scholarly journals Let It Pass: Changing the Subject, Once Again

PMLA ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela L. Caughie
Keyword(s):  
Women's Writing ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Student Responses ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Descriptive Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pedagogical Relation ◽  
Performative Pedagogy ◽  
Privileged Site ◽  
Women’S Writing

The recent controversial transformation of the humanities is due partly to the institutional acknowledgment of diversity and partly to critics' efforts to theorize difference and to destabilize the categories of identity on which programs devoted to the study of diversity are founded. This double agenda creates anxiety over the positions we find ourselves in as scholars and teachers in the newly configured university. My essay offers a means of working through this tension: a performative pedagogy based on a descriptive theory of the dynamics of passing. I exemplify this dynamic by reading debates on white feminists' appropriation of black women's writing, comparing student responses to the 1934 film Imitation of Life, and discussing Fannie Hurst's novel on which the film is based. I posit the pedagogical relation as the privileged site where passing, which is inevitable in any subject position, can be enacted and made explicit.

scholarly journals Becoming articulate: women writing on the visual arts in Renaissance Italy

1970 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 251-272
Author(s):  
Mary Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Women Writing ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors ◽  
Women’S Writing

Despite continuing interest in the contribution made by women to the material culture of Renaissance Italy, little attention has been devoted to their writings on the subject, although there is much material, both informal and intended for publication. This paper will attempt a preliminary charting of the area, by selecting letters and poems from c1450-1580 by a range of women which speak of actual or fictional artifacts. Although these are predominantly from those categories of objects which especially appealed to women in the period, namely small devotional works, textiles and portraits, the primary aim will not be to argue for a specifically feminine taste influenced by social and cultural factors. Rather, the paper will try to place women’s writing within the context of a developing critical language for discussing the art of which at least some women could be aware. Three broad phases will be identified within this evolving discourse.

Authorship, ‘Ghost-filled’ Islands and the Haunting Feminine: Contemporary Scottish Female Gothic

2017 ◽  
pp. 222-235
Author(s):  
Monica Germanà
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Female Gothic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Women’S Writing

While scholars are certainly indebted to Ellen Moers’s pioneering work on women’s writing, it would be difficult to agree, with almost four decades of Gothic criticism behind us, that ‘Female Gothic is easily defined’ (1977: 90). The topic has been the subject of contested definitions and critical revisions informed by both the contentious boundaries of the critical category in question, and the changing perspectives in feminist and gender studies (Fitzgerald 2009). While the link between Female Gothic and the biological sex of its authors has been frequently challenged, in one of the most recent works, we are also reminded that ‘Gothic and feminist categories now demand a self-criticism with respect to their totalising gestures and assumptions’ (Brabon and Genz 2007: 7).

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