."

15: "cultural policy"; "cultural development"; cultural democracy"

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange

Feral Arts, Australia

Mothers against Senseless Killing (MASK)

Appalachian Center of Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College

21:
community arts
community animation
community-based arts
cultural work
Participation arts projects

define "community"; "cultural"; "development"

National Arts and Cultural Alliance, Australia

1) Global Proliferation of Mass Media
2) Mass Migrations
3) The Environment
4) Recognition of Cultural Minorities
5) "Culture Wars"
6) Development
7) Globalization and Privatization

Freewrite: choose one of these to write about its effects on your own life

Unifying Principles

====
MUSIC: Mavis Staples, "Eyes on the Prize" from We'll Never Turn Back (Google Music) Wikipedia bio

Urban Bush Women, Wikipedia bio

We discover what feminism is in action, reflection, connection

2008-02-19T12:34:00.007-05:00

This is a picture of a 70's style CR (Consciousness-raising) group in the Women's Liberation Movement of the time. Read this description from the Wikipedia: CR

These were among the activist/theory development groups in which understandings of feminism came and come into being, then and now, for individuals, these groups, and for what bell hooks calls "feminist movement" more generally.

You are about to experience some of the meanings this formation has for feminism historically and currently, as well as get a feel for what activism is about.

Remember, it's the experience that matters most, although the produce has its own importance. We call some of this "feminist process." You will invent, re-invent it in your group!
======

Here are the instructions for Assignment Two:

WMST 250: Women, Art & Culture, Spring 2008
Professor: Katie King
Office: 2101F Woods Hall
Office phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail)
Email: katking@umd.edu
Course blog: http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
(Links to section blogs in Resources on right side)

ASSIGNMENT TWO: What is Feminism?

Imaginative assignment focusing on basic communication skills DUE with printed commentary in class, posted to section blog (and to be presented in section): TUESDAY 4 MARCH

Your second assignment asks you to work with your discussion group to come up with a collective meaning for the term feminism. Trying to come up with such a definition or set of meanings is the whole purpose of this assignment and its most important aspect. You won't fulfill the assignment unless you do this! Such making/discovering your groups' particular answer to the question What is Feminism? will push you to understand feminism as diverse, invested in changing meanings by the people who use it to describe themselves, and intrinsically connected to social action. You fulfill the assignment by:

creating a leaflet and a feminist event

(1) Each discussion group comes up with a leaflet or flyer for a real or imaginary feminist event; in the flyer as part of the copy for the event you find a way to also EXPLICITLY state your group's formal definition of What is feminism? Don't be indirect: have the definition itself in the copy, in complete sentences, formally spelled-out.

(2) Each discussion group should also turn in a printed description of the event advertised by the leaflet. This description should also include (a) what audience the flyer is aimed at; (b) where it would be distributed. The event it describes can be a real feminist event on campus, off campus, or a national event; or you can make up your event to allow maximum possibility for answering the question What is feminism?

(3) Each individual in each group will also individually turn in a printed account of what happened in your group as you-all worked on your project and understandings of feminism. You must say who did what work by name (so learn everyone's names), what work you personally did, and how the group functioned. Be sure to describe how conflict in the group was addressed, and how decisions were made to ensure representation and participation by all. This portion of the grade is not determined by how harmonious the group was, but rather on how detailed and honest the analysis of group process is.

Each group turns in only one leaflet and event description. Nothing has to be as finished as actual flyers would be for distribution, but can be mock-ups, or assemblages as if ready for the last stage of production. However everything should be very neat and ready for presentation to our class as a group. Each individual in each group also turns in their statement about their group as described above.

Your grade will be determined by
(1) the quality of the flyer or leaflet, and how well it addresses What is feminism?
(2) by how well you personally described group process, especially addressing issues of conflict and representation, and how well you know who did what by name, and
(3) by the contribution you personally made to the group.

====
MUSIC: Malvina Reynolds, "It isn't Nice" from Ear to the Ground album (2000)
her Wikipedia bio

YouTube - Malvina Reynolds - No Hole in My Head

Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, & Malvina Reynolds - Woody's Rag ...

Watch video - 2 min 36 sec -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sooNNv9qHg

2008-02-18T19:27:00.001-05:00

YouTube - Shadow Project (1:09)

Shadow Project is an international event that yearly ...

Watch video - 1 min 10 sec -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfSaugsYDDQ

WOMEN in the CITY

February — March, 2008

"Women in the City" is a viral public art exhibition spread throughout the streets of Los Angeles that will start in February 2008.

:Barbara Kruger:

:Jenny Holzer:

Art Activisms in murals, shadows, billboards

2008-02-18T18:11:00.014-05:00

Painterly Visions, Washington DC

The International Shadow Project

Women in the City: viral public art

======
From
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC05/Gussow.htm:

Moving Toward The Center Of Life

We cannot be mere spectators to art and life --
rather we coexist with both

by Alan Gussow

......

"The Shadow Project was first achieved in New York City in August 1982 as 150 people worked through the night placing over 2,500 "shadows" in streets, on curbs and sidewalks at five sites designated as imagined centers of nuclear detonation, including Wall Street, Lincoln Center, Grand Central Terminal, Columbia University and the 59th Street Plaza. Our work received extensive media coverage including brief notice on Japanese television via satellite. l felt what we accomplished was to take an event - the possibility of nuclear holocaust - and discover a language of form accessible to all. Each participant was free to use his or her skills to the fullest and to work as part of a community within a framework of shared understandings. For one brief morning, art in New York functioned as it does among the so-called primitive peoples of the world.

In August 1983, under the direction of Oregon artist Donna Grund Slepack, more than 200 volunteers replicated the New York project by placing thousands of shadows in downtown Portland, setting off a chain reaction of letters, editorials, commentary and debate."

========
========

=history civil disobedience in US (see MUSIC at end Post)
=modern art and transgression, violation of assumptions about art and beauty

Consider Shadow Project.
=why this form of protest? who has access to billboards, how much they cost?
=what does it take to communicate with public? cf. tv ads.

=inadequacy of a legal system designed to protect property not people
=temporary paint vs. permanent and issues public vs. private property
=project with and without permits

Reference:
Donna Grund Slepack: The Shadow Project; from:

HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics
# 20 Activists, Organizers, Progressives, Heroines, Visionaries (1985)
http://www.leftmatrix.com/heresies20.html

p. 89: "Social change is never the result of a single event or the deeds of one individual."
=what is the Nuremberg obligation?
"It is the goal of art and activism to motivate people to question, reflect, and act."

====
MUSIC: Anne Feeney, "Have You Been to Jail for Justice?," from Original Recordings (2004)
http://www.annefeeney.com/Pages/jailforjustice.html
Feeney's website

Judy Collins, "Bread and Roses," from Bread and Roses (1976)

Le Tigre, "Dyke March 2001," from Feminist Sweepstakes (2001)
website

Before we enter the Grade Zone

2008-02-14T11:30:00.006-05:00

Take a deep breath.

No grades yet.

Before we enter the grade zone, let's think about what you've done here for yourself, without grades, with your own sense of what matters and why.

Get out a piece of paper, write down the date, and keep this to look at later.

Yes, you HAD to do this assignment -- it wasn't voluntary, it wasn't something you came up with. But what was there about this assignment that you made special yourself, for yourself? How did you make this assignment YOURS? Write a sentence down about that.

Take out your paper and look it over for a moment. Pretend this is the paper of your dearest friend, someone you are really proud of, someone you really like.

If for any reason you don't have a paper right this minute, pretend you do and do the exercise anyway. And mentally prepare yourself: you are going to be asked to share something from what you've written, so know that as you write. You won't have to share it all, but be sure there is something you are willing to share said.

Now, imagine, you've just finished reading this paper that your dear friend wrote and you want to let them know what you liked the best about the paper. Write down a sentence that says that.

And after reading it, you have some friendly, constructive advice to give your friend too; something that might help when they do another assignment next time around. Write down a sentence or two that says that, in a kindly way.

Okay. Now you are yourself again. Look over the paper and pick out your favorite paragraph. Put a star next to it. It's possible you'll be asked to read this, in lecture or section, so mentally prepare yourself!

Now write down the aspect of the paper you are most proud of. You may be asked to share this, so consider that too. And YOU MUST SAY SOMETHING! You can't say there isn't anything you are proud of!

Now write down a few sentences about why this exercise matters. What is the point of it? Why might it be a good thing to do? Have you done this kind of thing before? What happens when you do it?

Finally, write down why you think we did Assignment One? What was the point of that? What kind of experience did you have with it?

Write down what was the most fun you had with it. Any good stories to tell about it?

============
MUSIC: Evelyn Glennie (her website; Wikipedia bio; Google Music)
Evelyn Glennie is a profoundly deaf woman who is possibly the best percussionist in the world today.

Rich People's Stuff?

2008-02-11T19:16:00.000-05:00

http://www.nmwa.org/
National Museum of Women and the Arts
Wilhelmina Holladay

http://www.nmai.si.edu/
National Museum of the American Indian
George Gustav Heye

http://www.nga.gov/
National Gallery of Art
Andrew W. Mellon

Ways of entering knowledge worlds of art

2008-02-11T18:37:00.001-05:00

What counts as art?

How do we begin to think about this question? How is it different from the question

What is art?

"Counts as" rather than "is"? What does this difference mean?

An introductory class is less about answers than it is about asking good questions, not jumping too quickly to conclusions, but being willing to spend some time and energy in the space of questioning.

We need some words that matter in various ways in various places as entry points. Here are some: what do they mean where? How do you know?

High Art --- Popular Art --- Craft --- Public Art -- Commercial Art --- Outsider Art

Art --- Artifact -- Cultural Property

Culture:

* as a "high art" class distinction
* as something to learn and cultivate
* as the ways of life that hold particular people together
* as public activities and meanings in civic life
* as a property of nations
* other ways to use this word?

From the Oxford English Dictionary: culture, n. (second edition, 1989):

[L. cultivation, tending, in Christian authors, worship]

1. Worship; reverential homage. Obs. rare.

2. a. The action or practice of cultivating the soil; tillage, husbandry; = CULTIVATION 1.

b. Cultivated condition. Obs.

c. concr. A piece of tilled land; a cultivated field. Obs.

3. a. The cultivating or rearing of a plant or crop; = CULTIVATION 2.

b. transf. The rearing or raising of certain animals, such as fish, oysters, bees, etc., or of natural products such as silk. culture pearl = cultured pearl.

c. The artificial development of microscopic organisms, esp. bacteria, in specially prepared media; concr. the product of such culture; a growth or crop of artificially developed bacteria, etc. Also applied to the similar growth of plant and animal cells and tissues, and of whole organs or fragments of them. Also in Comb., as culture-fluid, -tube, etc.; culture medium, a substance, solid or liquid, in or on which micro-organisms, tissues, etc., are cultured.

d. The training of the human body. Obs.

4. fig. The cultivating or development (of the mind, faculties, manners, etc.); improvement or refinement by education and training.

5. a. absol. The training, development, and refinement of mind, tastes, and manners; the condition of being thus trained and refined; the intellectual side of civilization.

Note: With distortion of spelling to indicate affected or vulgar pronunciation. "Culchuh"

b. (with a and pl.) A particular form or type of intellectual development. Also, the civilization, customs, artistic achievements, etc., of a people, esp. at a certain stage of its development or history. (In many contexts, esp. in Sociology, it is not possible to separate this sense from sense 5a.)

c. Phr. the two cultures: see quot. 1956.

d. attrib. and Comb., as culture-condition, -instinct, -monger, etc.; culture-loving ppl. adj.; culture shock: see SHOCK n.³ 4d; culture vulture, a rhyming collocation indicating a person who is voracious for culture.

Also spec. in Anthropol. and Sociol. (In some contexts the meaning shades into an attrib. use of sense 5.)

6. The prosecution with special attention or study of any subject or pursuit; =CULTIVATION 3. (rare.)

Identity by Design: Tradition, Change, and Celebration in Native Women's Dresses
March 24, 2007–August 3, 2008
NMAI on the National Mall, Washington, DC

http://www.nmai.si.edu/

Joy Harjo & Poetic Justice (on iTunes)

The Opening of the National Museum of the American Indian:

Final Revised Version of our Course Syllabus

2008-02-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/teaching/250/resources.html

WOMEN, ART & CULTURE:
Passionate Arts & Politics: Feminism is for Everybody

WMST 250: Introduction to Women's Studies, Spring 2008 UMD
Lecture for Everybody: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2 - 2:50 pm at KEY 0102
Discussion Sections: Either Tuesdays or Thursdays, 12:30 - 1:20pm in various locations
REVISED VERSION

Professor: Katie King
Office: 2101F Woods Hall, University of Maryland, College Park
Katie’s office hours: 3-4pm T & W; some Th by apt.
Office phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail)
Katie's home tel. 301.589.2195, call only 10 am-7 pm
Email: katking@umd.edu
Homepage: http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/

Class Blog at: http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
Teaching Assistants: Maren Cummings (mabcummings@gmail.com)
Carissa Liro-Hudson (calirohu@gmail.com)
Genevieve Page (genevievepage@yahoo.com)
Ana Perez (ana.amperez@gmail.com)
Teaching Researcher: Maria Velazquez (maria.i.velazquez@gmail.com)

Course Description

Women's art, art by women, feminist art, and art activism have been ways women have analyzed and changed everyday life. Art is one of the forms of passionate politics feminists have mobilized to make life better, for themselves and others. In this course we will investigate how artists and activists have asked sometimes hard, sometimes joyful questions about power, gender and sexuality, practices of racialization, nations and languages, abilities and disabilities, religion and meaning and more. We will examine assumptions we and others make about women, art, culture and feminism. We will especially consider how art can reshape possibilities and actualities for everybody. What counts as art? What do we do with public art? What is art activism?

