ARTH 1156

FWS: Bibliophilia - A Visual History of Women Reading

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

Tranquil depictions of women reading books arguably constitute one of the loveliest recurring themes in the history of art. On one hand, they capture interior, intellectual lives, the quiet intimacy of the domestic sphere. On the other, they reveal the learned woman as radical, access to information as dangerous to the patriarchy, literacy as powerful and subversive, and reading as a means to connect, escape, and transcend. This course considers the rich trove of images of women reading, and seeks to complicate it by highlighting the various ways in which they reflect and confront history and culture through theories of privilege, access, pleasure, leisure, and labor. Works include paintings by Mary Cassatt and Diego Rivera, images of Marilyn Monroe and Virginia Woolf, and evocations of literary bibliophiles like Hermione Granger and Elena Ferrante. Students will learn to write visual analyses that incorporate social history, use primary sources in Cornell's collections, explore emerging methods to access these images via digital archives, and ultimately, write content for a collaboratively curated exhibition.

When Offered Fall.

Satisfies Requirement First-Year Writing Seminar.

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