Classical Rome

“Death of Caesar” by Vincenzo Camuccini

Coliseum, Rome (from film Gladiator)

Upper class Roman woman (from TV series Rome) *Google Images

Roman classes

“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 LadiesChristine de Pizan

Lucretia MottJoseph Kyles (1815–1863)Oil on canvas, 1842National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionElizabeth Cady

Stanton & daughter

Women’s Situation in 1848 U.S.• 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

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 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. . . .

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 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….

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.

-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…

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?"

“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 self-actualization 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