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Alumni College June 6, 2008

Alumni College featuring WGS faculty Joyce Antler, Bernadette Brooten, Susan Lanser, and James Mandrell.

This daylong academic adventure for Brandeis graduates, their families, and friends of the University features Brandeis faculty members. The only prerequisites for participation are curiosity, imagination, and a desire to learn.

Courses being taught by WGS faculty:

Reclaiming the Nagging Stereotype: What Mother-Blame Tells Us About Ourselves
Joyce Antler '63
Samuel B. Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture and Women's and Gender Studies

The nagging, guilt-tripping "Jewish mother" and the intrusive, over-possessive "helicopter mother" are only two examples of the ways in which our culture scapegoats mothers. This talk analyzes the origins and meanings of these images, as promulgated in literature, film, anthropology, psychology, religion, history, and comedy, and suggests how feminism - and mothers themselves - provide fresh ways of understanding and appreciating maternal involvement.


Beyond Slavery: Overcoming its Religious and Sexual Legacy
Bernadette Brooten
Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies

Few Jews, Christians, or Muslims today believe that slavery is moral and religiously acceptable. Yet, the Bible, the Qur'an, Talmud, and classical Islamic and cannon law all allowed slavery. In recent decades, historians have documented that masters in all three religious traditions had sexual access to their slave women and slave girls, and that teachings on slavery are intertwined with teaching on marriage and adultery. In this session, we will talk about how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim feminists are transforming their religious traditions by moving beyond the slave-holding values embedded within them.


The Sexuality of History
Susan Lanser
Professor of English and American Literature, Women's and Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature

The advent of modernity brought a veritable explosion of interest in women's relationships with women. In poems, plays, scientific treatises, and travelers' tales, the idea that women could live without men became a new and serious topic of inquiry. But just as discussions of same-sex marriage today are often about more than sex or marriage, relations between women in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe became a flashpoint for grappling with fundamental challenges to social structures and beliefs. This talk will ask not only what history can tell us about sex and gender, but what sex and gender can tell us about history.


A Boy Named Sue and Other Conundrums: Gender in Country Music
James Mandrell
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, Comparative Literature, Women's and Gender Studies, and Film Studies

Despite the recent political statements of the Dixie Chicks and Merle Haggard, US country music has been famously conservative, especially regarding issues of traditional family values, including gender and gender roles. Songs such as Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue" (famously sung by Johnny Cash) and Jim Stafford's "My Girl Bill" (always sung in the key of humor), as well as the film based on Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," suggest other possibilities, but this alternative narrative is just that - merely a suggestion. Beginning in the 1990s, however, the country music industry began to show some interest, especially commercial interest, in examining other views of gender. This is particularly the case with crossover star Shania Twain, whose music videos, in addition to showcasing Twain and her singing, scrambled gender presentation. A careful look at Twain's music videos and the cultural moment of their production has much to say about the 1990s. It can also help us to understand US culture today and the current socio-political divide.


For more information and to register:
http://alumni.brandeis.edu/web/special_programs/alumni_college/

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