A HISTORY OF SEXUALITY

The "Mad Woman" is an archetype with enduring appeal in storytelling. Inimical forces conspire to curb her agency or prohibit the pursuit of her desires; how does she survive or strike back from such a disadvantaged position? How is her “madness” represented as the effect of her oppression and a consequence of her femininity? How does she weaponize the very terms by which her existence is disqualified? Moreover, under what conditions does she subject others to the same suffering imposed on her, and to what cost? This course considers the ways women of all kinds negotiate life “on the verge,” in states of extreme precarity or with the threat of violence lurking around them. What do their complicities, rebellions, and fantasies reveal about sexual difference materialized within patriarchal societies? To be “on the verge” is to hover in a liminal space between “here” and “there,” perhaps to be even something not quite human. This unique vantage point offered by this eclectic collection of women will orient our critical approach to this seminar. Possible texts include Euripides’s Medea, Aeschylus’s Oresteia cycle, Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, Andrea Dworkin’s Right-wing Women, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance.