Problematizing Power in Buffy:Last FRG Meeting of the Term!

For our last scheduled meeting of the term, the Feminist Reading Group will be screening select scenes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s final season. The brief screening will be followed by some discussion around how Buffy negotiates individualized and collective forms of power for women.

A Burden We Can’t Share?: Problematizing Power in Buffy
Tuesday, April 8th – 1:30-3:00 pm
UC 274

We hope to see you there!

Performance Studies Research Group Event THIS WEEK!!

The Performance Studies Research Group is hosting Dr Susan Fast, of McMaster University's Department of English and Cultural Studies, on March 19 from 3-4pm in UC 224A. Dr Fast, whose current SSHRC-funded research initiative explores the politics of representation in the work of all-girl rock tribute bands, will be delivering a talk entitled "Theorizing the Copy: Gender, Virtuosity, and Originality in Tribute Band Performances." Dr Fast will speak for approximately 20-25 minutes, and will then open the floor to a broader discussion of the issues her paper will raise. Please mark your calendars, and encourage your students to join us for what will be a stimulating paper and discussion!

Susan Fast is a musicologist, who began her academic career as a Medievalist, with a focus on the Aristotelian-influenced scholasticism of the late 13th and early 14th centuries in Northern France. Her focus shifted to popular music in the mid 1990’s, and has, since then, been focused on constructions of identity in popular music performance; theoretical perspectives from performance studies have been particularly influential in her work. She has produced two books, the first of which is a critical edition of the fourteenth-century treatise Musica speculativa, by the Parisian music theorist and mathematician Jean de Meurs (published by the Institute of Medieval Music, 1994). She is also author of In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music (Oxford, 2001), a collection of essays that explores the body in performance, gender and sexuality, cultural appropriation/hybridity, and ritual/mythology in rock music. Her publications also include articles on Live Aid and cultural memory, constructions of authenticity in U2, Tina Turner’s gendered and racialized identity in the 1960’s, issues of feminism and rock criticism, and on the mass-mediated benefit concerts that appeared after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Her current project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, investigates issues related to gender, race and normative genre boundaries in all female tribute bands to hard rock and heavy metal.

The Axe Effect: Targeting Advertising Campaigns – A FRG focus group/coffeehouse

The first FRG meeting of 2008 will be held on March 4 from 1:30-2:30 in UC274. The theme for our meeting will be "The Axe Effect: Targeting Advertising Campaigns." This meeting will be an interactive discussion on the representation of women in current advertising. Some of us are coming equipped with examples from print and television advertising – feel free to bring along your own examples, or just come as you are. We have reserved a smart classroom space, so the access of internet resources or other electronic material will not be a problem.
Please see the link below for a small sample of the type of advertising we will be discussing in relation to representations of women, and issues of feminist politics.
Hope to see you all there!

Click Here to See a Sample Axe Ad

Click Here to see another "Axe Effect" Ad that Amber has suggested

Discussion on Harlem Renaissance Theatre Readings

• Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958): A lot of Grimké’s poetry speaks to her desire to love and be loved by another woman. Her lesbian identity as an influence to her poetry has been discussed by theorists like Barbara Christian. Grimké’s love for other women is best seen in the third stanza of her poem "Naughty Nan". Click here to see the poem. Though her sexual identity is not overtly specified in Rachel, the paintings that are specified as stage direction at the beginning of the play speak to these larger sexual issues. Specifically, Burne-Jones’ “Golden Stairs” (1880) which can be seen on the Tate Gallery website here, can be argued to have homoerotic overtones. This relates to how the scene setting and architecture of the play is very detailed and deliberately chosen.

• The racial concerns seen in Rachel are not echoed as much in her poetry. Rachel published in 1920. First presented by NAACP in 1916. The play is said to be a response to W.E.B DuBois request for theatre, by and for African-Americans.

• I see two main themes to the play:

1. Lynching
2. The tension between motherhood and echoes of infanticide.

• Touch is also seen throughout the text, and is especially problematic when it comes to Rachel herself. On page 24 for example Rachel’s hug is described as a strangle. Also, Rachel’s dislike of being touched by John Strong towards the end of the play seems to be coupled with a rape discourse.

• Discussion Questions:

1. How does architecture function in the play? What does it mean that on pg.5 Mrs. Loving says that the poor live on the top floor, and how does this relate to the opposite use of contemporary architecture?
2. She originally called the play The Pervert, Blessed are the Barren and The Daughter before being titled Rachel. What are the implications of these titles?
3. How do you see the play ending? Does she kill Jimmy, does she commit suicide?
4. What is the function of the rape discourse in relation to John Strong?