This class is also an introduction to women's studies as an academic field. It functions as a CORE course in the Humanities, and introduces students to knowledge worlds and to academic skills of use in all college classes. Analytic writing and communication and collaborative learning are the intellectual focus of the course. To realize and enrich this focus in addition to twice a week course lecture/discussion time, you will participate in a required small discussion/project group with TAs weekly. In this group you may explore personal connections with the class materials, work together with other students on class projects, discuss readings in greater depth, and talk about resources in the DC area for pursuing your own interests in women, art, culture and feminism. The PhD graduate teaching assistants leading these groups are Maren Cummings, Carissa Liro-Hudson, Genevieve Page, and Ana Perez. Joining them for feminist pedagogies is Maria Velazquez. Make a point of meeting personally with Katie and with Maren, Carissa, Gen, Ana and Maria at some point during the semester. Tell us how the class is working for you, what touches and excites you, how your projects are going. Let us know when you need help, or any special accommodations, the sooner the better.

Folks with disabilities or who need time from class to observe religious holidays, please contact Katie ASAP to make any arrangements necessary. All students please do come to office hours to just talk. I want to get to know you all personally!

We will have a class blog as well as use course mail, so be sure you have access to internet resources, perhaps in labs across campus. Come and talk to me if you are having difficulties getting access to these resources. Plan on visiting our blog site and reading email at the very least twice a week, and not just a few minutes before class.

Did you miss the first day or week of class? Check our blog and http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/teaching/250/late250.html
for important information.
What to do when you miss class: Check our blog and http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/teaching/250/missmore250.html
for instructions.

Required Readings (available at Vertigo Books and on reserve at McKeldin):
For your convenience I have ordered all the course textbooks for purchase. But, remember that while you are required to READ them, you are not required to BUY them. I have also requested them all on reserve at McKeldin Library Reserves (at the Circulation Desk) for any of you to use for 24 hrs at a time. You could read them there or at any library you can get them from, taking good notes; you could xerox parts for yourself; you can share books with each other; and you can buy them anywhere you can find them including online used, or order them individually at the campus Barnes and Noble as you like. So, borrow and share with each other, or find them anyway you can. However, do not wait until the last minute (the night before) to discover one is not available on reserve (it does happen even if I've requested it, and often if someone else is using it), at any bookstore, online, etc. Be sure you have secured access LONG before we are going to read it. Finding a copy to read is part of your job in the class!

I ordered all these books from Vertigo Books, a wonderful independent bookstore located on the edge of campus because I want to support the bookstore and help it to survive in College Park. It is such a contribution to the community life of College Park and our university! When you go there, be sure to sign up for notice of when authors come to talk about their books. Vertigo regularly has exciting events of this sort. The bookstore is on the corner between HW 1 and Knox Rd, across the street from the Cornerstone restaurant: 7346 Baltimore Avenue. The telephone number there is: 301.779.9300. But you need to note that as a small independent bookstore just surviving Vertigo cannot issue refunds or accept returns in the same manner as the mega chain store Barnes & Noble. Their small staff and limited resources simply will not allow them to do so. Supporting them, however, works to counter the large economic consolidations of the publishing industry; it's a way of using your economic power to promote good art political practice. They do not buy back books or make refunds. Returns will receive store credit. Any returns must be made within 15 days of purchase. Returned books must be in saleable condition with proof of purchase.

Here's the list with ISBN numbers to make it easier for you to order them yourselves if you want to do that: any edition of these books is fine:

• Cynthia Freeland. (2001) But is it Art? Oxford 0192853678
• Megan Seely. (2007) Fight Like a Girl, How to be a fearless Feminist. NYU 0814740022
• bell hooks. (2000) Feminism is for Everybody. South End 0896086283
• Octavia Butler. (2004) Kindred. Beacon 0807083690
• Laura E. Perez. (2007) Chicana Art. Duke 0822338688
• Arlene Goldbard. (2006) New Creative Community, the art of cultural development. New Village 0976605457

There are two other wonderful art catalogs I did not order but did put on reserve for those who just get so excited they want to keep going! (You may find these at some of the art venues we will be going to as well....)

• Helena Reckitt & Peggy Phelan. (2006) Art and Feminism. Phaidon 071484702X
• Susan Freedman. (2004) PLOP: Recent projects of the Public Art Fund. Merrell 1858942470

Graded Writing Assignments

Each assignment is created to provide a specific learning experience. Grades matter but not as much as the experience does. Grades will be distributed and papers returned twice during the semester in order to emphasize the learning process itself. But you may come to office hours with Katie or your TA at any time to discuss grades, papers and how you are doing in the class in detail.

1. event analysis, discovering assumptions when surprised: What are my assumptions about art? about feminism?/3-4 pg. paper; DUE IN CLASS THURS 14 FEB (later this will be your first post on your section's blog)
2. discussion group leaflet/event: What is Feminism? DUE WITH PRESENTATION IN CLASS AND ON SECTION BLOG TUES 4 MARCH
3. (3a) partner plan for assignment 3/1 pg flow chart DUE IN CLASS AND ON SECTION BLOG THURS 13 MARCH
4. (3b) paired partner project: Analysis of Art and Everyday Life/8 pg. paper accompanying creative project; DUE IN CLASS AND ON SECTION BLOG TUES 22 APR
5. 5-8 pg. learning analysis; DUE IN CLASS AND ON SECTION BLOG ON LAST DAY TUES 13 MAY

Wondering how grades are determined? What they mean on your paper?

• A work is excellent, unusually creative and/or analytically striking
• B is fine work of high quality, though not as skilled, ambitious, or carefully edited as A
• C is average work fulfilling the assignment; may be hasty, drafted once, showing difficulties with grammar, spelling, word choice
• D work is below average or incomplete; shows many difficulties or can't follow instructions
• F work is not sufficient to pass; unwillingness to do the work, or so many difficulties unable to complete

See http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/teaching/250/grades.html
for more discussion of each grade.

Class Blogs and Coursemail

When you registered for this course the email address that you gave to Testudo will be the place where you will receive announcements for the class on coursemail. If you have not already gotten such coursemail then you are not regularly checking that particular address and are using another email location as your preferred address. YOU ARE REQUIRED to regularly view coursemail, at least twice a week. Any announcements about cancellations due to weather or other considerations, and general class requirements will be sent out on coursemail and you need to see them quickly. So, either make a point of checking THAT email address, or redirect or seek help to redirect this mail to your preferred email address. To get help go to OIT's Help Desk at the Computer Center. Directions, email and phone numbers, hours are all available at our class blog site. The TA for your section may put together a section mail list as well. Check with her to see how to participate appropriately.

The blog for our entire class is located at: http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
This is where graphics, lecture materials and notes, communications and assigment help, and other vital class information and presentations are displayed. This too needs to be regularly checked out. Your assignments will be easier to do if you stay very familiar with this website.

Each section will also have its own blog, and you will post assignments for the course there. This will make sure that in such a large class with many sections your work will not be lost by accident as well as make it possible to do collaborative work. Therefore YOU DO NOT RECIEVE CREDIT FOR ANY ASSIGNMENT UNTIL IT IS POSTED TO YOUR SECTION BLOG. How to do this will be covered in section, but it will mean that you will register with Blogger, the service we will be using. We suggest that when you register you use a nickname of some kind rather than your own full legal name. But this means that you must make sure that your TAs know which nickname is yours so you will get credit for your work. Talk to TAs and Katie if you have any problems getting all this together. We want to help!

Reading, Writing & Web Assignments

NOTE THAT CLASS IS CANCELED ON THE 5TH & 7TH OF FEBRUARY TO ALLOW YOU FLEXIBLE TIME TO VISIT MUSEUMS. NOTE THAT DISCUSSION SECTIONS DO NOT BEGIN UNTIL THE WEEK OF FEBRUARY 11TH – AFTER THE WEEK FOR MUSEUM VISITS.
Readings are of several sorts: some will be discussed in depth in class or section, some are background reading to enrich discussion and class experiences.

AN INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN, ART AND CULTURE
Tu 29 Jan—Getting Started by introducing our Books and Concerns
Th 31 Jan—Prospective Immigrants: Introducing Ourselves as subjects in history
• help with Ass. 1 experiences (see label: Ass. 1)
Tu 5 & Th 7 Feb—FLEX DAYS FOR ASS. #1: visit 4 Art Venues, NO CLASS
Tu 12 Feb—Women, Art, Culture: what counts as art?
• Webbing: Art Museums/National Museum of the American Indian
• Webbing: Artists/Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice
• Look over Freeland, But is it Art? pick one chapter to read carefully
• Choose one other class text, look it over and pick one chapter to read carefully
• How to Read Handout; how to read a syllabus?
• complete info sheet handout & introduce yrself as Subject in History; give TA
Th 14 Feb—Assumptions about Feminism & Art—ASS. #1 DUE

BUT IS IT ART? BILLBOARDS, MURALS AND SHADOWS RESHAPING POSSIBILITIES
Tu 19 Feb—Anyone can do it: activist imagination shapes how we define feminism
• Look over Seely, Fight Like a Girl and read carefully Ch. 1 & App. A
• help with Ass. 2 experiences
• begin work with event group
Th 21 Feb—Processes of Transformation in communities
• Webbing: Art Museums/Hirshhorn
• Webbing: Art Activist/SPARC
• Goldbard, New Creative Community, Forward, Intro, Notes, Ch. 1 & 2
• continue work with event group
Tu 26 Feb—Billboard Utilization, Truth in Advertising, Subverts
• Links: See new Post for Subvertizing Links and explore (available online day before class)
• Webbing: Art Activist/International Shadows Project Show
• Webbing: explore 5 more sites you choose
• continue work with event group
Th 28 Feb—Art Worlds, whose money, whose art?
• Webbing: Art Museums/National Gallery of Art
• Webbing: Art Activist/Art in the Public Interest
• Freeland, Ch. 4
• Goldbard, Ch. 3 & 4
• complete work with event group
Tu 4 Mar—Your group's event and definition of feminism—ASS. #2 DUE; presentations

