Week of april_26th

Editor's Notes

• #46: Example: employer can pay women less for performing same work as a man simply by giving her a different job title.
• #49: Feminists don’t deny biological differences; however, they don’t agree that differences in physical size, shape, and body chemistry make men naturally superior to women. more intelligent more logical better leaders
• #59: Men (either consciously or unconsciously) have oppressed women, allowing them little or no voice in the political, social, or economic issues of their society;
• #61: OTHER: an unnatural or deviant being Men, in effect, have made women the “nonsignificant Other.” Women have been marginalized by the dominant male culture.
• #67: men’s voices continued to articulate and determine the social role and cultural and personal significance of women.
• #68: She believed women should have a voice in the public arena alongside men.
• #69: However, women were still lacked the equality of men
• #70: British scholar and teacher Her work Laid foundation for present-day feminist criticism. Woolf’s symbol of the solitude and autonomy needed to seclude ones’ self from the world and its social constraints in order to find time to think and write. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s sister dies alone without any acknowledgement of her personal genius. Even her grave does not bear her name because she is buried in an unmarked grave simply because she is female.
• #71: British scholar and teacher Her work Laid foundation for present-day feminist criticism. Woolf’s symbol of the solitude and autonomy needed to seclude ones’ self from the world and its social constraints in order to find time to think and write. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s sister dies alone without any acknowledgement of her personal genius. Even her grave does not bear her name because she is buried in an unmarked grave simply because she is female.
• #72: British scholar and teacher Her work Laid foundation for present-day feminist criticism. Woolf’s symbol of the solitude and autonomy needed to seclude ones’ self from the world and its social constraints in order to find time to think and write. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s sister dies alone without any acknowledgement of her personal genius. Even her grave does not bear her name because she is buried in an unmarked grave simply because she is female.
• #73: Unfortunately, the Great Depression of the 30s and WWII drew the focus away from such matters and delayed the development of such feminist ideology.
• #74: French writer The OTHER: an object whose existence is defined and interpreted by the male, the dominant being in society.
• #75: Beauvior insists that women must see themselves as autonomous beings. They must reject the societal constructs that men are the subject or the absolute and that women are the Other. Embedded in this assumption is the suppostition that males have power and define cultureal terms and roles. Accordingly, women must define themselves outside the present social construct and reject being labeled as the Other.
• #76: With the advent of the 1960s and its political activism and social concerns, feminist issues found new voices, and prominent among them is Kate Millet. With her publication of Sexual Politics in ’69, a new wave of feminism begins. She was one of the first feminists to challenge the social ideological characteristics of both the male and the female.
• #77: She examines works of D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Jean Genet and argues that even these “liberal” modern writers still perpetuate the sexual stereotypes by portraying male power and domination as natural and desirable. Stereotypical Criticism
• #78: Conforming to these prescribed sex roles dictated by society is what she calls “Sexual Politics”
• #79: Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• #80: Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• #81: Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• #84: Chopin: American archetypal, rediscovered feminist text Lessing: England Throughout the universities, readers turned their attention to historical and current works authored by women. Simultaneously, works that attempted to define the feminine imagination, to categorize and explain female literary history, and to attempt to define the female aesthetic or concept of beauty became the focus of feminist critics.
• #85: Showalter is the dominating voice of fem. Crit. Throughout the 80s
• #86: Writers accepted the prevailing social constructs of their day on the role and therefore the definition of women
• #87: Stereotypical criticism
• #88: Mysogyny: term Showalter uses to describe the male hatred of women.
• #90: Example: Olive Schreiner, a feminist novelist who wrote around the turn of the century Showalter doesn’t consider her an excellent literary artist (her novels are “depressing and claustrophobic”), but does point out that she influenced later writers such as Doris Lessing. Points out that these three women authors Susan Warner E.D.N. Southworth Mary E. Wilkins Freeman were by far the most popular authors of the second half of the 19 th century in American fiction but were not deemed worthy to be included in the canon.
• #93: The 4 models are sequential, subsuming and developing the preceding model(s)
• #96: War of Words is first volume of 3 vol. No Man’s Land: The place of the woman writer in the 20 th century.
