Course detail

Feminist (and) Queer Issues in Art, Film, and beyond (1970-1990s)

FaVU-2FQIAcad. year: 2021/2022

The material that has been chosen for the course focuses on the older period of feminism and queer visuality – 1980s and 1990s – and looks at two different sections. Within feminist (and queer feminist) art discourse, it focuses on issues of representation or the lack thereof in the curatorial strategies of dominant art institutions and curatorial narratives, on the issue of the erotic sovereignty of representation in the polemic against the critique of the objectification and sexualization of women's and queer bodies, or on the issue of activist approaches in art (and the risk of their historicization and inclusion in major art institutions and narratives). In the second section of the course, students will be introduced to some of the seminal film works made by queer artists, whether in the 1990s or at the turn of the millennium as part of the so-called New Queer Cinema movement, or older works made in the 1970s by, for example, John Waters or Ulrike Ottinger.

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Department

Department of Art History and Theory (KTDU)

Offered to foreign students

Of all faculties

Learning outcomes of the course unit

Students will gain insight into topics and aesthetic modes brought by older periods of feminism and queer studies and will be able to critically reflect these texts and artworks in a wider context, both historical and contemporary. Students will be able to reflect with a clearer insight some aspects of the institutional processes of the art world(s) and they will gain insight into different approaches of identity politics.

Prerequisites

None.

Co-requisites

Not applicable.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

The course is taught in a seminar form based on an analysis of one or two shorter texts/films discussed in each class and written about in short texts handed in before each class. In the case of distance learning, the subject can be taught in a hybrid form or completely online (MS Teams).

Assesment methods and criteria linked to learning outcomes

Students will be assessed (non-letter grade) on submitting the reading and writing tasks and active participation in the seminar + attendance (by the end of the semester at the latest, all assignments must be handed in).

Course curriculum

1. Lucy Lippard – Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power, Andrea Fraser -There is No Place Like Home
2. Greta Gaart – Toward Queer Ecofeminism; Tanya Augburg: Ars Eroticas of Their Own Making: Explicit Sexual Imagery in American Feminist Art.
3. Mira Schorr – Patrilineage, Guerilla Girls, Ridykelous
4. Griselda Pollock on Screen Theory
5. Griselda Pollock + Roszika Parker/Old Mistresses (Women, Art, and Ideology – Questions for Feminist Art Historians)
6. Amelia Jones (Essentialism, Feminism, and Art – Spaces Where „Woman“ Oozes Away )
7. Alexandra Kokoli and Angela Dmitrikaki – Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures, and Curatorial Transgressions
8. Gloria Andalzúa (La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciouness) and Audre Lorde (Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power)
9. Avant-garde queer and film – Ulrike Ottinger - FreakOrlando
10. New Queer Cinema: Isaac Julien – Looking for Langston, New Queer Cinema: Todd Haynes - Poison
11. Forbidden Love – The Unshamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992) – Aerlin Weismann and Lynne Fernie
12. New Queer Cinema: Boys Don’t Cry and (post NQC) Brokeback Mountain – the tragedy of rural queer
13. John Waters & Divine (Pink Flamingos, etc)

Work placements

Not applicable.

Aims

The course introduces students to queer, and feminist topics connected to the politics of representation in visual art and film in historical perspective (1980s and 1990s). They will be able to link these perspectives to the current discourse in visual art.

Specification of controlled education, way of implementation and compensation for absences

Attendance is mandatory, 2 absences are allowed under normal circumstances, 3 absences are allowed should the learning be carried out in an online form due to covid restrictions.

Recommended optional programme components

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Jones, Amelia. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. (EN)
Judith Butler - The Trouble With Gender, Závažná těla/Bodies That Matter (CS)
Pollock, Griselda, and Parker, Roszika. Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology. (EN)
Saraswati, L.Ayu and Shaw, Barbara. Feminist and Queer Theory. An Intersectional and Transnational Reader. (EN)

Type of course unit

Seminar

26 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová