Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe
Professor Tracy Hamilton
Professor Kimberly Morse-Jones
Spring 2008
Hallie - Celeste - Ginny
Tess - Lindsay - Courtney
Images of Women & Men in Western Art
A critical examination of the ways in which women and men, and their relationship, have been represented in Western art from prehistoric times to the present
SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
January 16
Introduction to the seminar
Requirements
DISCUSSION: Adam and Eve / Men and Women
PRELIMINARY READING:
Genesis 1-13
Eve and the Identity of Women (Witcombe)
Elaine Pagels, Adam and Eve and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988)
Chapter 3, "Adam and Eve: Before and After," in Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)
Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, "Seeing Through Art: A Course on Images of Women and Men in Western Art," Transformations 6 (1995): 16-38 (excerpt)
WEEK 2
January 23
Podcast Planning Session: Seminar Room, Pannell, 1:30
Webpage Tutorial: Smith Computer Lab (Room 201, Library), 3:00
PART I: Prehistoric to the Renaissance
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
PART II: 18th Century to the Present
WEEK 10
WEEK 11
WEEK 12
WEEK 13
WEEK 14
WEEK 15
ART HISTORY SENIOR SEMINAR 2008
January 30
1: Stone-Age Women and Men: Hallie Watson
PRELIMINARY READING:
Venus of Willendorf (Witcombe)
Chapters 1 and 2 in Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1987), 1-28
Patricia C. Rice, "Prehistoric Venuses: Symbols of Motherhood or Womanhood?" Journal of Anthropological Research 37 (1982), 402-414
2: Egyptian Queens and Pharaohs: Celeste Wackenhut
PRELIMINARY READING:
Menkaure and His Queen (Witcombe)
Nancy Luomala, "Matrilineal Reinterpretation of Some Egyptian Sacred Cows." In Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, edited by Norma Broude and Mary G. Garrard (New York: Harper & Row, 1982) 19-31
Chapter 10, "Images of Women in Literature and Art," in Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 176-190
February 6
3: Minoan Culture (Matriliny in the Bronze Age): Tess Drahman
PRELIMINARY READING:
Minoan Snake Goddess (Witcombe)
Kenneth Atchity and Elizabeth Wayland Barber, "Greek Princes and Aegean Princesses: The Role of Women in the Homeric Poems," in Critical Essays on Homer, edited by Kenneth Atchity (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), 15-36
4: Nudity in Classical Greece: Courtney Culbreth
PRELIMINARY READING:
Larissa Bonfante, "Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art," American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989): 543-570
Chapter 4, "Nudity in Greek Culture," in Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Eye, Art, and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (typescript)
February 13
5: Maenads and Satyrs: Lindsay Rice
PRELIMINARY READING:
Lissarraque, François, "The Sexual Life of Satyrs" in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World edited by David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1990), 53-81
Sheila McNally, "The Maenad in Early Greek Art" in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers edited by John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984), 107-141
6: The Apotropaic Phallus: Ginny Moncure
PRELIMINARY READING:
Catherine Johns, "The Phallus and the Evil Eye" in Sex or Symbol: Erotic Images of Greece and Rome (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 62ff.
February 20
7: Amazons: Courtney Culbreth
PRELIMINARY READING:
Elaine Fantham and Helene P Foley, "Amazons: Women in Control," in Women in the Classical World: Image and Text (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 129-134
William Blake Tyrrell, Amazons: A Study in Athenian Mythmaking (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)
8: Mary, Eve, and Medieval Women: Hallie Watson
PRELIMINARY READING:
Chapter 3, "Eve and Mary: Conflicting Images of Medieval Woman" in Henry Kraus, The Living Theatre of Medieval Art (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. 1967), 41-62
Chapter 4, "Eve and Mary," in Frances and Joseph Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Harper & Row, 1978)
Chapter 7: "Woman on a Pedestal: Courtly Love," in Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
John A. Nichol, "Female Nudity and Sexuality in Medieval Art" in New Images of Medieval Women: Essays Toward a Cultural Anthropology edited by Edelgard E. DuBruck (Lewiston: Edward Mellen Press, 1989), 165-181
February 27
9: Renaissance Women and Men: Tess Drahman
PRELIMINARY READING:
Margaret King, "The Woman of the Renaissance" in Renaissance Characters edited by Eugenio Garin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 207-249
10: Woman as Sex Object: Celeste Wackenhut
PRELIMINARY READING:
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin, 1972, 1986) 45-64
Mary Pardo, "Artifice as Seduction in Titian" in Sexuality & Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images edited by James Grantham Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 55-89
Patricia Simons, "Women in Frames: the Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture," History Workshop 25 (1988): 4-30
March 5
11: The Threat of Women: Ginny Moncure
PRELIMINARY READING:
Bernadine Barnes, "Heroines and Worthy Women" in Eva/Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints, H. Diane Russell, exhibition catalogue (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1990), 29-73
Elena Ciletti, "Patriarchal Ideology in the Renaissance Iconography of Judith" in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance edited by Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 35-70
