120032 PS Interdisciplinary Course (501) = Proseminar Cultural Studies (2010W)

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. Furthermore, we will 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, and then 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. We will, for example, use Julia Kristeva's concepts of the semiotic and the symbolic, as well as other theoretical texts concentrating on the question of female creativity and writing.