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Rhapsodica's picture

Hmm... although I tend to

Hmm... although I tend to be a little wary of the validity of online quizzes, especially ones composed of so few questions, I find the results of this one to be quite interesting. Apparently, I am bell hooks... which seems fitting, since Anne recommended that I look into womanist theology (the basis of which seems quite similar to her ideas) as a way of starting to explore the questions I raised in my web paper. In addition, I realized that I read an article by bell hooks a few weeks ago in my education class... which was more about education than feminism, as can be expected, but towards the end of this particular excerpt, she does talk about how, to her, "the feminist classroom was the one space where students could raise critical questions about pedagogical process," so... I think her readings might be quite relevant to the concepts we're exploring, as well as perhaps... how we're going about exploring them?

I also want to add my support to those who are asking for more Cixous-style readings as opposed to those in Spivak's style. I have nothing against Spivak, and believe that texts such as hers are definitely important for us to study, but I personally find Cixous' ideas and ways of approaching them to be more interesting & relatable... and would like to read more about the relationships between feminism, identity, the body, sexuality, etc.

I like the idea of reading some works belonging to the feminist literary canon (ie. Jane Eyre), partially because I'm not familiar with them and would like to be, but also because I think it would be interesting to examine them ourselves after reading about how other critics have interpreted them.

I also really love the idea of reading feminist poetry -- that was one of the options on Anne's list of ideas that seemed especially exciting to me. In addition to that idea, I'd like to also suggest looking at more feminist art. I personally found it interesting to start off the course looking at the Sojourner Truth plate (and The Dinner Party in general), and would like to explore more feminist art... perhaps corresponding with time periods of literature, etc. that we end up reading from?

If art does sound like a good idea to anyone... I had coffee this afternoon with a friend who graduated from BMC in 2006, and she gave me a list of feminist artists that she thought might be interesting to consider... though I haven't really had a chance to look into many of them yet. One artist she mentioned that I am slightly familiar with is Cindy Sherman, some of whose work can be seen here... and an author she suggested is Linda Nochlin, one of whose articles can be found here (I haven't read the whole thing, but the bits I've picked up do seem quite relevant to some of our discussions). I can type up the rest of the list if anyone is interested.

So, basically, I guess I'd like to head in the more artsy-literary-ish direction. I still think we should focus on the political aspects of feminism, definitely, but that it would be interesting to do so while looking at different kinds of texts (or even things that aren't texts, like photographs and other works of art, or films).

There were other ideas mentioned in this thread that I liked as well, and I would elaborate more if I weren't so tired at the moment, but... suffice it to say that I would not be disappointed to go in any of the directions people have suggested so far!

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