120691 PS Proseminar Cultural and Media Studies (2016S)

In their book The Madwoman in the Attic, Gilbert and Gubar use the term patriarchal poetry to talk about the dominance of male writing in Western culture and the implied link between creativity, writing and male sexuality.

This course will focus on representations of female weavers, seamstresses and spinners in Western culture, and we will ask ourselves if their production of text(iles) with threads and needles can be seen as an alternative to the male production of texts with pen and paper. We will also investigate whether the female weaver subordinates herself to patriarchal culture by confirming his-story, or whether she tells her own story.

We will start our discussion of the image of the female weaver with Greek mythology, explore how it has been employed in fairy tales, in Victorian and postmodern literature, as well as in art and in film.

All texts will be situated in their historical and cultural context and will be analysed with the help of feminist theories and other theoretical texts concentrating on the question of female creativity and writing.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to feminist (and psychoanalytic) theories and to show them how they can use these theories to analyse literature, art and films.