Registering the Self

This thesis explores how women artists articulate their subjectivity through autobiographical writings such as memoirs, diaries, and romans à clef. It begins by acknowledging the difficulties many women artists experience in claiming or asserting their identity as artists. In traditional and masculinist ways of understanding art, creativity is assumed to involve an act of transcendence from material circumstances and everyday life. For many women artists such acts of transcendence are not possible. By writing about their own lives, women artists give themselves space to negotiate and confront myths and institutionalised values about art and to produce counter-institutional histories. In the thesis I investigate how three women artists, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington and Faith Ringgold, write about their lives and their art. I note how each of these artists place their art not only in studio spaces set aside from everyday life but also in domestic spaces saturated by everyday life. Indeed, they each offer vivid accounts of domestic spaces including rooms and furniture. My method of reading is to follow each of these artists through spaces, from room to room, into and outside of houses. Domestic spaces are also filled by intimate relationships; women artists, in writing about art also write about their roles within these relationships. I explore how women artists are called upon to perform certain roles that risk distancing them from their lives as artists. Whether they fulfil these roles or not, I argue that the rationale they provide for the roles they take up is how they assert their creative identities. By exploring how women artists write about art, this thesis demonstrates how art can be created given the restrictions of physical environments, social norms and gendered expectations. Throughout, the thesis engages with classic feminist critiques of domesticity and recent queer and feminist reflections on the subject. It demonstrates how creativity can come from the very struggle to make room.

Reviewed by: Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity Douglas Burton-Christie Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. By David Brakke. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ix + 308 pp. $49.95 The past twenty-five years have witnessed a remarkable transformation in the way scholars understand and interpret early Christian monasticism. In the wake of the ground-breaking work of social historian Peter Brown, a generation of scholars has emerged for whom the study of Christian monasticism must be approached with a critical awareness of, among other things, issues of gender, power, and social construction. Although this methodological shift has sometimes resulted in a reductionistic reading of monastic experience, it has for the most part yielded a richer, more varied and textured understanding of the early monastic world than we have had before. David Brakke is among the most gifted of this new generation of scholars and is already well known in the field for his astute and original reading of the monastic ethos of Athanasius of Alexandria (Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism [Oxford, 1995]). Brakke turns his considerable skill here to a subject of crucial importance for understanding early Christian monastic spirituality: the monk's battle with the demons. It is the singular contribution of this outstanding book to lay bare the roots of this important idea and to delineate the astonishing range of expressions to which it gave rise in early monasticism. One of the virtues of Brakke's disciplined historical analysis is that we come to see that neither "spiritual combat," nor "demons" meant one thing in early monastic experience. Rather, there were intricate and subtle differences between and among different authors, schools, and monastic traditions concerning what it meant to struggle with demons. It is Brakke's stated aim to investigate the idea of "spiritual combat" in all its complexity and variety, to understand how theological assumptions, ecclesial location, philosophical orientation, literary genre and other matters affected this crucial idea. But if Brakke is a careful historian, he is not historicist; that is, he is not interested only in situating the idea of "spiritual combat" historically. He wants to interpret it, understand how it came to expression in a range of genres and settings. He wants to understand what it meant to the early Christian monks to struggle in this way, with the demons, with God, with oneself. And if he cautions us against importing anachronistic ideas about contemporary psychology into our reading of the early monastic understanding [End Page 119] of the demons (about which I will say more below), he neither underestimates nor dismisses the power of the demonic in early Christian monastic life. One might well characterize this work as "historical-phenomenological" in its outlook. The book is divided into two main sections. Part I, "The Monk in Combat," consists of an excellent introductory chapter that lays out the main thematic and theoretical issues of the book, and in-depth analyses of works by or about some of the key figures from the early monastic movement—Antony of Egypt, Evagrius of Ponticus, Pachomius, and Shenoute. Part II, charmingly entitled "War Stories," engages in analysis of key thematic issues arising from the monks' experience of struggle with the demons: the diversity of stories and literary genres through which tales of spiritual battle came to expression in the first few generations of monastic life (Brakke considers the distinctive stories through which the History of the Monks, the Lausic History and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers imaged and configured spiritual battle); the image of the Ethiopian, through which fears connected to racial and sexual otherness came to be crystallized in the early monastic mind; the complex and ambiguous use of gender to render the demonic; and the role of the demonic in framing the ever shifting debate between Christian monastics and their pagan counterparts. This brief summary hardly does justice to the complexity and depth of Brakke's analysis of the texts and figures from the early monastic tradition, or to the real theoretical sophistication that he brings to bear upon his interpretation of this material. But it does reveal something of...