Discussion on Native Canadian Theatre Readings

On Monday, the Feminist Reading Group had a lively discussion of Annie Mae’s Movement by Canadian playwright, Yvette Nolan. Much of our discussion around this play was concerned with the role played by gender politics in male-dominated activist movements.

For further information/context for Nolan's play, please see the following, taken from Yvette Nolan's page on the Native Earth Performing Arts site:

Native Earth Performing Arts: Yvette Nolan
http://webhome.idirect.com/~naterth/yvette.html

It has been twenty five years since the body of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a Mi'qmak woman from Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia, was found on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Twenty five years since the FBI cut off her hands and informed us she died from exposure. Twenty five years and her Murder is still unsolved. I did not write this play to explain what happened to Anna Mae. Rather I wanted to explore what it must have been like to be Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a woman in a man's movement, a Canadian in America, an Aboriginal in a white dominant culture at a time when it felt like we really could change the world. I wanted to give voice to one who they tried to silence in life and in death. I never intended to write a documentary. What really happened to Anna Mae back in 1975/1976 cannot be truly known, not to the satisfaction of her family and her friends. The facts are now lost in disinformation and denial, in misinformation and memory. Instead of facts, I am looking for the truths we can gleam from examining the life and death of Anna Mae Aquash: that we must fight for what we believe in; that we cannot know the consequences of our actions; that we live on in the work that we do and the people we affect long after we have passed from this world.

Performance Studies Research Group Event

Please come out to support the PSRG!!

The Western Performance Studies Research Group (PSRG) Presents:
"Fashioning Female Modernity: The Revolution in Modern Gowns and the 'Psychology of Stage Clothes'"
By Dr. Marlis Schweitzer (Department of Theatre, York University)
Tuesday, December 4 from 3:30-4:30 in UC 224A
Dr. Schweitzer’s work is interdisciplinary and her talk will be of interest to those who work in theatre studies, social history, performance theory, and women’s studies. We hope that many of you will join us for what promises to be a fascinating presentation and discussion!
Please find attached a poster announcing the event that we hope you will distribute to your department, colleagues, and students.
About Marlis Schweitzer:
Marlis Schweitzer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at York University. She has published in a number of journals including American Quarterly, The Journal of Women's History, Theatre Research in Canada, and Canadian Theatre Review. She is currently completing a book entitled Becoming Fashionable: Actresses, Fashion, and American Consumer Culture, forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press. Her latest research looks at the men and women who laid the foundation for contemporary celebrity culture in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century through their work as press agents, photographers, literary agents, and managers.
About the Performance Studies Research Group (PSRG):
The Western Performance Studies Research Group explores any and all aspects of "performance" at UWO. We are an interdisciplinary group of scholars who meet twice per term to share our work and insights with like-minded academics. New members are always welcome.

Discussion Question on Urdu Theatre Readings

During the FRG meeting this week, we began discussing, and exploring, the connection between women's clothing (cloaking) of the body, and the space that a body occupies. Jameela Nishat's play, "Purdah" [curtain/veil] addresses these issues by calling the Islamic burqa a portable room, or closet, which immediately undermines the current construction of the burqa as a cloaking device that seeks to render femininity invisible in the public domain. The play suggests, however, that the burqa may render femininity invisible, but makes the female body highly visible, a "subject" of the male gaze. The one character who wears the burqa on the street, however, is the only one capable enough (brave enough?) to return the gaze, to give as good as she gets. The question we attempted to address in such a complex representation of the veiled body is: what does this particular character's response say about the assumptions that the veil is a manifestation of the patriarchal oppressive machinery?

Another interesting avenue opened up by the play is Nishat's (assumed) play with lighting and disembodied voices that question the necessity for veiling the female body. The written version of the play that we have provides very little stage direction. We are assuming that scene 3 (in which multiple, unidentified, voices make numerous statements about the impact of the veil on women's lives) takes place in total darkness, with little or no light. If that indeed is true, then is the stage transformed into the dark interior, presumably the inside of a burqa? What does that suggest about space, body, performance and voice in a feminist context? Is she suggesting that the cloaking of a female body is more than a religious issue?

Following is a link to a poem by Nishat, entitled "Wearing a Burqa", one that highlights some of the issues we've been addressing in our meetings and discussions. Since the play under discussion is not readily available, the poem should help launch some interesting discussions about the role of religion, culture and cloaks in women's lives. Even though the context of the poem (and the play) is quite specific--both are addressing an audience that presumably reads and understands Urdu, and is, thus, part of the North Indian Muslim population--the poem itself seems to transcend issues of translation and cultural specificity. Any comments, questions, suggestions about the material are welcome. Hopefully, we can launch a productive discussion around these issues.
http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10034&x=1