American Studies Center Aarhus

Ru Paul images

What a Drag!

Representations of Gender and Sexuality

in English and American Studies

Wednesday 24 September 1997

Mødesal 1, Studenternes Hus

University of Aarhus

This one-day seminar is devoted to the discussion of diverse Gender Studies and Feminist theories and approaches and their application to reading literary texts and cultural productions within the larger fields of English and American Studies. The event will be conducted in a seminar format and is open to all students and faculty.

Program

08:25 - 08:30	Welcome
08:30 - 10:00	Nicholas F. Radel, 'The "Heterosexual" Shakespeare: Canonizing Sexuality in Early Modern Drama Criticism'
10:00 - 10:30	Coffee
10:30 - 12:00	Tom Byers, 'Patriotism, Populism, Patriarchy, War: Braveheart in the USA'

12.00 - 13.00	Lunch

13:00 - 14:30	renee hoogland, 'Just Weird or Queer? Elizabeth Bowen and 1930s Sapphic Writing'
14.30 - 15.00	Coffee
15.00 - 16.30	Magdalena J. Zaborowska and Nicholas F. Radel, 'Sleeping with the Enemy: Feminism and Gender Studies'

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Synopses

Nicholas F. Radel, 'The "Heterosexual" Shakespeare: Canonizing Sexuality in Early Modern Drama Criticism'

Nick Radel considers the ways in which canonical hierarchies of early modern drama are implicated in the construction of modern sexual (and gender) regimes and vice versa. He looks primarily at the work of the early sex researcher, Havelock Ellis, whose work on the Mermaid Drama Texts in the late nineteenth century helped revive interest in many of Shakespeare's fellow dramatists. His essay reveals a significant overlap between Ellis's critical language and the discourses of sexuality put forth in his work on 'sexual inversion.'

Tom Byers, 'Patriotism, Populism, Patriarchy, War: Braveheart in the USA'

Tom Byers analyzes Mel Gibson's Oscar-winning Braveheart in its relation to the militia movement and other manifestations of right-wing US populism. The session particularly explores the connections between a nationalist warrior mentality and the reassertion of the prerogatives of the patriarch in a time when these prerogatives seem threatened.

renee hoogland, 'Just Weird or Queer? Elizabeth Bowen and 1930s Sapphic Writing'

renee hoogland explores Elizabeth Bowen's novel, Friends and Relations (1930), and demonstrates the ways in which early twentieth-century female authors succeeded in expressing a kind of 'lesbian' desire that had found its way into fiction long before literary critics theorized Gender and Gay & Lesbian Studies. By taking Bowen's novel as an example, hoogland shows how contemporary theory allows one to re-read older, ostensibly straight texts perversely; that is, from a homoerotic and lesbian perspective.

Magdalena J. Zaborowska and Nicholas F. Radel, 'Sleeping with the Enemy: Feminism and Gender Studies'

Nick Radel and Magdalena Zaborowska discuss the ways in which the rise of Gender Studies has resulted from productive critiques of and has offered new ways of reading Feminist Theory. They look at examples from popular culture and mass media to illustrate the impact of this shift in thinking about and constructing representations of sex, gender, and sexuality.

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The Speakers

Tom Byers (Ph.D. University of Iowa) is Professor of English, University of Louisville, and during the Fall 1997 semester Visiting Fulbright Professor at the Department of English and Center for Gender Studies, University of Aarhus. His research fields include American literature, film and gender studies. Professor Byers' publications include What I Cannot Say: Self, Word and World in Whitman, Stevens and Merwin (1989).

renee c. hoogland (Ph.D., University of Amsterdam, 1991) is Assistant Professor of Lesbian/Cultural Studies at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her research fields include lesbian and gay studies, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and queer theory. Her publications include Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing. (1994) and Lesbian Configurations; (1997). Professor hoogland has also published in Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight, Women's Studies and Culture: A Feminist Introduction and Modern Fiction Studies.

Nicholas F. Radel (Ph. D., Indiana University, Bloomington, 1982) is Professor of English at Furman University, South Carolina, and during the Fall 1997 semester Guest Professor of English Literature at the Department of English, University of Aarhus. His research fields include Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, English and American drama, feminist theory, queer theory, gay and lesbian studies, and cultural studies. Professor Radel has published articles in Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Totalitarian Cultures East and West , Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Quarterly and Theory in Practice: Measure for Measure.

Magdalena J. Zaborowska (Ph.D., University of Oregon) is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Aarhus University. Her research fields include gender studies, cultural studies, ethnicity and immigration. Professor Zaborowska's publications include How We Found America: Reading Gender through East-European Immigrant Narratives (1995) and 'Ethnicity in Exile in Maria Kuncewicz's Writings,' in Something of My Very Own to Say: Americam Women Writers of Polish Descent (forthcoming, 1997).

The American Studies Center Aarhus is grateful to the Department of English and Cekvina, the Center for Gender Studies, for sponsoring this seminar

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