Timeline
For my final project I have decided to chose the option of the timeline. I will focus on the difference in attitudes of female and male authors between the 17th and 20th century. Women were trying to publicly make a point of the gender inequality and unfairness that was present in society. Female authors such as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Christina Rossetti, and Virginia Woolf were either bluntly or symbolically making the problem aware through their works of literature. At the same time there are male authors such as Charles Baudelaire that despite female attempts at overcoming the gender barrier, puts on a negative and degrading attitude towards women, focusing especially on “A Carcass.” My argument would entail how no matter what attempts these women put out there for gender equality, that there is a glass ceiling of men that is trying to refrain them and tackle down their efforts.
I hope to integrate artwork into this and look for paintings done by men that degrade women and those done by women that empower them. I hope this would continue to emphasize my argument and extend it further with a very visualizing effect, especially with it being a timeline. I would surely need to do heavy research and even find more authors that I can add to my timeline besides those we read in class. There’s only about 6 or so weeks left to the semester so I plan to organize all my research and have my plan completely set up in the several up coming weeks. By Thanksgiving weekend I plan to work hard on it and use those few days off to piece together the timeline. I will finalize a few of the the last touches, in the two weeks after that but I plan to be already done at that time, so I’m not completely stressed out with my other classes. I don’t really anticipate having problems unless I don’t follow my predicted time schedule. Need to make sure there is no room for procrastination and hopefully it’ll be smooth sailing.
3 responses so far
Neat idea! I would definitely check out the paintings exhibits at The Met and the MoMA. Frida Kahlo is a very famous female painter from the 1900s, and a lot of her self portraits are extremely empowering for women. Marc Chagall is also a painter from the 20th century and many of his works depict young females or couples– so you may find an interesting piece from a male’s perspective.
This is a great idea, and it will be interesting to see how you contrast the male and female perspectives.
When integrating art, I think a good era to look into within your time period would be the 1940s-1960 when pop art was becoming big and “pin-up” style art started. The idea of this kind of art might be considered objectifying but many women reclaimed this genre of art to make it empowering – a specific artist to check out is Barbara Kruger.
Good luck on your timeline!
You might run into problems trying to say female authors were promoting feminist agendas and male authors were just trying to keep them down. There’s a lot of room for speculation, and also for wrongly interpreting a male author’s purpose in creating certain troubling, but not necessarily oppressive, representations of women. Why not look at a smaller time period and look at specific social movements or developments regarding women that you could argue certain authors were in some way responding to? For instance, if you looked at the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement to the present day and took news reports or historical landmarks during this time (when women got the vote in the US or the first elected female official somewhere or feminist events of the 70s or powerful and influential female figures like mother Teresa), you could link them to issues and themes around women explored by some of our texts.