ANALYSIS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES: EVERYDAY LIFE SEEN WITH NEW EYES
Th 6 Mar— Your group's event and definition of feminism—presentations continued
Tu 11 Mar—Intersecting our various forms of movement, feminists and more
• Read bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody, pp. 1-43
• Freeland, Ch. 3
• Handouts in class
• help with Ass. 3 experiences
Th 13 Mar—Intersectionalities and histories, the matrix of domination—ASS. #3a DUE
• Goldbard, Ch. 5
• Handouts in class
• Read Butler, Kindred over the break
Tu 18 Mar—SPRING BREAK—read Kindred
Th 20 Mar— SPRING BREAK—read Kindred
Tu 25 Mar—Is SF Art? Moving through Time and Making Worlds
• Webbing: Archives/Feminist SF, Fantasy and Utopia
• Seely, Pref., Intro, Ch. 2 & 3
• you should have finished Kindred over the break
Th 27 Mar—Kindred and everyday life, who are we connected to and how?
• you should have finished Kindred over the break
• Look at the art work in Perez, Chicana Art and read about 4 works you choose
Tu 1 Apr—Kindred and violence, what work does it do?
• you should have finished Kindred over the break
• reread Freeland, Ch. 1 on Blood and Beauty
• choose 4 more artworks in Perez to read about
Th 3 Apr—Spirit, Glyphs, and reading feminist scholarship
• Webbing: Art Museums/National Museum of African Art
• Perez, Chicana Art, read Note to the reader, Intro, and Ch 1
• we will talk about how to read scholarly work in particular
• reread How to Read Handout
Tu 8 Apr—Passionate Politics, the personal, the political, the world
• hooks, pp. 44-84
• Seely, Ch. 4 & 5
Th 10 Apr—Is feminism fun? is funny fun? those Guerilla Girls
• Webbing: Art Museums/National Museum of Women and the Arts
• Webbing: Artists/Guerilla Girls
• Freeland, Ch. 5
Tu 15 Apr—Altar, Alter, spirit and feminism in the everyday
• Perez, Ch 3
Th 17 Apr—A feminist sexual politic, feminism is for every body
• Finish hooks
• Seely, Ch. 6
Tu 22 Apr—Your analysis of Everyday Life—Ass. #3b DUE

ARTS, COMMUNITIES, CULTURES, ACTIONS AND SPIRITS
Th 24 Apr—Art and Direct Action, Fight Like a Girl
• Webbing: Feminism, Political Activism/all the links
• finish Seely
Tu 29 Apr—From Generation to Generation
• Webbing: Girls/choose several links
• Goldbard, Ch. 6 & 7
Th 1 May—Name ourselves as liberated free zones
• Perez, Ch. 4
Tu 6 May—Time to Rise and Shine
• Webbing: Women in the Web/choose several links
• Goldbard, 9 & 10
Th 8 May—Heart, Self, Other
• Perez, Ch. 6, 7
Tu 13 May—LAST CLASS—ASS. #4 DUE

Wondering where the class is?

2008-01-31T12:20:00.000-05:00

This is the National Museum of Women and the Arts

You will be going here and to three other places for Assignment 1

WMST 250 with Prof. Katie King does not meet for one week to give you time to do Assignment 1 and go to 4 (yes, 4) Art Museums in the area.
If you just signed up for the class, or missed the first week, or are just figuring out about Assignment 1, go now to Katie King's office, 2101 F, Woods Hall, find the syllabus with explanation of Assignment 1 on her door, and then get off to Museums!

Take a friend, housemate, family member or a class buddy, or go by yourself. Enjoy being in Washington DC, and enjoy exploring art, feminism and all the cultural opportunities we have.

We will meet back here again on TUESDAY 12 FEBRUARY.

You can contact Katie King via email: katking@umd.edu, phone: 301.495.7294 (voice mail), or come to her office. Her office hours are T & W 3:15- 4:15 pm, and Th by appointment.

Have Fun!

