Assignment Four

Lauren Kessler
5-07-08
WMST250 Sec. 08


I entered this course with an array of misconceptions about feminism and a limited knowledge of its relevance to me and to society. I had never taken much time to objectively think about and define feminism, feminist art, or art in general, nor did I understand the significance of relationships shared among these concepts and the world around me. I took this course both to fulfill a core requirement, but also because I am interested in art and culture, and I desired to take a class in women's studies in order to learn and develop my thinking. My interest developed as the course began and progressed. I immediately appreciated its construction, its emphasis on learning rather than upon insuring good grades, and found the readings engaging and the professor excited to teach. I journeyed through the course as the center of a story about my life in this society as it relates to what we all thought about, discussed and learned together. Now as it draws to a close and my story continues elsewhere, I appreciate the integral knowledge I have gained and the new associations I have formed.

The assignments, readings, freewrites and subjects for independent thought proposed for us in the course have all been vastly essential to our new understanding of women, art and culture. I also valued reading the class blog, which shared a wealth of information and interesting topics for thought and discussion. I had never had a class that went so in depth with what it provided, nor have I had a teacher so eager and willing to teach her subject. In the beginning of the class, I very much enjoyed visiting the art museums and analyzing art in ways I haven't before done. It is exciting to look at something new and evaluate it innovatively, and even more so to look at something I have seen before and see it in a new light, to change my perspective and draw conclusions from that I wouldn't have otherwise drawn. Through this I better learned how to think and engage critically, and was a wonderful stepping stone for the beginning of the course to learn to denaturalize assumptions. Cynthia Freeland's book, But is it Art?, was integral to me for this reason; she reveals to us the vastness of art in all its strange, shocking and ground-breaking ways. This book allowed me to think openly about art and its possible definitions, about my place in the world of art, and how this relates to feminism. I am an artist, as a writer is one in her crafting of words or a philosopher is one in her crafting of theory, and I am free to observe art and to observe how it effects me as a woman and as a person in general. Assignment two asked me to think about a definition of feminism that was objective and all-encompassing, which forced me to dispel previous notions and subjective assumptions of what I had thought feminism was. For the assignment we created an event which would help spread understanding of feminism and appreciation of equality, which was important considering feminism requires action, as Megan Seely and others highlight in their work. In this assignment and in the third, I worked with others and learned a lot about the differences between us, but more importantly about the similarities. We are all in our respective stories that involve our journeying throughout the course, but we are also interconnected and share parts in eachother's stories. In assignment three I learned about the concept of the matrix of domination and was asked to think about the various factors influencing oppression and privilege in our society and the intersectionality of people because of the categories with which they are identified. I spent a lot of time wondering independently about the way power is set up in our society and I thoroughly enjoyed what I learned while writing my paper for assignment three.

Through this course I better learned how to read actively, how to cultivate interest in material that was completely foreign to me or was something I would normally not have picked up to read. An example of this is bell hook's Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, which taught me valuable information about the definition of feminism and the practical ways in which the perspective is relevant to everyday life. I felt the book was written as an introduction to people who knew little about feminism and desired to challenge their assumptions, and this made it easy to understand and enlightening. I learned how to look at social problems such as sexism and racism and basic social existences such as capitalism and class disparity and apply them to feminism to theorize new causes. I was empowered by hook's explanation of true liberation in social, economic, and other arenas. She discussed the meaning of women increasingly entering the workforce and earning more money than in the past, and critiqued the common conclusion that this implies greater freedom, opportunity and equality for women. This was interesting to me because I had never thought about this in regard to class structure, how this opportunity varies for wealthy and poor women, and defined roles. hooks explains that if women are working to make money for greater spending rather than for greater well-being, then the influence of this societal change is void, as liberation is the key. What I learned from this book helped me during assignment three in which I challenged myself to recognize oppression and privilege in my own life with regard to the matrix of domination. I was better able to relate my life's experiences to the inequality inherent in today's world.

Megan Seely's Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist, was an informative and inspiring book which teaches about feminism for the present time and for the present youth, and forsees its future. I appreciated that her book offered practical solutions and emphasized the importance of taking action rather than simply espousing ideologies like similar books do, and I learned a lot from it. I particularly enjoyed reading about issues of body image and the struggles of women with their bodies, and I felt I could relate to the author's grapplings. It is interesting to think about such concepts in relation to feminist issues, how our perceptions of ourselves are influenced by the gender roles imposed upon us from our parents and from society, and how we struggle with positive self-image despite the array of negative influences by the media and other avenues. Seely's book is essential for all women because we all live in a society where feminist issues are relevant and where women are affected, whether or not we choose to recognize it. She encourages us to defy the defined roles and boundaries imposed upon us and to appreciate the strength and power of women, which helped me to contemplate how I am vastly capable and worthy as a woman and as a person in general.

Kindred, by Octavia Butler, is a fascinating novel concerning racism and oppression, abuses of power, and gender roles. I enjoyed that it is a science-fiction book also interesting feminist readers that challenges our assumptions in imaginative ways. The main character, a contemporary African-American woman, is continually transported back into time in order to rescue her white ancestor. Dana's and Rufus's lives are interconnected and interdependent; he is dependent on her, a black woman, for his survival, and her life in the future depends on his continued survival and his production of a child with Alice. When she is thrown into the past, she can no longer be herself. The threat of harm forces her to act differently, as if she were a slave, and adjust herself to the boundaries imposed upon her by her slave owners and the assumptions of her by others around her. It reveals how simple it is to fall into imposed categories and act accordingly, and is relevant to any occasion in which a person is put into an unfamiliar category or markedness; they must reassimilate and re-examine their circumstances. As she learns about the great struggles of African-American women during slavery in the 1800s, so does the reader, and together they feel, actually and suggestively, what it was like to be a slave. Kindred effectively put me in the perspective of understanding the mentality of a slave, how it hurt and conflicted the mind and body, and what it felt like to be oppressed, persecuted and abused for seemingly no reason.

Upon enrolling in Women, Art, and Culture, I was unaware of what level of fundamental understanding I would leave with or what vastness of knowledge I would gain. I certainly learned about women's culture and art, activism and feminist politics, but more importantly, I learned about the dynamics of the society in which I live and how I am affected by this, my assumptions and then my reevaluations of them, and how all of this reshapes myself and possibilities for myself and others. I was surprised by my readiness to participate in freewrites and to, for example, spend time thinking about what I heard someone say in discussion. This is because the subject matter was important and relevant to me, as it is to everyone. Feminism is about the way our society would ideally be, but also about how it is, and its intrinsic value is evident in everyone's lives if they look for it. This encouragment of independent contemplation is what makes this course essential, and because of it we become part of story. We leave the lecture and the discussion but what we heard and what we talked about stays with us and is directly applied to our lives as we go about them. We are changed by what we learn, we are enlightened by our dispelling of previous beliefs, and we are encouraged to continue in our paths of development.