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DATE
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SUBJECT OF THE MEETING
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DURATION
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Thursday
Nov. 9th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting One: Why Study Literature and Film?
This introductory lecture addresses problems related to the transformations of Western culture and literary sensitivity throughout the ages. Questions raised include:
- What is the relationship between literature and language?
- What is the relationship between literature and metalanguage?
- What is a metanarrative?
- How is literature related to metanarratives in time of a crisis? Of War? Of radical transformations?
- In what sense does literature search for language?
- Towards the canon...
Homework:
Explain the following concepts
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Nov. 18th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Two: Metanarratives, Politics, Femininity
The second introductory lecture is dedicated to the fates of the concept of femininity in the culture. Questions we will try to address include:
- In what sense is femininity a linguistic construct?
- What is phallogocentrism?
- In what sense is the Bible a masculine text?
- What is the difference between the use of the word “decent” in the context of “a decent woman” and a “decent man”?
- How do such phrases demonstrate the marginality of femininity with respect to the centrality of the masculine discourse?
- How does literature seek for the language of the feminine?
- How is our language related to the shape of our world in the context of logocentrism?
Homework:
- Reflect upon the concept of inherited languages
- Reflect upon the idea of logocentrism
- Reflect upon two stereotypes: Mary vs. Eve
- Who was Lilith?
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Nov. 25th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Three: On The Tower of Babel and Politics of Language
The meeting assumes the form of a lecture dedicated to one of the most intriguing and unsettling problems of the history of the Western culture: that of gender politics. Questions raised will include:
- The Confusion of Languages at the Tower of Babel as the Judeo-Christian analog of the Myth of the Androgynes
- Religion as a regulatory system
- Religion as a metanarrative sanctioning a political status quo
- Women in the Bible: from Eve till the New Testament
- Mary as an impossible model for Western Femininity
- Western Patriarchy as rooted in the biblical discourse
- Controlling the Feminine: Towards contemporary political rhetoric
- Rape, courts and woman’s provocation: shaming the victim
- The discourses of masculine authority: why women reading romances “must be whores at heart?” – reading and 18th century women
- “Przewodnik po beletrystyce” (Dla panien): A Book of Recommendations (by men)
- Limits of femininity vs. limitlessness of masculinity
- On the Impossibility of Raping a Whore and Polish Right-Wing/Conservative Politicians
Homework:
- Watch the movie "Shrek"
- What is anorexia nervosa? What is bulimia?
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Dec. 2nd
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Four: The Construction of the Eye: On Capability of Seeing
The debate revolves around the concepts of “cultural” blindness and the necessity of searching for the language of the feminine. The lecture begins with a quotation from the famous prologue to Ellison’s The Invisible Man and develops toward the generalization of the concept of invisibility as the function of the eye. The issues raised will include:
- Invisibility vs. Capacity to See
- Perception as relative to naming
- Why is it sometimes impossible to see (the case of agoraphobia/depression taken for “whims”)
- Logos and Creation
- Naming = calling into existence
- The Breedloves: as the ugly people in Toni Morisson The Bluest Eye
- The Ugliness of Non-Europeans in Robinson Crusoe
- Beauty Canons as Non-Universal
- Eating disorders and death
Homework:
- Think of beauty canons and their impact upon femininity
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Dec. 7th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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MEETINGS WITH THE POLISH ACADEMIC ACCREDITATION COMMISSION
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Dec. 16th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Six: Mothers, Lovers, Whores and Saints – women characters in Literature (on examples relevant to the theses)
This conversatorium will address women characters in texts central to the students’ dissertations, beginning with women in Shakespeare and finishing with the Cyborg. Issues raised in the discussion ought to concern:
- The definition of woman’s self in the context of changing cultural and philosophical trends
- “Frailty, Thy Name is Woman”: Ophelia, Desdemona and Miranda vs. Lady Macbeth;
- “Prologue” and Ann Bradstreet’s poetry: A Poety Spoken For and Demeaned
- Phillys Whitley
- Margaret Fuller
- The Scribbling Women
- Kate Chopin
- Willa Cather
- Confessional Poets
- The Revision of the American Canon as a result of the Culture Wars
- Object/Self/Other
Homework:
- What is „the abject”?
- What is „melancholia”?
- What is ecriture feminine?
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Jan. 4nd
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Seven: Feminity Mis-Represented
This meeting will predominantly be dedicated to the reflection of the traditional concepts of femininity in literature by men and to attempts of problematizing the liquid concept of the feminine as related to the traditional set of gender roles. Issues raised will include:
- Laclos: Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the tragedy of the Marquise de Merteuil
- Daisy Miller: A Leperous Woman?
Homework:
- Rethink the discussions we have had so far and try to formulate your own concept of how femininity is constructed in literary texts
- Can femininity be represented if it remains misdefined?
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Jan. 11th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Eight: On Feminine Space. Family.
In this class we will study in detail issues related to the space of femininity. The issues raised will include:
- The Woman Leaving her Children: Edna Pontellier
- Blanche Du Bois: A Case Study of Rape
- Curly’s Wife/Lennie, George and Candy
- I Love Lucy
Homework
Refresh your memory of the Women’s Rights Movement of the Post-War America
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90 minutes
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Thursday
Nov. 12th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Meeting Nine: Womanhood and Race: Ain’t I a Woman, Too?
Watching the film The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
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90 minutes
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Jan. 18th-25th
room 23
Żytnia 8
11:20-13:00
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Summary of the Course: Womanhood, Family and the Discourse of Political Correctness
Individual Conferences, Credits
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90 minutes
by appointment
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