• #99: Canon: body of work regarded as deserving of serious study. Alice Walker has brought new attention to works of Zora Neale Hurston, African American novelist, whose writings were well regarded earlier in the century but had drifted into virtual obscurity. Feminist critics argue that in order to appreciate the merits of women’s writings, must reexamine our ideas about what makes a literary work excellent or important.
• #100: 19 th century sentimental fiction was dismissed as “unworthy of serious critical attention” because it was the work of female authors who wrote for an audience of other women. However, feminist critics ould consider the sentimental novel “as a social as well as a literary document” and see it as far from trivial.
• #101: Argue male artists have created two principal masks, or images for women – and women cannot create freely unless they first understand and destroy these masks They analyze at length two works they see as creative “misreadings” or “rewritings” of Paradise Lost (inferior and Satanically inspired Eve – which has intimidated and blocked their view of possibiliites) Many women writers have devised their own revisionary myths to free themselves from the inhibiting image Milton created. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) in which Victor Frankenstein and his monster may be identified with Eve And Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, in which the fall from heaven is transformed and parodied.
• #102: Visions of how women ought to behave In resisting the obvious meanings, for example, the false claim that male falues are universal values, women may discover more significant meanings Example: Fetterly argues that in “A Rose for Emily” (read rest on handout)
• #103: already mentioned Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics
• #104: already mentioned Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics
• #105: Scarlet Letter has been read as work with a male protagonist (Arthur Dimmesdale) resisting temptations of seductress Hester Prynne Carol Ohmann: analyzes reviews that appeared when WH was first published; B’s contemporaries assume that B. had little conscious control over her material and that her lack of experience and understnading limits her achievement. Such statements are often used to dismiss the works of women writers.
• #107: SHowlater belives that feminist criticism has gradually shifted its focus from revisionary readings to a sustained investigation of literature by women Physical geography plays an important role in determining the major interests of various voices of feminist criticism. American feminism concerned with restoring the writings of female authors to the literary canon Annette Kolodny believes that the literary history itself is a fiction. Wishes to restore the history of women so that they themselves can tell “herstory” Women must first find a means to gain their voice in the midst of numerous voices (particularly male voices) clamouring for attention in society. All groups attempt to rescue women from being considered “the Other”
• #111: By applying any or all of these questions to a text, we can begin the journey into feminist criticism and better understand the world in which we live.
• #128:   Du Bois had always wanted to go to Harvard and he was initially disappointed when he learned that it had been arranged that he attend Fisk University in Nashville. But the experience changed his life. It helped to clarify his identity and pointed him in the direction of his life's work. When Du Bois left for Fisk in the fall of 1885, it was the last time he would call Great Barrington his home. His mother had died during that summer and Du Bois entered a world that he would claim for his own. Du Bois arrived in Nashville a serious, contemplative, self-conscious young man with habits and attitudes formed by a boyhood in Victorian New England. At Fisk he encountered sons and daughters of former slaves who had borne the mark of oppression but had nourished a rich cultural and spiritual tradition that Du Bois recognized as his own. Du Bois also encountered the White South. The achievements of Reconstruction were being destroyed by the white politicians and businessmen who had gained political control. Blacks were being terrorized at the polls and were being driven back into the economic status that differed from institutional slavery in little but name. Du Bois saw the suffering and the dignity of rural blacks when he taught school during the summers in the East Tennessee countryside, and he resolved that in some way his life would be dedicated to a struggle against racial and economic oppression. He was determined to continue his education and his perseverance was rewarded when he was offered a scholarship to study at Harvard University.
• #129:   Du Bois was born in the small New England village of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, three years after the end of the Civil War. Unlike most black Americans, his family had not just emerged from slavery. His great-grandfather had fought in the American Revolution, and the Burghardts had been an accepted part of the community for generations. Yet from his earliest years Du Bois was aware of differences that set him apart from his Yankee neighbors. In addition to the austere hymns of his village Congregational Church, Du Bois learned the songs of a much more ancient tradition from his grandmother. Passed from generation to generation, their original meanings long forgotten, the songs of Africa were sung around the fire in Du Bois' boyhood home. Thus, from the beginning, Du Bois was aware of an earlier tradition that set him apart from his New England community - a distant past shrouded in mystery, in sharp contrast to the detailed chronicle of Western Civilization that he learned at school.   Du Bois' father left home soon after Du Bois was born. The youngster was raised largely by his mother, who imparted to her child the sense of a special destiny. She encouraged his studies and his adherence to the Victorian virtues and pieties characteristic of rural New England in the 19th century. Du Bois in turn gravely accepted a sense of duty toward his mother that transcended all other loyalties.