The article is aimed at the development and implementation of innovative methods of teaching a short story as a literary genre with the use of digital instruments. The research suggests using a cross-sectional study based on descriptive methodology and comparative analysis. The study was set up at the Kazakh National Women’s Teacher Training University and included 68 participants (38 in the experimental group and 30 – in the control group). The results found that digital tools are widely used to teach a short story as a literary genre. The effective methods to teach a short story as a literary genre are the following: debate and interactive discussion through online platforms, writing exercises, role-playing and simulation, problem-based tasks, thematic mind mapping, comparative study, collaborative projects, video lectures, and peer learning. Besides, it was proved that a short story is an efficient educational tool and contributes to the improvement of the professional skills of future philologists. They refer to analytical skills, critical thinking, creativity, digital literacy, emotional intelligence, cross-cultural competence, communicative skills, creative writing, and textual analysis. The experiment resulted in the development of recommendations for teaching the short story as a literary genre at the institutional, pedagogical, technological, linguistic, and psychological tiers. In conclusion, innovative methods based on digital tools enhance the process of teaching a short story as a literary genre and contribute to the training of philological students.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Victorian Life Writing

Gender and Judgement: The Blind Spot of the Visual Arts ‘Quality’ is the foremost criteria, when Danish art museums collect artworks. At least that is what curators claim when it comes to gender, and most female artists agree: gender issues are second to quality. However, in this article the concept of ‘quality’ is an obstacle for a critical thinking of gender. ‘Quality’ does not exist as an autonomous analytic category in the field of the visual arts. On the contrary, it is depending on the agents’ habitus as well as the cultural and social processes of valuing in the field. Therefore, this article argues, ‘gender’ should be considered before ‘quality’, just as ‘periods’, ‘geography’, ‘-isms’, ‘motives’ and so on are naturalized analytic categories in the museums’ everyday which without trouble go before any concern of ‘quality’. The article is not aiming at an equal number of male and female artists’ represented in the museums, which would just reproduce the traditional concept of quality, but of an increased professional awareness of gender issues in all practices and discourses of art.

The social position of woman has been considered as a political and cultural issue with in the process of modernization attempts under the Turkish Enlightenmentera which coversthelate Ottoman period and the Republicanera. This issue has always been in close relation with the way of living of Turkish woman. The Turkish girls who have received training wanted to be included to the national fractions and they wanted to have a spot in thesocial life. Turkish girls wanted to have a spot in musicand in particular, panting, and they were encouraged by their families; and they were consciousaboutreceiving art education. Within this context, we observe that the female identity constructed with Republic an modernization in Turkey is considered as equivalent with female artist identity. History of Turkish painting has its beginning with Muslim Turkish women involved in it, only after the beginning of 20th century. On the otherhand, at the Istanbul exhibition saloons in the end of 19th century minority women Works have been exhibited. Within this process, we observe that the names of Turkish women artists have become more featured after the modernization era. Therefore, we can say that the identity of female artists were established with in the social structure determined by historical conditions. This study aims to elaboratethesocial and cultural transformation of Turkey by focusing on the works of female artists; therefore trying to provide a new and alternative perspective forthesocio-cultural history of Turkey by putting the pioneering and critical position of female artists into the center in modern and contemporary art.

