Women in Fiction and Film

This seminar will investigate the shifting roles that female characters have played in theatre, literature and film over the millennia. Al Duncan will discuss Aristophanes’ “sex-strike play,” Lysistrata, which was both of, and ahead of, its time, and highlight the caprices of literary reception and the play’s continuing cultural role if (when), indeed, “the future is female.” Inger Brodey will look at the tendency to depict women in distress as erotically exciting in the eighteenth-century novel (including Richardson, Radcliffe, and Goethe), and Austen’s responses to this problematic trope. Rachel Schaevitz will round out the day by tracing the rise of powerful female characters in American film across generations and genres and how this trend reflects Hollywood’s response to changing attitudes about what roles women and girls should hold in the world.

TOPICS & SPEAKERS

Aristophanes’ Lysistrata: Timeless or Timely?

Al Duncan, Assistant Professor of Classics

The Attractions of “Virtue in Distress” in the Novels of Austen and Others

Inger S. Brodey, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature

The Rise of the Heroine in American Film

Rachel Schaevitz, Postdoctoral Scholar for Carolina Public Humanities and Lecturer in Communication

Evolution of Female Characters in Theatre, Literature and Film

A panel discussion with our speakers

TIME & COST

9:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Saturday, November 11, 2017. The tuition is $125 ($110 by September 1). Tuition for teachers is $62.50 ($55 by September 1). Teachers can also receive a $75 stipend after attending (click here for more information) and 10 contact hours for 1 unit of renewal credit. The optional lunch is $15.00.

This seminar will take place in Research Triangle Park.

Co-Sponsored by the General Alumni Association.

For information about GAA discounts and other scholarships available to Humanities Program participants, click here.

Register for this seminar.