I can say with all honesty that I came into this class expecting to breeze through with out having to immerse myself in what I was learning or even really listen to what was being taught. I was expecting to learn about women in art and women that make art, nothing more and nothing less. However, after about the first day of class I realized that this class would require a lot more effort than I anticipated. Especially after learning that our first assignment would require us to venture into Washington, D.C., museum heaven, to visit some museums. In this class, I was expected to put more effort and time than any of my other classes and to find a way to tell this course’s story. The story this class tells is one that cannot simply be told by showing up to one lecture, going to discussion, and the assumption that this is sufficient enough to understand the material. This story is one that requires constant attention and thought with a commitment to attend lecture as often as possible. Not just that but also a willingness to immerse yourself in what is being taught and to take the information and shape it into something that you can use later in your life, or even in the present. This story is one that will be told in three parts, first, the description of the “story” of the course, then how I and my thoughts tie into this story, and lastly how the readings helped me connect with the course and help tell it’s story.
At first, looking at the way the class syllabus is constructed looks to be as if it is just a random selection of readings sitting under a distinct topic that will be discussed for a few weeks, with a different topic being discussed after each assignment. However, when I really took a look at the way the syllabus is constructed I noticed that the topics seemed to tie into the each other in a way that helps tell the course’s story. Our introduction to the course was simply titled “An Introduction to Women, Art, and Culture.” A title suggesting the briefing of the students on what is going to be taught in the class and what is expected out of us, the students. It was then that we were informed that for our first assignment we were to venture into D.C. to examine our views and assumptions about feminism in art. We were asked to do so honestly and without hesitation, to think about what we assumed feminism was and what feminist art looked like.
In the first part titled “But is it art?”, we were given a chance to examine what we thought about art and what we assumed art was. We learned from Cynthia Freeland in her book, “But is it art?”, that our definitions of and “taste” in art varies depending on our socioeconomic class and education level (93). In this part of the course we were asked to examine our definition of feminism, using the insight gained from the completion of assignment one and used that to complete assignment number two in which we gathered into groups and created a feminist event. We were also asked to examine our definition of art and what we thought was considered art and why it was or was not actually art. Freeland talks about philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant who speak of art in relation to beauty and taste. They discuss an aesthetic theory that intertwines the idea of people with “taste” with the idea that things that are beautiful are “purposiveness without a purpose” (11), or that beauty serves no really purpose but to be aesthetically pleasing.
The second part of the course is titled “Analysis in Women’s Studies: Everyday Life Seen with New Eyes” and was by far, the most eye opening and informational part of the course. In this part of the course we were asked to examine our own lives and see where the power and oppression stood in our own privileged lives. We read Kindred, a novel written by Octavia Butler about a black woman that travels back in time to save her white slave owner ancestor so that she and her family may exist. This novel was a very interesting read and a very fitting topic as it dealt with where power is held in different time periods and social circles. We saw that the main character, Dana, and how she struggled with going back and forth through time and the experience of being a black woman in the late 70’s in L.A. and also in the pre-Civil war south. How she went from experiencing discrimination to experiencing flat out hatred and humiliation because of the color of her skin. We are introduced to the idea of the standpoint theory, which is the theory that there is information out there for you to know, but there is something out there preventing you from knowing it, that prevention being a sort of oppression. In assignment three, we were to examine oppression and privilege in our own lives and how our marked and unmarked categories are intersectional with our standpoints in life. How our privilege can be another’s oppression.
In the final part of the course titled” Arts, Communities, Cultures, Actions and Spirits” we examine the differences of what is expected of art and what is thought of as art through different cultures. Most often with a focus on that of Chicana artwork, where there is a large focus on art and its connection with the spiritual. We see how in Chicana art there is this combination of the use of altars with the use of the idea of altering reality to convey a point. The connection of these three topics lie in the introspection used to help us understand these topics and relate them to our understanding of art and feminism. So we can then say that the story of this class is one that speaks of feminism and how it can actively participate in art and how we can use the ideas presented to us in the class to form our own ideas and observations in these once new and unfamiliar topics. The class tells us the story of a culture that might be unfamiliar to us and how this culture relates to feminism and the part feminism plays in the artworks of the people and even in our own lives.