===
Here is the info for Assignment 1:
===
http://wac250spr08.blogspot.com/
(Check label "Ass. 1")

WMST 250: Women, Art & Culture, Spring 2008
Professor: Katie King; email: katking@umd.edu
TAs and TR: Maren Cummings (mabcummings@gmail.com); Carissa Liro-Hudson (calirohu@gmail.com); Genevieve Page (genevievepage@yahoo.com); Ana Perez (ana.amperez@gmail.com); Maria Velazquez (maria.i.velazquez@gmail.com)

ASSIGNMENT ONE:
What are my assumptions about Feminism and Art?
Event analysis in which you discover your own assumptions when surprised
3-4 pages printed, DUE in class THURS 14 FEB
(later this will be your first post on your section's blog)

Your first assignment asks you to learn to "read" institutional structures, works of art, events, and displays. It may sound strange to think that anything but words can be read, but think of it as a metaphor, or a kind of playful pretend operation, such as you remember making up as a child. Here we are, near Washington, D.C., a wonderful resource and an exciting place. So your first assignment takes advantage of our location: you will visit at least four art venues (although there are some more possibilities). Be sure to give yourself enough time, a whole day at the NMWA and another day with the other exhibits you choose.

NOTE THAT CLASS IS CANCELED ON THE 5TH & 7TH OF FEBRUARY TO ALLOW YOU FLEXIBLE TIME TO VISIT MUSEUMS. NOTE THAT DISCUSSION SECTIONS DO NOT BEGIN UNTIL THE WEEK OF FEBRUARY 11TH – AFTER THE FLEX WEEK CREATED FOR MUSEUM VISITS.

The point of this assignment is to examine your assumptions about feminism, about art, about women and art. You will discover what your assumptions are when your find yourself startled! That is to say, you will discover them when something surprises you or causes some other emotional reaction (you laugh, you get angry, you feel strongly in some way). People's assumptions are invisible to them until they are shaken up. These museums' sites are extraordinary and will startle your assumptions somehow if you are both honest and savvy. It's your job in this assignment to be sensitive to that happening, to be honest about what assumptions you discover, and to realize how much FUN this shaking up your assumptions can be!

Take notes of: (Make a list. Or several lists.)

• What assumptions about feminism you had (and maybe didn't even know about) which were shaken up by the exhibit itself, information you learned, historical facts, what you saw, felt, believed, whatever. What surprised you?
• What assumptions about art you had which were startled by the exhibit itself, information you learned, historical facts, what you saw, felt, believed, whatever. What surprised you?
• What relations between feminism and art were suggested to you. What were you able to infer about feminism from your visit?

Examine the questions and suggestions below as well: then write up a 3-4 page story and analysis of your visit which includes the information you took in your notes. Include a list of shaken up assumptions in the form: "I assumed that...." Be sure to make an argument about whether this place is or is not feminist and how you know: "This museum is feminist since it does x,y,z and feminism is about a,b,c., therefore it does/doesn't meet this definition of feminism in the follow ways, m,n,o,p."

• SHOW OFF HOW WELL YOU WRITE AND ANALYZE!
• BE PREPARED TO DISCUSS WHAT YOU WROTE IN CLASS ON THE DUE DATE!!
• MAKE A LIST OF YOUR ASSUMPTIONS! BE AS EXPLICIT AS POSSIBLE! Be boring and write them all in this form: "I assumed that...." Don't write down the new information, write down the old assumption. This is actually extremely difficult, but it is the most important part of the assignment, even if it seems silly to you now. For example, you go to the National Museum of Women and the Arts and you notice that the place is just full of pink marble! You catch yourself chuckling, as you suddenly realize that YOU ASSUMED that an institution that promoted women's art would avoid the color pink! You write: "I assumed that a women's museum would avoid the color pink as too comic-book feminine." (Some of your examples will be more profound than this one but even silly ones are okay.) Papers will not be accepted without including a summary list of your assumptions separate & in addition to the text of your paper! (Don't worry if they seem simple or obvious. That tends to be the nature of assumptions. Don't worry if the moment you write them down you disagree with them, or, conversely, if you are prepared to die for them! These reactions too are typical, if different.) Notice, you are not your assumptions!
• MAKE ARGUMENTS WITH SUPPORTING EVIDENCE, DON'T JUST ASSERT OPINIONS! This is the crucial difference between a paper written in high school and a college level paper. For example, you will need to consider at each art venue whether that place is feminist, not feminist, or if perhaps that question is not meaningful there. Just giving your opinion is insufficient, you will need to say how you know anything is feminist, that is, what criteria you use, AND give evidence to support why this is or is not feminist, or give evidence why this question is not meaningful at this location.
• AFTER YOU FINISH YOUR FIRST DRAFT go to the web site for each museum you visited and see what additional information there might enrich your paper. Search on the web and also see Webbing Resources for links.
• WRITE AT LEAST TWO DRAFTS OF YOUR PAPER! You'll find over time that quite short assignments like this one (3-4 pages) actually require more drafts than longer ones. You want this to be a sophisticated essay that shows off your skills in writing analytically and thinking for yourself. One draft is usually insufficient to achieve this standard of craft.

