Art 210: Gender and Sexuality in Modern American Art Spring 2005 • T/Th 9:45-11:00 • FA M140
Instructor: Elizabeth Lee
Email: leee@wabash.edu
Office phone: 361-6241
Office location: Fine Arts A105
Office hours: call/email for an appointment or stop by
Course schedule
Th, 1/13: Introduction to course
Tu, 1/18: Setting the stage – gender and sexuality in mid-nineteenth-century America. Read Joy Kasson, “Narratives of the Female Body: The Greek Slave.” As background for next class, read Michael Kimmel, “Playing for Keeps: Masculinity as Recreation and the Re-creation of Masculinity” (from Manhood in America).
The 1890s
Th, 1/20: Thomas Eakins. Read Michael Hatt, “Muscles, Morals, Mind: the Male Body in Thomas Eakins’ Salutat” and Martin Berger, “Manly Associations” (from Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood).
Tu, 1/25: Eakins, cont’d. Read Bridget L. Goodbody, “The Present Opprobrium of Surgery : The Agnew Clinic and Nineteenth-Century Representations of Cancerous Female Breasts” and excerpt from Women on the Verge catalogue.
Th, 1/27: Discuss research projects. Winslow Homer. Read Jules Prown, “Winslow Homer in his Art.”
Tu, 2/1: Theodore Roosevelt and the American West. Read Sarah Watts, excerpt from Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire.
Th, 2/3: Urban male culture in the late nineteenth century – Stanford White and Augustus Saint-Gaudens at Madison Square Garden. Read Joseph Gustaitus, “The Lady of the Tower” and Michael Kimmel, “A Room of One’s Own: Socializing the New Man” (from Manhood in America).
Tu, 2/8: Women in the Gilded Age. Read Kathleen Pyne, “Evolutionary Typology and the American Woman in the Work of Thomas Dewing” and Bailey Van Hook, “Ideal and Real” (from Angels of Art: Women and Art in American Society, 1876-1914).
Th, 2/10: The Vagina Monologues. Read excerpt from Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Annoted bibliographies due.
*Sunday, February 13 @ 7:30? The Vagina Monologues – location TBA (attendance required)
Tu, 2/15: Chicago World’s Fair. Read Judy Sund, “Columbus and Columbia: Man of Genius Meets Generic Woman, Chicago, 1893” and Robert Rydell, “A Cultural Frankenstein? The Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.”
Th, 2/17: No class (College Art Association conference in Atlanta)
Tu, 2/22: Discussion with Michael Kimmel. First take-home exam due.
*8pm? – Public lecture by Michael Kimmel – location TBA (attendance required)
The 1920s & ‘30s
Th, 2/24: Michael Kimmel, “Muscles, Money and the M-F Test: Measuring Masculinity Between the Wars” (from Manhood in America) and Robert Haywood, “George Bellows’s Stag at Sharkey’s: Boxing, Violence and Male Identity”
*Monday, February 28 from 8-9:30pm Kinsey show opening (attendance required)
Tu, 3/1: Women at work – showgirls. Read Kathleen Spies, “‘Girls and Gags: Sexual Display and Humor in Reginald Marsh’s Burlesque Images” and Vivien Green Fryd, “Edward Hopper’s ‘Girlie Show’: Who is the Silent Partner?”
Th, 3/3: Women at work – office girls. Read Ellen Wiley Todd, “The Question of Difference: Isabel Bishop’s Deferential Office Girls.”
Tu, 3/8 & Th, 3/10 – Spring break!
Tu, 3/15: Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz. Read Anna Chave, “O’Keeffe and the Masculine Gaze” and Vivien Green Freed, “The Sexualization of Georgia O’Keeffe As Woman and Artist” (from Art and the Crisis of Marriage.)
Th, 3/17: Paul Cadmus, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth. Read Richard Meyer, “A Different American Scene: Paul Cadmus and the Satire of Sexuality” (from Outlaw Representation) and Randall R. Griffey, “Encoding the Homoerotic: Marsden Hartley’s Late Figure Paintings” (from Marsden Hartley, 1877-1943.
Friday, March 18 by 4:30 pm – Research papers due in my office
Tu, 3/22: Gay New York – Greenwich Village and Harlem. Read George Chauncey, excerpt from Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. View and discuss Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston.
Th, 3/24: Regionalist women. Read excerpt from James Dennis, Renegade Regionalists.
Tu, 3/29: Research presentations in gallery
Th, 3/31: Research presentations in gallery
*Friday, April 1 from 12-1 – Lunch and research presentations in the gallery – open
to the campus community (note: Kinsey show closes on Monday, April 4)
The 1950s & ‘60s
Tu, 4/5: Mid-century masculinity. Read Michael Kimmel, “‘Temporary About Myself’: White Collar Conformists and Suburban Playboys, 1945-1960” (from Manhood in America); on Jackson Pollock read Ellen Landau, “The Wild One” (from Jackson Pollock).
Th, 4/7: Pollock, cont’d. Read Anna Chave, “Pollock and Krasner: Script and Postscript” and Anne M. Wagner, “Fictions: Krasner’s Presence, Pollock’s Absence” (from Significant Others).
Second take-home exam due.
Tu, 4/12: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Read Jonathan Katz, “The Art of Code: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.”
Th, 4/14: Pin-up girls. Read essays from Vargas girls catalogue (live link on Blackboard) by Maureen Honey and Andrea Dworkin; reading on Playboy by Barbara Coleman?
Tu, 4/19: Pop art – Wesselmann. Read David McCarthy, “Tom Wesselmann and the Americanization of the Nude.”
Th, 4/21: Pop art – Warhol. Read Michael Moon, “Screen Memories, or, Pop Comes From the Outside: Warol and Queer Childhood” and Jonathan Flatley, “Warhol Gives Good Face: Publicity and the Politics of Prosopopoeia” (both from Pop Out: Queer Warhol)
The 21st Century
Tu, 4/26: Students’s choice (possible topic: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy)
Th, 4/28: Students’s choice (possible topic: Sex in the City)
FINAL EXAM: Tuesday, May 3 @ 9:00am
Attendance policy: Students are expected to attend class regularly and to arrive on time. Up to three unexcused absences are allowed during the semester – any absence after that will cost a letter grade in the final grade for the course. For every three latenesses (defined as anytime after class has started), a student will receive one unexcused absence. Excused absences must be documented (ie, a Dean’s excuse or doctor’s note) and it is the student’s responsibility to make sure the professor receives the excuse.
Assignments: Readings should be completed prior to the day for which they’re assigned. Each student is required to send me two questions for class discussion about the reading by email before each class (by 9am that morning). Students are allowed three days “off” from submitting questions (although you will still be responsible for the reading) during the semester. There will be two essay based take-home exams and a final exam for the course. Each student is also responsible for writing a 10-12 page research paper on one of the works of art in the Kinsey exhibit. A detailed description of the assignment will be provided early on in the semester – due dates for the annotated bibliography, the final paper and individual presentations, however, are included above.
Here’s how the parts add up: Three exams @ 20% each (total = 60%); participation and daily questions @ 15% (I will meet with students individually during the semester to discuss your participation grade in the course); research paper and presentation @ 25%.