In this course, I think that I play a very important part, maybe not in the entire class’s understanding of the words feminism and art, but at least in my discussion sections understanding of art. At the beginning of the course, I thought I had a pretty set idea of what feminism and art was and how the two coincided. However, my definitions of the two were promptly tossed out the window as soon as assignment one was completed and lectures began and discussions ensued. With assignment one came the introspection on what we thought feminism and art really was and how the two ideas related. I learned that I had made assumptions about art that were not necessarily true, and assumptions about feminism that were definitely not true. By the second part of the course, I had assumed that knew a decent enough amount of information to deduce a good idea of what feminism really was. Then assignment three came around and I was told to examine my standpoint in life and my own privilege and oppression, I discovered that I have never experienced actually oppression in my life, only what could be miniscule limitations to others that seemed, at least in my life, to be oppressive. I also learned that my gender and race play a large part in my life and the way other view me upon first impression. I learned about marked and unmarked categories and discovered that I had these similar ideas in my own train of thought, but was never actually able to piece it together in such an organized and clear way. The assignments connect in a way that starts off as an introduction to what you should be thinking about and how you can define the two important words in this course, feminism and art, and then slowly but surely escalates into a deep introspection of where we see power in our lives and how it affects us and those around us. The assignments allowed use to form our own ideas on what was presented in class. Personally, I found both of these assignments to be very eye-opening as I have never been asked to put so much thought into a paper on oppression and power, or feminism and art.
I feel that in the smaller sections of the class, our discussion, I was an important piece in the puzzle of helping myself and the others discover our ideas about this course. I used their comments and ideas to help shape those of my own. Our meetings allowed us to establish what we assumed and then helped us form our ideas, using each other’s words a kind of starter kit for the ideas of feminism and art. We worked well together on all of our projects. We were able to set up times that worked for each other and we even used the time in between discussion and lecture to develop ideas on for our projects. I feel that in this discussion I contributed several good ideas, just as nearly every other member of the discussion. We were always able to come to an understanding and never had any conflict with each other. There was not any part of the discussion that did not work for me, as it was important to the cohesiveness of my understanding of the course. However, the amount of readings was the part of the course that somewhat through me off.
The books of the course are a very important tool for the overall understanding of and success in Women’s Studies 250. Many of the readings had a lot of relevance to what we were discussing and provided valuable insight into the topics at hand. Three books that connected me to the story of the class were “But is it art?” by Cynthia Freeland, “Kindred” by Octavia Butler, and “Chicana Art” by Laura E. Perez. I chose Freeland’s books because it was the most helpful in helping me understand the various aspects of art and how sometimes what we find to be morbid and disgusting, some other culture might find it exciting and provocative, such as “Piss Christ” (17), which was a painting that provoked many disdainful feelings in our discussion section because of it’s seemingly apparent disrespect of an important religious icon. Freeland also provides us with some information on the art market and how government and private funding keep museums up and running.
I chose Butler’s book next because I think it was by far the most interesting and helpful in assisting us to understand about standpoint theory and the matrix of domination. The book itself was a science fiction novel, which is actually a very interesting genre of movie and books. The lead character struggled with her identity, and her pride and her need to stay alive often clashed as she went back in time to the pre-Civil war days. She struggled with being an independent and smart black woman in the period of time where African Americans were considered less than human. I found this book to be very interesting and it helped me better understand the concept of the standpoint theory. It put a more literal interpretation of the idea of the matrix of domination into our heads.
And lastly, I chose Perez’s book because I found it to be very insightful and a challenging read. As I began to read Perez’s book, I was thrown off by all the jargon she used and how deep her insights really were. I did not really know what to think, so at first I did not like the book at all. I was offended by Perez’s use of such jargon because I assumed that she would write so that everyone that read her book could understand what she is talking about, not in the elitist sounding language she often used. I did not realize that everyone that reads her books probably would know what she is talking about. I then started to connect to the readings in the book because I found some similarities in Chicana culture with that of my own Hispanic heritage. The altars she often spoke of reminded me of the little makeshift altar my own grandmother has, devoted to Jesus and his Virgin mother, Mary. Or even the expectation of Hispanic women to serve as maids or nannies. This book was a very insightful read into how this culture connects with the art of it’s people, not just in your typical canvas paintings, but in the altars of our grandmothers, dedicated to our religious idols, or even the large tattoo shrine to the Virgin Mary on a convict’s back (137).
Throughout this course I think I can honestly say that my feelings and attitude towards feminism has changed greatly. The connection of these readings to the story of this class is the utilization of these books as tools in helping us understand and relate to the material. With more literal interpretations, such as “Kindred” and the standpoint theory and matrix of domination”, or the more insightful and harder to read books, such as “Chicana Art”, which was helpful in allowing us understand how art, feminism, and culture connect in one culture. “But is it art?” even helped us understand the more basic concepts of art and that is probably why it was one of the first books that we read.
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