Women, Looking: Writing the Female Gaze

UG - Undergraduate

The title of this course, "Writing the Female Gaze," should immediately raise some questions for us. After all, what does it mean to be a woman--what does it mean to portray a woman? How do these representations change with form? In examining art, film, theory, and literature, this course asks how women articulate their own desires, selfhoods, and existence, in opposition to a patriarchal order that comes to define what appropriate representation looks like. Students will examine questions the above through discussion responses, seminar-style discussion, and a combination of creative and essay writing. In this course, the term "female gaze" will not refer only to cishet women, but to all female-identifying people, including trans, nonbinary, genderqueer individuals. In this class we will engage with a range of art, films, and texts that explore and engage with the female gaze. We will work with the overarching goal of writing comprehensive, curious, and fully formed essays and writings on the subject, through the approach of seminar-style reading discussion and a series of peer workshops. Together, we will think about the many visions of womanhood, of the limits of representation, and the contemporary world these texts and artists make visible to us.We will explore a range of styles of writing, and consider the effects of creativity in both voice and style towards composing powerful, interesting, and informative pieces of writing. Above all, we will explore, practice, and question the notion of writing on -- and of -- the female gaze.