Blog Posts by Subject: Women's Studies

Gloria Carmody thought she had everything she could want: the big diamond, the handsome fiance, the promise of a secure, respectable life among Chicago’s high society. But as her wedding looms ever nearer all Gloria can think of is a notorious speakeasy and the piano player who intrigues her more than her fiance ever has. Or will.

Wonders Of Women (WOW) features a mosaic of selected titles including recent resources on self-help, as well as powerful narratives by and about extraordinary African-American women, will submerge the reader into a journey of discovery from the past to the present.

Wonders Of Women (WOW) presents the notable life and amazing accomplishments of three courageous women.

The whole mess started with Finn. But it started a while ago. Before Finn was all cute and tall and athletic. Well, technically it might have had more to do with Kim. But Finn is definitely involved. So is Jackson. And his four ceramic frogs. Tommy Hazard, as usual, is blameless. Angelo and Noel aren’t really involved. But they might have helped make everything worse. When it’s all said and done Nora, Cricket and Meghan are all not speaking to her. Kim isn’t either but that isn’t really a surprise.

And that’s almost all before fifteen-year-old Ruby Oliver starts having panic attacks that lead to her eleven shrink appointments.

New York in the 1970s, without cellphones, the internet, globalization, etc., was a very different place and arguably more vibrant (though I'm glad Central Park isn't like it used to be.)  Photographer extraordinaire Peter Moore tirelessly went about the City capturing just about everyone and everything, and became particularly known for his thorough photojournalism of the avant-garde scene, which included such influential groups as Fluxus and the Judson Dance Theater.  Tuesday will feature one facet of this multi-talented man's enormous body of work—The Avant Garde Festivals of Charlotte Moorman.

Tuesday is the second of the Wertheim Study scholars' lecture series: Singular and Collective: Radical Women Artists [in NYC during the 1970s].  This one, by Dr. Aseel Sawalha, is the collective part.  She's going to examine the scene from the perspective of anthropology, focusing on two women's arts collectives: The New York Feminist Art Institute (still going strong) and Heresies, which was both a school and a magazine, available at the Library and at home with a library card.   I'll bring the bound printed journal on Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to Tuesday.  Wouldn't you like to meet an artist who draws herself with bunny ears?

Green used to think her story was written. The day her beloved city was burned to the ground seemed to be the end of things. Her mother, her father, and her beautiful sister were gone. The boy she loves is far away searching for his own family. The past is filled with dangerous memories and the future seems like a distant hope. So Green tries to focus on the present.

In the wilds of Transylvania, set on a high spur of rock next to the Wildwood, rests a castle named Piscul Dracului. The castle itself is unexceptional, old and crumbling as it is. Looking at it, you would never know it hides a portal to the Other Kingdom.

Each full moon five sisters travel through the portal into a magical glade where they dance with creatures rarely seen outside of fairy tales--fairies, dwarves, trolls and other creatures only whispered about back home.

For nine years of full moons, the sisters have gone dancing in the Other Kingdom.

Until now, the secret of the portal has been safe in Wildwood Dancing (2007) by Juliet Marillier.

A long time ago, before the five days of the unspeakable, Finnikin of the Rock dreamed he was to sacrifice a pound of flesh to save the royal house of Lumatere. Though only nine, Finnikin knew the dream was not to be ignored.

This spring, the Reserve Film and Video Collection is preserving Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill’s 1973 documentary Joyce at 34.   One can question whether or not discourses on family planning, reproductive politics and gender roles have advanced since the film’s release; what is certain is that Joyce at 34 remains potent and relevant as a document of the conflict endured by working mothers.

For symbols of the freedom of the road, you can't beat the wind in your hair, piles of crinkly state road maps at your side, and a whole continent of asphalt spilling out underneath your wheels. The devil-may-care excitement that goes with exploring the American continent has lured many a traveler since the invention of the automobile.

But would one ever call taking a road trip a feminist activity? I don’t mean Thelma and Louise on a tear in a Ford Thunderbird, shooting criminals and running from the law. That’s Hollywood. I mean real, adventuresome women out to investigate what there is to see in these United States.

Candide is a story composed of other stories, as the hero spends much of his world travels listening to others. Few stories are as long and involved as the old woman's in chapters 11 and 12, and she even spurs other characters to tell their stories of misfortune and tragedy at the end of her tale: "I advise you to divert yourself, and prevail upon each passenger to tell his story."

To celebrate Women’s History Month last year, I wrote about some women from the past who made history by doing amazing things in later life. This year I’d like to take a look at some superwomen over 50 who are making history right now.
 
First, let’s look at some of the women who have won the Purpose Prize, a prize awarded to several individuals over 60 each year for making extraordinary contributions in their encore careers.  Note: these are just a few of a cadre of dozens of wonderful women, as well as magnificent men who have won the Prize!
 

Our interactive reading of Candide continues with chapters 7-12. Here's a roundup of recent discussions...

"The diligence with which these gentlemen strip people!" American illustrator Mahlon Blaine chose the old woman's story as one of the full-page drawings for his 1930 edition of Candide. The exotic nude woman posed between two men in various states of undress is of a piece with Blaine's erotic illustrations for William Beckford's Oriental tale Vathek (1928) or for the Marquis de Sade's Justine (1931).

In celebration of Women’s History Month, this week The Undercover Muffins discussed the women that inspire them. Having beauty, brains, and talent -as well as- overcoming hardships are some of the key things about them they found inspiring.

Check out who they picked and why:

Global women's issues are the focus of Jefferson Market Branch's Monday night film series in March, which is National Women's History Month. The series, titled 21st-Century Women on Film, includes five movies made in the first decade of the 2000s, and examines contemporary challenges facing women across four continents.

“Men! Give Women Votes to Protect the Children!”

This sentiment, originating during WWI, is an example of the many tools first wave feminists used in their efforts to obtain the right to vote. Women of the first wave argued that the vote would allow them to fix social ills such as poverty, child labor, alcoholism, and the war, and they used these issues as political levers to achieve their suffrage goal. This was not a cynical calculation, however: these early feminists and suffragists believed in their causes and would go far to fight for them. Numerous activists were put on trial, arrested, force-fed, hounded and harassed in the papers for their adherence to the belief that 

How did women fare in the 1830s? European society was growing more conservative, and the lusty days of the Regency were now looked back on with a shudder. Popular culture might admire the dash of a Count d’Orsay, but, for women, only courtesans and actresses were permitted the same license.

As one consequence, a trend was building for a greater envelopment of the feminine form in fabric. A new age was coming—one with powerful consequences for the future.

It began on the morning of June 20, 1837, when an eighteen year-old girl learned that she had become the reigning monarch of England. Her values would set a whole new standard for communicating gender. In fact,