Classical Rome
“Death of Caesar” by Vincenzo
Camuccini
Coliseum, Rome (from film Gladiator)
Roman
classes
Upper class Roman woman
(from TV series Rome)
*Google Images
“The angry matrons, led by
Hortensia, address the triumvirs”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortensia_(orator)
Medieval France
Google Images
Je, Christine
Christine de Pizan lecturing to a group of men. She is seated in a chair or
cathedra. In Spanish a Full Professor is Catedrático or Cathedrática.
from: http://humanities.ucsd.edu/courses/Ringrosefall2002.htm
The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan
Elizabeth Cady
Stanton &
daughter
Lucretia Mott
Joseph Kyles (1815–
1863)
Oil on canvas, 1842
National Portrait
Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution
Women’s Situation in 1848 U.S.
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Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
Women were not allowed to vote
Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation
Married women had no property rights
Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they
could imprison or beat them with impunity
Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of
these taxes
Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid
only a fraction of what men earned
Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept
women students
With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the
church
Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally
dependent on men
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
When, in the course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the
Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare
the causes that impel them to such the
separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. –
That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the
governed. . . .
When, in the course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one portion of the
family of man to assume among the people
of the earth a position different from that
which they have hitherto occupied, but one
to which the laws of nature and of nature's
God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes that impel them
to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men and women are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; that to secure these rights
governments are instituted, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the
governed. . . .
The history of the present King of Great
Britain is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an Absolute Tyranny of these
States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted
to a candid world.
The history of mankind is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations on the
part of man toward woman, having in
direct object the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let
facts be submitted to a candid world.
-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most
wholesome and necessary for the public
good.
-He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws
of immediate and pressing importance, unless
suspended in their operation till his Assent
should be obtained; and when so suspended,
he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
-He has refused to pass other Laws for the
accommodation of large districts of people,
unless those people would relinquish the right
of Representation in the Legislature, a right
inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants
only…
-He has never permitted her to exercise her
inalienable right to the elective franchise.
-He has compelled her to submit to laws, in
the formation of which she had no voice.
-He has withheld from her rights which are
given to the most ignorant and degraded
men--both natives and foreigners.
-Having deprived her of this first right of a
citizedn, the elective franchise, thereby
leaving her without representation in the
halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on
all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of
the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property,
even to the wages she earns….
My name was Isabella; but when I left the house of bondage, I left
everything behind. I wa’n’t goin’ to keep nothin’ of Egypt on me,
an’so I went to the Lord an’ asked him to give me a new name. And
the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to travel up an’ down the
land, showin’ the people their sins, an’ bein’ a sign unto them.
Afterward I told the Lord I wanted another name, ‘cause everybody
else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to
declare the truth to the people.
--Sojourner Truth as rendered by Harriet Beecher Stowe in
“Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl”
Maria Stewart 1803-1879
“How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be
compelled to bury their minds and talents
beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?”
bell hooks 1952-
Born Gloria Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. “She came from a
poor working class family and worked her way up the academic
ladder to become Distinguished Professor of English at City College
in New York.”
BA Stanford University, MA University of Wisconsin, PhD University
of California, Santa Cruz 1983.
“Her use of a pseudonym arose from a desire to honor her
grandmother (whose name she took) and her mother, and a
concern to establish a 'separate voice' from the person Gloria
Watson.”
Burke, B. (2004) 'bell hooks on education', the encyclopedia of informal education,
www.infed.org/thinkers/hooks.htm.
Ain't I a woman : Black women and
feminism (1981) “established her as a
formidable critic and intellectual and set
out some of the central themes around
culture, gender, race and class that have
characterized her work. In this book bell
hooks looked 'at the impact of sexism on
the black woman during slavery, the
devaluation of black womanhood, black
male sexism, racism within the recent
feminist movement, and the black
woman's involvement with feminism.”
Burke, B. (2004) 'bell hooks on education', the encyclopedia of informal education,
www.infed.org/thinkers/hooks.htm.
In her 1994 book Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of
Freedom, she argues for “a progressive, holistic education - engaged
pedagogy”:
“To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone
can learn. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach
who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who
believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in
the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner
that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are
to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and
intimately begin.”
She says that “Progressive, holistic education, ‘engaged pedagogy’ is more
demanding than conventional critical or feminist pedagogy. For, unlike
these two teaching practices, it emphasizes well-being. That means that
teachers must be actively involved and committed to a process of selfactualization that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a
manner that empowers students.”
“Homeplace (a site of resistance)” 1990
• Subject Matter the idea of resisting racism & sexism
by creating a homeplace
• Position black women should choose to emphasize
the home as a political choice (not b/c it’s a woman’s
“natural” sphere)
• hooks explores the tension between honoring this
history of black women’s service in white people’s
homes and in their own homes and at the same
time critiquing “the sexist definition of service as
women’s ‘natural’ role’” (384).
• Her idea, then, is taking the position women have
been forced into and then “owning” it – making it a
site of resistance – without affirming the idea of the
home is the woman’s place.
Appeal: ethos – she creates a sense of ethos by her
stance as an educated person using examples from
literature, psychology, history. But she also shows that
she understands this need for a homeplace through her
use of personal examples/anecdote.
Appeal: pathos – written for a mixed audience of black
& white academics, feminists, educators, activists, men
& women. Style is narrative in the beginning, which
pulls in most audiences.
Appeal: logos -- If black women commit to the
homeplace as a political site – a place they make a
home to escape racism, then it will unite women, help
children/young people, unite the community
• Other Available Means of Persuasion – see
her feminist reading of Frederick Douglass’s
narrative about his mother.
• Video to get a sense of how she sounds.
• DISCUSSION QUESTION – hooks resists the
idea of the home as woman’s sphere by
rereading the homeplace as a site of
resistance. Like others we’ve read, how is her
writing itself an act of resistance to the norms
of public/academic writing?
Toni Morrison
• http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html
• “Being a writer, she thinks of language partly
as a system, partly as a living thing over which
one has control, but mostly as agency—as an
act with consequences”
• “Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it
is generative; it makes meaning that secures
our difference, our human difference - the
way in which we are like no other life.”
• “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But
we do language. That may be the measure of
our lives.”
Nobel Prize Lecture
• “The kind of work I have always wanted to do
requires me to learn how to maneuver ways to
free up the language from its sometimes sinister,
frequently lazy, almost always predictable
employment of racially informed and determined
chains. (The only short story I have ever written,
‘Recitatif,’ was an experiment in the removal of all
racial codes from a narrative about two
characters of different races for whom racial
identity is crucial.)”
• --Toni Morrison Playing in the Dark: Whiteness
and the Literary Imagination