With Mrs. Behn we turn a very important corner on the road. We leave behind, shut up in their parks among their folios, those solitary great ladies who wrote without audience or criticism, for their own delight alone. We come… Read More ›
Feminism
Analysis of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine
One of the things I wanted very much to do, in Cloud Nine . . . was to write a play about sexual politics that would not just be a woman’s thing. I felt there were quite a few women’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
Whether one reads A Doll’s House as a technical revolution in modern theater, the modern tragedy, the first feminist play since the Greeks, a Hegelian allegory of the spirit’s historical evolution, or a Kierkegaardian leap from aesthetic into ethical life,… Read More ›
Analysis of Doris Lessing’s Stories
Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) engaged in a lifelong process of self-education, becoming involved with all the important intellectual and political movements of the twentieth century: Freudian and Jungian psychology, Marxism, feminism, existentialism, mysticism, sociobiology, and speculative… Read More ›
Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Stories
One of Margaret Atwood’s (born November 18, 1939) central themes is storytelling itself, and most of her fiction relates to that theme in some way. The short-story collections each focus on key issues. Dancing Girls is primarily concerned with otherness,… Read More ›
Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Novels
From the appearance of her first novel in 1915, Virginia Woolf’s work was received with respect—an important point, since she was extremely sensitive to criticism. Descendant of a distinguished literary family, member of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group, herself an experienced… Read More ›
Analysis of Mary Shelley’s Novels
Shelley’s literary reputation rests solely on her first novel, Frankenstein. Her six other novels, which are of uneven quality, are very difficult indeed to find, even in the largest libraries. Nevertheless, Mary Shelley lays claim to a dazzling array of… Read More ›
Analysis of Doris Lessing’s Novels
Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) has been one of the most widely read and influential British novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Her works have been translated into many languages and have inspired critical attention… Read More ›
Analysis of Wendy Wasserstein’s Plays
Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006) has been hailed as the foremost theatrical chronicler of the lives of women of her generation. Her plays, steeped in her unique brand of humor, are moving, sometimes wrenching explorations of… Read More ›
Analysis of Ntozake Shange’s Plays
Ntozake Shange’s (October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018) work embodies a rich confusion of genres and all the contradictions inherent in a world in which violence and oppression polarize life and art. These polarizations in Shange’s work both contribute… Read More ›
Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s Plays
Henrik Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) is widely acknowledged as the father of modern drama, but his significance in literature and history overshadows the influence of his revolutionary stage techniques and his iconoclastic concept of the theater…. Read More ›
Analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s Novels
Analysis Simone de Beauvoir’s novels are grounded in her training as a philosopher and in her sociological and feminist concerns. She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal, and The Mandarins all revolve around the questions… Read More ›
Gay and Lesbian Novels and Novelists
Homosexuality, traditionally regarded as a disease or perversion by church, state, and society, was rigorously denounced and condemned by those same institutions. In the case of the arts and literature, works featuring homoeroticism or gays and lesbians as characters were… Read More ›
Feminist Novels and Novelists
Feminist long fiction features female characters whose quest for self-agency leads to conflict with a traditionally masculinist and patriarchal society. These novels have been harshly criticized and dismissed—and even ridiculed—for their nontraditional female characters. Feminist ideology in the Western world… Read More ›
Queer Theory
Since the late 1980s, theories of Gender and Sexuality have redefined how we think about culture and society. They have raised new questions about the construction of the gendered and sexualized subject and put forward radical new ideas about PERFORMANCE… Read More ›
Girlhood Studies
With the advent of sex‐positive third‐wave feminism in the 1990s, notions of femininity and feminism shift, in reaction to the growth of fields like masculinities and transgender studies, but also in response to the activism of women in the previous… Read More ›
Gay/Lesbian Studies
Gay/lesbian studies looks at the kinds of social structures and social constructs which define our ideas about sexuality as act and sexuality as identity. As an academic field, gay/lesbian studies looks at how notions of homosexuality have historically been defined… Read More ›
Postfeminism and Its Entanglement with the Fourth Wave
The concept of postfeminism as associated with a time after, or even reaction against, feminism, can in part be attributed to Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash (1992). Faludi’s analysis of discussions of feminism in the media suggested that the term ‘postfeminism’… Read More ›
Feminist Science Studies
Feminist Science Studies emerged in the mid-1980s as a response to the masculinist paradigms of participation and epistemology in the natural sciences. A survey of initial efforts in the area reveals a schism between the women-in-science movement and feminist critiques… Read More ›
Trinh T. Minh-ha and Film Criticism
Born Vietnam in 1953, Trinh T. Minh-ha came to the United States, studied music and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, and she studied ethnomusicology in France. Her later experience as a researcher in Senegal led directly to her… Read More ›