Your grade will be determined by:
(1) the quality of the writing, both analytically and stylistically
(2) how well your willingness to examine your assumptions comes across
(3) your ability to understand and execute directions fully

Papers may be returned, ungraded, for revision and resubmission if:
(1) you do not include a list of assumptions written in the form "I assumed that...."
(2) you do not make arguments with evidence rather than asserting opinions
(3) you do not visit four art sites or otherwise do not follow directions
(This is only likely to happen if your paper is turned in on the due date. If it is turned in later, for any reason, then more likely your grade will reflect these omissions.)

FOUR PLACES TO VISIT (you can get extra credit for checking out others too): Call for directions if you are unsure how to get there. You can take shuttles from UMD to metro locations. Contact Shuttle-UM at 301-314-2255 or 301-314-7269, or visit www.umd.edu/shuttlefor shuttle times and departure locations. All Shuttle-UM buses are "fare-free" - no money is needed to ride! Call 301 or 202.637.7000 for Metrorail/Metrobus route and schedule information; and 202.789.7000 the Washington Tourist Information Center for help finding the museum.

#1: Everyone go to:
The National Museum of Women and the Arts

BE SURE TO SPEND BIG CHUNK OF TIME examining the Permanent Collection.

Try to get a sense of the museum as a whole; what sort of place it is, and what kinds of events and exhibits are located there. Check out the permanent collection. From your observations, what can you infer about feminism? Is this museum feminist? How do you know? What exhibits have been there recently? What's coming up? How did you figure this out? 1250 New York Avenue, N.W.; hours: M-Sat 10 am-5 pm, Sun noon-5 pm; tel. 202.783.5000. At Metro Center Station on the Red, Blue & Orange Lines, get off at 13th St. Exit, turn in the opposite direction that you face coming up escalator and head up 13th St. to New York Ave. 1250 is on the right. Entrance Student Fee: $8; FREE ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF EVERY MONTH.

#1: Everyone go to:
The National Museum of the American Indian
What's your sense of this building as a whole; what sort of place is it, and what kinds of events and exhibits are located here? From your observations, what can you infer about the purpose of various exhibitions? What place does art by women have here and why? How do you know? Is this exhibition feminist? How did you figure this out? Fourth and Independence S.W.; hours: daily 10-5:30; tel. 202.633.1000. At L'Enfant Plaza Station on the Yellow, Green, Orange and Blue Lines, get off at 7th St., Maryland Ave, Smithsonian Museums Exit, and look toward the Capitol Building (East). Head up Maryland Ave. to Independence. The Museum is on the left ahead of you. No fee.

#3 & #4: For the third and fourth venues chose two from among the following:
(extra credit for more than two).

• National Gallery of Art
Fourth and Constitution N.W.; Fri-Sat & Mon-Th 10-5pm; Su 11-6pm; tel. 202.737.4215. No Fee.

• National Museum of African Art
SEE ESPECIALLY "Body of Evidence," on contemporary African art.
950 Independence Ave. S.W.; daily 10-5:30pm; tel. 202.633.1000. No Fee.

• Hirshhorn
SEE ESPECIALLY "Currents: Recent Acquistions."
Seventh and Independencee S.W.; daily 10-5:30; tel. 202.633.1000. No Fee.

• U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
SEE ESPECIALLY "Remember the Children: Daniel's Story."
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place (15th Street) S.W. ; daily 10-5:30; tel. 202.488.0400. Fee: $5.

• Textile Museum
2320 S St. N.W. (near Dupont Circle); Mon-Sat 10-5pm, Su 1-5pm; tel. 202.667.0441. Fee: $5.

• DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution)
SEE ESPECIALLY "New Threads, Quilts and Costumes."
1776 D. St. N.W.; M-F 9:30-4, Sat 9-5 (closed Su); tel. 202.879.3241. No fee.

Considering Ourselves as Subjects in History

2008-01-28T13:23:00.001-05:00

from the World Wall

What world historical events have occurred during your life? when baby, child, teen, now?

Where have you lived, and what sort of events is that part of the world known for? what do you know about its history? what family stories are there about world events?

What is the earliest memory you have of something of historical importance? what were you doing? what did you notice happening with people around you? what did you learn?

What do you think is the most significance set of events of the currrent historical moment? how do you see yourself acting in relations to those events? what do you want to see happening?

When have you worked with others for important changes? what happened? what will happen?

What I learned from student activism

2008-01-28T13:20:00.000-05:00

(1) how political the structures of my life are and have always been,

(2) how to use some of the privileges of education and its institutions to learn about issues of social justice and, even more important, to make connections among these issues,

(3) and especially, how I didn't have to wait for someone else to make things change, but rather that I was an agent of social change, I and many others are connected in that process.