COP: Question Sheet

Suggested Research Question. This can be a topic or theme, but please try to be as precise as possible.

Queer Women in Ancient History

Which Of The Module Resources Does This Question Relate To? You can find these on eStudio - Try to list at least three.

Barthes, R. (1968) 'The Death of the Author', London, Fontana. Berger, J. (1972) 'Ways of Seeing', Harmondsworth: Penguin.  Carr, E.H. (1961) 'What is History', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.  Storey, J. (2008) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture', 5th ed, London: Pearson. pp. 62-82.

Which Academic Sources Are Available On The Topic? Include a Harvard Referenced bibliography of at least 5 sources.

-Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin, and Lisa Auanger. Among Women. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Print. -Rich, Adrienne Cecile. 'Compulsory Heterosexuality And Lesbian Existence (1980)'. Journal of Women's History 15.3 (2003): 11-48. Web. -Halperin, David M. 'Is There A History Of Sexuality?'. History and Theory 28.3 (1989): 257. Web. -Unger, N. C. 'Teaching "Straight" Gay And Lesbian History'. Journal of American History 93.4 (2007): 1192-1199. Web. -Garber, Linda. 'Claiming Lesbian History: The Romance Between Fact And Fiction'. Journal of Lesbian Studies 19.1 (2015): 129-149. Web.

How Could The Research Question Be Investigated Through Practice? What Graphic Design would you make in response to this, and why?

-I could make illustrations based on my findings -I could draw more well known historical women to up their profile -I could draw my own interpretations of historical queer women so that people could see them and challenge the idea that queer women didn't just appear in the modern world out of nowhere? -I could illustrate facts about historical women to educate people that queer women to have a history

Peer Feedback – How could this topic be refined / developed? Show this form to a fellow student. They should record their feedback in the box below Naomi Crompton:  "Keep specific in your topic and research, because we only have 3000 words"

COP: Creating a Question

The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader from the college library. I was browsing looking through for possible essay ideas. Two essays in particular first stood out:

"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience" by Adrienne Rich

(Rich, Adrienne Cecile. 'Compulsory Heterosexuality And Lesbian Existence (1980)'. Journal of Women's History 15.3 (2003): 11-48. Web.)

and

"Is there a History of Sexuality" by David M. Halperin

(Halperin, David M. 'Is There A History Of Sexuality?'. History and Theory 28.3 (1989): 257. Web.)

This got me thinking about perhaps doing about historical queer women, it's a topic that really interests me, and it's largely undocumented. It's also in line with what I studied last year with heteronormativity, since heteronormativity is the reason why the history of queer women is so undocumented. However I know the just saying the history of queer women is very broad for the length of my essay (something I learnt from last year), so I think I'd like to cycle it down to what I find most interesting and least documented, ancient or classical queer women.

Leeds Uni

I went to Leeds University Library to get more potential books, as I wasn't able to find what I wanted in the LCA library. It was intimidating to be in such a massive library but I was able to download two PDFs:

"Claiming Lesbian History: The Romance Between Fact and Fiction" by Linda Garber 

(Linda Garber (2015) Claiming Lesbian History: The Romance Between Fact and Fiction, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 19:1, 129-149, DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2015.974381)

and 

"Teaching "Straight" Gay and Lesbian History" by Nancy C. Unger

(Unger, N. C. 'Teaching "Straight" Gay And Lesbian History'. Journal of American History 93.4 (2007): 1192-1199. Web.)

I've yet to read these articles, but when I do I will probably make a post on my blog, copying and analysing some quotes I find particularly intreating and relevant. 

Books I found were:

• "Sappho & Alcaeus: An Introduction to the study of ancient Lesbian Poetry" by Sir Denys Lionel Page- (I didn't think this was relevant in the end, maybe if I feel the need I'll come back to it but for now I thought I'd leave it)
• "Equal Partners in Ancient Times" by Bryan H Wildenthal ( A journal article I couldn't find, I will have to see if I can find this online somewhere, so I can see if it'll be good for my research or not)
• "Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past" by Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, jr. (Again one I may come back to)
• "Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World" by Nancy Rabinowitz (I loved this book! However I really couldn't take anything out of the library, I may be forced to buy this book just to read it all. Really relevant essays in here, very thought provoking.)

The one thing I am worried about it linking my topic to some of the suggested texts, I will have to read into those also. Off the op of my head I vaguely think the Death of the Author text will fit in, but I'll have to read my current materials and re look at the Death of the Author text before I can say for sure.

Death of The Author Analysis; The Death of Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita is a literary classic, published in 1955, and since then it has gone through many covers throughout the years, yet a common theme with a lot of these covers is that they on a whole defy Vladimir Nabokov's original intentions for the book cover, having said “I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain,” he wrote. “And no girls.”

With this it's easy to see how this relates to the Death of the Author theory. Vladimir Nabokov' specifically did not want girls on the cover of his book, yet it is the reader interpreting his work which created the number one image associated with the book. These covers have also shaped the way the book is perceived, most thinking it to be an erotic novel, when it's actually more a study into the mind of a male character whose dark and disturbing thoughts project onto a child. Instead we think of images of a teenage seductress. This can mostly be attributed to 1997 movie, where the main character age was changed from 12, to 16, a massive leap, which renders the original narrative of a sexually abused child to that of a rebellious young teenager, soon to be women. After that Lolita photographs of half naked or fully naked women seductively posing for the viewer, plagued covers.

Nabokov was outraged at: “Humbert was fond of ‘little girls’ — not simply ‘young girls.’ Nymphets are girl-children, not starlets and ‘sex kittens.’” and yet we still take the cover artists interpretations. Here the intent of the author is explicitly ignored.

The cover above is by Per Ahlin above is a one of numerous Loita covers, which shows how artists dismiss Nabokov's original intentions. The character on the cover looks to be a young woman, not the 12-year-old girl within the book. She had big model like hair and is wearing lingerie, which is highlighted by the orange spot colour chosen by the artist, her eyes seductively half lidded. This is exactly the type of cover Vladimir Nabokov did not want and thus the interpretation of his text Nabokov did not want.

However, in Roland Barthes "Death of the Author" text, he speaks of how in the modern era the origin of a work may lie with the author, but its destination is with the reader, everything comes down to the readers perception in the end. Here we have two readers, the cover book artists and the viewer who read the book with the artwork on the front, and see them as irrevocably linked. Barthes wrote "Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing." Via Death of the Author, what is to say these erotic interpretations of Lolita are not valid? However, it becomes interesting because these erotic interpretations undeniably show the gaping flaws within our society around the sexualisation of young girls, and the abuse of young girls, and the way men feel they have ownership over them, the themes Vladimir Nabokov was originally trying to write about. Having Lolita's meanings and interpretations decided by the readers and artists via death of the author undeniable hold a mirror up to our society and it's problems. Has Vladimir Nabokov's original intentions been realised, even though they are not the way he intended.

Ellen Lupton Cover; a non sexualised cover

COP: Practical 1

This task was hard, I felt one hour wasn't enough time to do much of anything, and I had 45 minutes when I actually left LCA. I decided to head to Leeds Uni Student Union as I felt it was the best place to go in the travel radius I had available. I was looking to continue my study into a similar area to last year, last year being heteronormativity, so I knew I was looking for anything linked to heteronormative ideas, gender politics, etc. 

Can men not smell of grapefruit? What if the men want to smell of grapefruit? 

There were only two 'Happy Anniversary' cards available and they both had a man and a women on it, no gender neutral ones.

Toxic Masculinity? No. Hyper Masculinity? Yes? Not much wrong here to be honest.

The "best" things in my haul were NHS victim support leaflets. I picked up "Helping a Child after a Crime", "Domestic Violence" and two "Rape and Sexual Assault" leaflets, one for men and one for women. I was pleased to find that there was leaflets for both, and upon reading the one for men I was also glad to see how it was covered how men can be raped by men and women, and how the crimes have little to do with sexuality and if the victim got aroused or not. 

Although it , at the back does state "him or her" which is good, but I feel it would be suited putting it at the front too, such as with the male one, that women can rape women. Crimes where women assaulted by women is likely to be belittled, but can have the same effects on a victim as any case of assault. 

The one thing which is definitely missing from these leaflets is help for transgender people.

As one of the most likely sections of people to experience sexual violence, especially when some studies have shown that 50% of all trangender people have experienced sexual abuse/assault in their life, where is the section for them? I worried about what the protocol with these leaflets was, does a trans women pick up a leaflet marked "men" or "women"? The "men" leaflet is more likely to contain health information that might be important to her, but as a women how would she feel having to pick that leaflet up, especially after having something as traumatizing as sexual assault happen to her. Or worse have it given to her? (Same for a trans man but flipped) 

In the end I got a few useful things, I didn't really enjoy the task, and I certainly didn't have time to do any drawing, but I think I did ok gathering various things to do with my line of study.

The Flipped Classroom

Traditional Classroom: 

• Teacher centred
• Didactic 
• Students follow Instructions 
• Disempowering

Flipped Classroom: 

• Student centred
• Explorative
• Students Actively Engage
• Empowering

Jacques Ranciere:

• French Theorist
• Trendy Philosopher 
• His most famous works include, "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" and "The Politics of Aesthetics"

May 1968: 

• Social and Civil unrest in Paris led by young students.
• Against the prevailing social order
• Workers joined the students
• They were angry that higher education was so expensive, unattainable, middle and high class, rich, white, male
• They also believed Higher Education was becoming too specialised, and by specialising students weren't being given a wider and better education. 
• They felt education was about training cogs in a machine
• Also pro sexual education
• Students threw paving bricks at the police
• Graffitied institutions
• Distributed sexual health leaflets
• Took over universities and art schools by barricading themselves in. Print studios where used to make protest posters that were plaster over the streets of paris.

Althusser and Ranciere: 

• Philosopher Althusser theorised that capitalism is held by certain state apparatus's. 
• Repressive state apparatus:- Police, prison, etc
• Idealogical state apparatus:- Media, Church, school
• Idealogical state apparatus's are things that reproduce the ideas of capitalist thinking, like being a singular person, being a number, things that keep people happy with their lot in life.
• Ranciere counters this by saying Althusser is part of the problem, saying "Althusserism is committed to preserving the power it brings to light", e.g. Althusser is a teacher and therefore benefiting from being higher in the hierarchy than his students. He'd not write himself out of a job.
• Ranciere questions the need for teachers at all.

Ranciere's ideas: 

• Ranciere looks at workers who are poets and artists outside of their jobs as labourers. He thinks on how they challenge the idea that "hobbyists" and labourers are excluded from serious art.
• They rebel by being more than workers.
• He thinks about why people have trouble identifying themselves outside of their work/position in a capitalist system.
• People are divided and put into different layer and fixed, based on class, race, sex, etc.
• Even in art school we are divided into subjects, and there is a hierarchy amongst which subject are higher than others, etc.
• This system stops people participating in different activities. 
• Athoritarian teachers are apart of the police system. 
• People within the system self police themselves. 

The Ignorant Schoolmaster:

• Based on Ranciere's analysis of a french teacher who taught his dutch students french by giving them two copies of a book. 
• Rangiere theorises that maybe the teacher gets in the way of students learning organically. The teacher explains and gives answers. The teacher socialises you into accepting you're not as intelligent as you are and that there will always be someone higher than you and to relay on other people for answers. 
• With this teaching is about supporting inequality.
• What kind o society can you build thinking that everyone is intelligent. 
• Writers writing in flowery over the top language is showing contempt for the working class who won't understand, gatekeeping. 
• Universal teaching will not take

Context of Research and Epistemology

Definitions: 

• Ontology: What is there to study?
• Epistemology: How can we know about it?

What is research:

• The progress of finding facts
• Collecting information, experiments, talking to people
• Analysing 
• Asking questions you don't know the answer to
• It's a process not a product and it doesn't go from A to B

Types of Research:

• Primary: Carrying out experiments, etc
• Secondary: Collecting data which already exists

Different Approaches to Research:

• stimulated approach - influenced by thinking, watching, seeing, reading
• systematic approach - practical, finding out physically 
• intuitive approach - gathered from experience

Types of Data

• Quantitate- numbers, stats, data
• Qualitative- concepts, feelings

Reflection:

• I think I relay too much on intuitive research sometimes, I should probably broaden my ideas more by thinking more about the different approaches to research.
• Paradigm Position- I am at the centre of my own research.
• Start with any approach to research, then go onto another, etc
• Keep things relevant to you
• Play with purpose

OUIL501-The Death of the Author

What Message is Barthes Trying to Convey?

• In the modern world the origin of a work may lie with the author, but its destination is with the reader, everything comes down to the readers perception in the end.
• Historically we relied more or authors intent and took their word for everything, but now we're more open to looking at work having multiple interpretations and the readers interpretation being the truest.
• Historically we were more inclined to consider an authors entire background and history when looking at their work, now we can look at the work in an isolated way. When the author is taken away the reader must assign their own meaning to the text.

How Does this Impact Illustration? 

• In the modern world a lot of illustration is done solely for clients, perhaps for corporations, and with that those clients will probably not want any underlaying opinions, messages, etc from the artists, their work will simply go out as if it exists in a vacuum. This relates to the Death of the Author concept because in these situations the artists work will be seen by viewers who will form their own opinion, and the voice of the author will probably not be present.
• It also shows how the viewer of the work can take their own meanings from it without having to also consider what the artists ideas where when making the piece.
• Also in the modern world of the internet, it's easy for artwork to go uncredited and thus completely disconnected from the artist, existing on it's own.

How Does it Relate to Your Chosen Theme?  

• The cultural change of the authors word being law, now it's with the reader/viewer represents a cultural change.
• The culture author was thought to have a significant impact on the interpretation of the work, but this theory questions it.

This session was very interesting, I've come across Barthes ideas before in the context of an author arguing with how the majority of viewer saw his work, but it was good to look at the theory in depth. It also gave me questions, such as what would Barthes think of the modern world we live in which is more connected and disconnected than ever? What would he think of the internet? How would this change his ideas?

I see more and more oftern authors being held accountable for the content of their work. Also due to the resurgence of sub cultures wanting to keep things real do the modern audience crave the authenticity of the author/artist? Via doing these things are we demanding the "Resurrection of the Author" ?? Is the Author not dead, just sleeping? Questions.

OUIL501- 1st Task of the Year Part 2

Cultural 

-relating to the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a society.

-relating to the arts and to intellectual achievements.

Quotes:

"Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed; the culture reflects the realities of people working together every day."

— Frances Hesselbein
The Key to Cultural Transformation, Leader to Leader (Spring 1999)

"Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival."—René Dubos 

(French-born American Microbiologist, Environmentalist, Humanist; 1901-1982) 

“Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.” 

— Yo-Yo Ma 

(French-Born American Cellist, United Nations Messenger of Peace; b. 1955) 

Photographs:

 

A culturally significant photograph.

Vicky Grout’s South London streetwear and music culture portraits

 

Cultural incidents/events (Scotland Referendum by Jane Stockdale)

Images: 

Norman Rockwell depicting idealised American culture of the past

Paintings that show what the West considers Cultural

A Tanjore Painting showing cultural and religious iconography.

OUIL501- 1st Task of the Year Part 1

 

Historical

People

• Boadicea 
• Elagabalus
• Cleopatra
• Stalin
• Ada Lovelace

Subject

•  War
• Colonialism
• Genocide
• Racism
• Scandal

 Place

• Rome
• Byzantine
• Constantinople
• U.S.S.R
• Egypt

Meaning

• Period
• Oppression
• Classics
• Legend/Fable
• Society

Social

People

• Martin Luther King jr
• Emily Pankhurst
• Mary Seacole
• Randy Shilts 
• Marsha P Johnson

Subject

• Suffragettes
• Revolution
• Empires
• Democracy
• Classism 

 Place

• France
• Underground bunker in eastern Russia
• Selma
• Salem
• U’p North

Meaning 

• Equality/Inequality
• Justice
• Progress/Luddites
• Taboos
• Hierarchy 

Technology

People

• G.Orwell
• Steve Jobs
• Edward Jenner
• The Code Breaker
• Marie Curie 

Subject

• Computers
• Robots
• Cameras
• Space
• A.I

Place

• Silicon Valley
• Area 51
• Moon/Space
• E3
• NASA

Meaning 

• Progress
• Future
• Global Village
• Mail?
• Surveillance

Cultural

People

• Dali Lama
• Pope
• Kanye West
• Nicki Minaj
• Bob Marley

Subject

• Music
• Fashion
• Iconography
• Language
• Food

Place

• Leeds Market
• Mecca
• Paris
• Bologna
• Library of Alexandria

Meaning 

• Togetherness
• Community
• Warfare
• Appropriation
• Pop

Political

People

• Berlusconi 
• Donald Trump
• Jonathan Swift
• Maggie Thatcher
• Mugabe 

Subject

• Satire
• Elitism
• The Grass root movement
• Assassination
• Coupe

 Place

• West Minster
• DC
• Kremlin
• Hague
• Switzerland 

Meaning 

• Power
• Conspiracy
• Kanye
• Money
• Sex

Definitions:

Historical

-of or concerning history or past events.

-belonging to the past.

-(of the study of a subject) based on an analysis of its development over a period.

Social

-relating to society or its organisation.

-needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities.

- living together in groups, typically in a hierarchical system with complex communication.

Political 

-of or relating to the government or public affairs of a country.

-done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organisation rather than as a matter of principle.

-motivated by a person's beliefs or actions concerning politics.

Cultural 

-relating to the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a society.

-relating to the arts and to intellectual achievements.

Technology

-the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.

-machinery and devices developed from scientific knowledge.