Sumários

(Home assignment)

6 Novembro 2024, 15:30 • Chiara Nifosi

No class on Nov. 6 due to the professor's absence (scientific mission abroad). The class was replaced by an extra assignment (Home assignment 1, due by the end of the month of November).

Judith Butler / 2

30 Outubro 2024, 15:30 • Chiara Nifosi

Discussion of Judith Butler's article "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" (second part): gender as an act that is learnt through sociability; role of the audience in validating or invalidating your performance (coercive nature of gender); anti-essentialism of Butler's take on gender; the influence of this theory on the development of Queer Studies.

Judith Butler / 1

25 Outubro 2024, 15:30 • Chiara Nifosi

Introduction to Judith Butler and discussion of the article "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" (first part). Butler's sources and analysis of the first paragraphs of the article: Speech Act Theory, Althusser, phenomenology, de Beauvoir's work on gender, Poststructuralism. 

Simone de Beauvoir

23 Outubro 2024, 15:30 • Chiara Nifosi

We discussed the main topics of today's reading, Simone de Beauvoir's introduction to The Second Sex, namely the idea of women's biological destiny, the process of othering in the context of a master-slave relationship to men, the existentialist approach and terminology used by de Beauvoir to frame her discourse on gender-based oppression (the original mitsein, immanence and transcendence).

Woolf, A Room of One's Own/2

18 Outubro 2024, 15:30 • Chiara Nifosi

Today we completed our discussion on Woolf's essay. After framing the work through some general remarks about the formal aspects of the text (i.e., the idea of fictional truth, imaginary first-person narrator, the blend of fictional and essay writing), we went through all the main topics for each chapter, namely: the underdevelopment of women's education system, which is less invested upon; the historical obstacles to women's accumulation of capital; the thought experiment of imagining the life of Shakespeare's sister; material vs. immaterial obstacles to women's imagination (man's hostility); the idea of writing with your sex in mind / sex consciousness; the revolutionary prose of Mary Carmichael as finally free from the mental constraints created by sex; the androgynous writer.