• #130: Du Bois knew little of his father. Alfred Du Bois married Mary Burghardt in 1867. Soon after Du Bois was born, his father left, never to return. Du Bois described him as "a dreamer-- romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable, he had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a beloved vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little."
• #131:   Du Bois excelled at school and outshone his white contemporaries. While in high school he worked as a correspondent for New York newspapers and became something of a prodigy in the eyes of the community. As he reached adolescence he began to become aware of the subtle social boundaries which he was expected to observe. This made him all the more determined to force the community to recognize his academic achievements.
• #132:   Du Bois was clearly a young man of promise. The influential members of his community recognized this and quietly decided his future. Great Barrington, like most of New England, still glowed with the embers of the abolitionist fires that had only recently been dampened with the ending of the Reconstruction in the South. Together with the missionary inclinations of the Congregationalist Church, these sensibilities manifested themselves in the community's attitude towards Du Bois, who presented them with an opportunity to perform an act of Christian duty toward a promising example of what they considered to be the less fortunate races of the world.
• #133:   Du Bois had always wanted to go to Harvard and he was initially disappointed when he learned that it had been arranged that he attend Fisk University in Nashville. But the experience changed his life. It helped to clarify his identity and pointed him in the direction of his life's work. When Du Bois left for Fisk in the fall of 1885, it was the last time he would call Great Barrington his home. His mother had died during that summer and Du Bois entered a world that he would claim for his own.
• #135: Du Bois arrived in Nashville a serious, contemplative, self-conscious young man with habits and attitudes formed by a boyhood in Victorian New England. At Fisk he encountered sons and daughters of former slaves who had borne the mark of oppression but had nourished a rich cultural and spiritual tradition that Du Bois recognized as his own. Du Bois also encountered the White South.
• #136: The achievements of Reconstruction were being destroyed by the white politicians and businessmen who had gained political control. Blacks were being terrorized at the polls and were being driven back into the economic status that differed from institutional slavery in little but name. Du Bois saw the suffering and the dignity of rural blacks when he taught school during the summers in the East Tennessee countryside, and he resolved that in some way his life would be dedicated to a struggle against racial and economic oppression. He was determined to continue his education and his perseverance was rewarded when he was offered a scholarship to study at Harvard University.
• #142: Du Bois' life was a struggle of warring ideas and ideals. He entered Harvard during its golden age and studied with William James and Albert Bushnell Hart. It was a progressive era and Du Bois was smitten with the ideal of science - an objective truth that could dispel once and for all the irrational prejudices and ignorances that stood in the way of a just social order. He brought back the German scientific ideal from the University of Berlin and was one of the first to initiate scientific sociological study in the United States. For years he labored at Atlanta University and created landmarks in the scientific study of race relations. Yet a shadow fell over his work as he saw the nation retreating into barbarism. Repressive segregation laws, lynching, and terror were on the increase despite the march of science. Du Bois' faith in the detached role of the scientist was shaken, and with the Atlanta Riot of 1906 Du Bois with his "Litany at Atlanta" passionately sounded a challenge to those forces of repression and destruction. At a time when Booker T. Washington counseled acceptance of the social order, Du Bois sounded a call to arms and with the founding of the Niagara Movement and later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People entered a new phase of his life. He became an impassioned champion of direct assault on the legal, political, and economic system that thrived on the exploitation of the poor and the powerless. As he began to point out the connections between the plight of Afro- Americans and those who suffered under colonial rule in other areas of the world, his struggle assumed international proportions. The Pan-African Movement that flowered in the years after World War I was the beginning of the creation of a third world consciousness.
• #143: Du Bois (at right) was one of six speakers at his Harvard commencement. While at Harvard, Du Bois wrote, "I was quite voluntarily and willingly outside its social life... I asked no fellowship of my fellow students. I found friends-- and most interesting and inspiring friends-- among the colored folk of Boston and surrounding places."