Susan L. Smith, The Power of Women : A Topos in Medieval Art and Literature (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)
Anne L. Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of European Witch Hunts (San Francisco: Pandora, 1994)
Dale Hoak, "Witch-Hunting and Women in the Art of the Renaissance," History Today (1981): 22-26
Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (1486). Translation by Montague Summers (New York: Dover, 1971). See excerpt
12: Propositioning Virtue, and Rape: Lindsay Rice
PRELIMINARY READING:
Margaret D. Carroll, "The Erotics of Absolutism: Rubens and the Mystification of Sexual Violence," Representations 25 (1989): 3-10
Frima Fox Hofrichter, "Judith Leyster's Proposition - Between Virtue and Vice," [1975] in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany edited by Norma Broude and Mary G. Garrard (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 174-179
Wayne E. Franits, Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
WEEK 9
SPRING BREAK
March 19
13: Voyeurs and Immorality: Ginny Moncure
PRELIMINARY READING:
Mirjam Westen, "The Woman on a Swing and the Sensuous Voyeur: Passion and Voyeurism in French Rococo" in From Sappho to De Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality edited by Jan Bremmer (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 69-80
Sheriff, Mary D. Fragonard: Art and Eroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
Donald Posner, "The Swinging Women of Watteau and Fragonard," Art Bulletin 69 (1982): 75-88
14: Mothers and Female Sexuality: Hallie Watson
PRELIMINARY READING:
Carol Duncan, "Happy Mothers and Other Ideas in Eighteenth-Century French Art" in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany edited by Norma Broude and Mary G. Garrard (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 201-217
Mary Sheriff, "Fragonard's Erotic Mothers and the Politics of Reproduction" in Eroticism and the Body Politic edited by Lynn Hunt (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 14-40
March 26
15: Neoclassicism and Male Virtues: Celeste Wackenhut
PRELIMINARY READING:
Natalie Boymel Kampen, "The Muted Other: Gender and Morality in Augustan Rome and Eighteenth-Century Europe," [1988] in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 161-168
Madelyn Gutwirth, The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (New Brunswick. N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992)
16: Orientalism and the Sexual Slave: Lindsay Rice
PRELIMINARY READING:
Chapter 3, "Narratives of the Female Body: The Greek Slave," in Joy S. Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)
Alev Lytle Croutier, Harem: The World Behind the Veil (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989)
April 2
17: Nudes, Bathers, and Prostitutes: Courtney Culbreth
PRELIMINARY READING:
Eunice Lipton, "Degas's Bathers: The Case for Realism," Arts Magazine 54 (1980): 94-97
Norma Broude, "Edgar Degas and French Feminism, ca. 1880" [1988] in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 271-289
Hollis Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991)
Charles Bernheimer, "Degas's Brothels: Voyeurism and Ideology," Representations 20 (1987): 158-186
Linda Nochlin, "Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art" in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in the Erotic Arts, 1730-1970 edited by Thomas Hess and Linda Nochlin (London: Newsweek, 1973), 8-15
Marcia Pointon, Naked Authority: The Body in Western Painting, 1830-1908 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
18: The Femme Fatale and the (continuing) Threat of Women: Ginny Moncure
PRELIMINARY READING:
Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
Martha Kingsbury, "The Femme Fatale and Her Sisters" in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in the Erotic Arts. 1730-1970 edited by Thomas Hess and Linda Nochlin (London: Newsweek. 1973), 182-205
Nina Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982)
Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1983)
April 9
19: Transformations: Metamorphic Women - Surreal Men: Hallie Watson
PRELIMINARY READING:
Carol Duncan, "Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth-Century Vanguard Painting" [1973] in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany edited by Norma Broude and Mary G. Garrard (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 293-305
20: The Fetishized Female: Tess Drahman
PRELIMINARY READING:
Gill Saunders, The Nude: A New Perspective (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 71-74
April 16
21: Women Artists: Female Iconography: Celeste Wackenhut
PRELIMINARY READING:
Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1990), 297ff
Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" [1971] in Women, Art, and Power, and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 145-178
Hilary Robinson, Visibly Female: Feminism and Art (New York: Universe Books, 1988)
Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement 1970-1985 edited by Rozsica Parker and Griselda Pollock (London: Pandora, 1987)
22: Images of Women and Men in Contemporary Art and the Media: Lindsay Rice
PRELIMINARY READING:
Valerie Steele, "Clothing and Sexuality" in Men and Women: Dressing the Part edited by Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 42-63
Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991), 169-174, 190-191
Rosemary Betterton, Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media (New York: Pandora, 1987)
Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (New York: Viking, 1978)
April 23
23: Images of Women and Men Today: Courtney Culbreth
PRELIMINARY READING:
24: New Images of Women and Men: Tess Drahman
PRELIMINARY READING: