Women and the Arts

Catalog description

In this course, we will explore the role of women as artists, spectators, and representations in the visual, literary, and performing arts. Our primary category of analysis in Women & the Arts is gender, the socially constructed and historically variable understanding of what it means to be a woman or man, but we will further consider how this category interacts with race, class, and sexuality in the arts. Likewise, a central idea in our class is that knowledge and images conveyed through artistic texts are not neutral; rather, the arts socialize and discipline us even as they entertain and enlighten us.