• #144: Admission card, signed by economist Gustav Schmoller, admitting Du Bois to his seminar at the University of Berlin.
• #145: While at Atlanta University, Du Bois planned a long-range series of studies dealing with the issues and problems that faced black Americans.
• #149: As a result of the intransigence of Booker T. Washington's "Tuskegee Machine," Du Bois and other black leaders of similar opinions organized what became known as the Niagara Movement. It was the first organization to seek full political and economic rights for Afro-Americans at a national level. By 1910, the organization led to the founding of the NAACP.
• #150: The NAACP was formed by a coalition of black leaders and white liberals, and Du Bois left Atlanta University in 1910 to become the NAACP's Director of Publicity and Research. Through this position he spearheaded efforts to enact anti-lynching laws and to initiate legislation that would end jim-crow practices in the nation's public institutions and transportation systems. Du Bois was a man of firm opinions and this trait often brought him into conflict with others on the NAACP's Board of Directors. When, in the depression year of 1934, Du Bois advised blacks to patronize black businesses, he was ironically forced to resign from the NAACP for advocating what was considered to be a plan of voluntary segregation.
• #154: Resolutions (page 1) established by 15 countries at the first Pan-African Congress, Paris, February 1919.
• #155: Especially after World War II, Du Bois' concerns became increasingly international. In 1945, he helped present a petition on behalf of oppressed minorities before the United Nations. Du Bois was horrified by the Cold War policy of the Truman administration and believed that the efforts to halt the spread of Communism often obscured the real desire of colonial peoples to gain political and social self-determination. As he became more vocal in behalf of peace, he came under the suspicion of his government. During the McCarthy era, many attempts were made to silence debate on issues affecting foreign policy and Du Bois became another victim of that effort. At the age of 83, Du Bois was indicted for failing to register as a "foreign agent." Although acquitted, the government had effectively attached a stigma to Du Bois' name and he became isolated from the mainstream of the growing civil rights movement which depended upon the goodwill of the Federal Government to advance its aims.
• #156: In 1951, in the midst of his battle with the Justice Department, Du Bois, now a widower, married Shirley Graham, a friend of long standing, on the eve of his 83rd birthday.
• #157: In the years after World War II the desperate struggles that Du Bois had waged came together in a vision that was to challenge many of the assumptions of his contemporaries. He had fought for many progressive causes but saw them consumed by a cold war mentality that silenced rational debate.
• #160: Throughout his career Du Bois was the object of investigation by Government intelligence agencies. Especially during the 1950s, the FBI kept Du Bois' activities under constant surveillance.
• #161: If Du Bois was a prophet without honor in his own country, he was hailed as a visionary by non-western nations. He was warmly received in visits to the Peoples' Republic of China and the Soviet Union and was a guest in the newly independent states of Africa. Du Bois also devoted his time to writing and speaking, producing an enormous amount of articles, speeches and a trilogy of novels which he titled The Black Flame. Du Bois addressing the first Afro-Asian Writers' Conference, Tashkent, U.S.S.R., October, 1958. Du Bois in the garden of Paul Robeson's home in London, Fall 1958. Premier Nikita Khrushchev greets Du Bois on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1958. Du Bois with Chairman Mao Tse Tung, 1959. The Peoples' Republic of China honored Du Bois on his 91st birthday in Peking.
• #162: Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah offers a toast on Du Bois' 95th birthday, c. February, 1963.   Du Bois' mature vision was a reconciliation of the "sense of double consciousness"- the "two warring ideals" of being both black and an American - that he had written about fifty years earlier. He came to accept struggle and conflict as essential elements of life, but he continued to believe in the inevitable progress of the human race - that out of individual struggles against a divided self and political struggles of the oppressed against their oppressors, a broader and fuller human life would emerge that would benefit all of mankind.
• #163: At the age of ninety-three, Du Bois was invited to Ghana by President Kwame Nkrumah to assume editorship of the Encyclopedia Africana , a monumental project involving scholars from around the world. He assumed Ghanaian citizenship and lived in the land of his fathers until his death at the age of ninety-five on August 27, 1963-- the day before the March on Washington that marked the climax of the civil rights struggle in the United States.
• #164: One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in Life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.    -- W.E.B. Du Bois in his last statement to the world, 1963