Art as a Political Act:Expression of Cultural Identity, Self-Identity, and Gender by Suk Nam Yun and Yong Soon Min Hwa Young Choi Caruso (bio) Introduction A number of artists of color, including Asian American women, are creating art from the basis of their lived experiences. Within minority groups searching for their cultural identity, establishing self-identity is an important process. For various psychological and sociological reasons, artists seem inspired to seek deeper meaning and a broader participation in cultural work.1 Asian American women artists, in particular, are currently making art as a means of exploring self-identity, cultural identity, and gender issues. Korean/Korean American minority women artists are creating art as a reaction to their cultural upbringing, which questions issues of identity, gender, ethnicity, politics, cultural, and socioeconomic status. These contemporary artists are breaking away from traditional cultural expectations and overcoming social barriers as artists, women, and Koreans/Korean Americans. With the growing public awareness of women's consciousness and sense of self as women in Korea and as an ethnic minority in America, these artists are redefining their identity. Despite the traditional patriarchal Confucian hierarchy; lack of social, institutional, and political support; and stereotypic gender, cultural, and socioeconomic status expectations for women, a few have stepped out of their traditional roles as women and have become successful artists in Korea and America. The artworks of these artists are worthy of investigation because they appear to be a culturally, socially, and politically motivated artistic expression of the complex multifaceted Korean/Korean American life experiences as women and as Korean immigrant members of a cultural (ethnic) minority in American society. Therefore, two main research questions can be posed: [End Page 71] • Given that art can be constructed out of layers of different experiences and influences, to what extent do the dimensions of cultural identity, self-identity, and gender interweave and contribute to the function of art as a political act for Korean/Korean American women artists? • How do Korean/Korean American cultural, social, and female experiences influence the artistic expression of Korean/Korean American women artists? In order to answer these questions, I selected case study methodology2 and adapted elements of interpretive biography,3 and narrative approaches as developed by Wallace and Gruber.4 According to Denzin,5 interpretive biography involves the collection and analysis of personal experiences, life documents, stories, accounts, and narratives that describe turning-point moments in individuals' lives. Denzin argues that personal experiences and personal stories are derived from a larger cultural, ideological, and historical context. The intent of the biographical project is to problematize the social, economic, cultural, structural, and historical forces that shape, distort, and otherwise alter lived experiences. By using narrative case study methods, I explore elements of self-identity formation, cultural identity, gender issues, personal thoughts, artistic expression, meaning of artworks, professional achievement, and life circumstances. I examine each participant's life in the Korean and American historical, cultural, social, and political environments. I interpret participants' outer lives (what they do) and inner lives (feelings, thoughts, inner self) to capture their deep, profound life experiences. I examine salient themes of their art expression and how the role of art and artistic activity is a part of political, cultural, social, and feminist activism. I further investigate their professional activities in order to identify the multiple roles that contribute to personal and professional identity formation. For the purpose of this study, I selected the contemporary Korean woman artist Suk Nam Yun and the contemporary Korean American woman artist Yong Soon Min as primary participants. These two women artists, despite many social and cultural barriers, chose to become artists; feminists; and social, cultural, and political activists; in addition to fulfilling traditional Korean family and domestic roles. Yun and Min are regarded as the leading contemporary Korean/Korean American women artists whose artworks deal with issues of cultural, social, feminist, political, and hybrid identity and art as political activism. Lippard acknowledges that visual images play an increasingly important role in society.6 Art that connects everyday experience with social critique and creative expression becomes a vital means of reflecting upon the nature of society and social existence.7 Artworks can function as...

Being colonized by France, Cocochina (the South of Vietnam) was the region where Western literature was introduced into earlier than the North. Truong Minh Ky was considered the first translator of Western literature in Vietnam. His earliest works of translation appeared in 1884. By the early 20th century, introduced to Vietnamese readers were Western literary works not only of French origin but also of British, American and Russian origins; not only poetry, prose but also drama. In the late 19th century, many writers such as Truong Vinh Ky, Huynh Tinh Cua were interested in Chinese literature. In the first decade of the 20th century, a wide variety of Chinese novels were translated into Vietnamese, forming a strong movement of translating "truyen Tau” (Chinese fictions). The remarkable characteristics of the translation of Western literature in Cochinchina were as follows - The newspapers and magazines in “Quoc Ngu” (Vietnamese language written in Latin characters) where the first works of translation were published played very important role. - The translators were greatly diverse, coming from different social and cultural backgrounds. - More translation was made on prose. Novels of martial arts, historical stories, novels of heroic deeds attracted the attention of the translators and the publishers. Therefore, they were translated much more than romance novels were, because of their compatibility with popular audience. - By translating the works of Western literature, the writers tried to express new concepts of humanism, such as women rights, or gender issues. Translated literature in Cocochina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries reflects a paradox: Western influences started to leave their marks but the Chinese influence was still strongly engraved. However, this was a remarkable step in the journey of modernization of national literature. Through these early translated works, new literary genres were introduced and Vietnamese readers gradually became familiar with them. Translation experiences were the first steps for Cocochina writers to achieve thorough understanding, to learn Western writing techniques and styles, which helped them become the pioneers of new literature in Vietnam.

The primitivism that informed the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century directed attention to women’s creativity and was instrumental in the incorporation of women artists in their circles. But the same ideology that authorized women artists was partly responsible for their subsequent marginalization. The attendant risk of this ‘preference for the primitive’, in E. H. Gombrich’s phrase, is illustrated in the case of María Blanchard. She had been among the select group of Cubists attached to Léonce Rosenberg’s gallery in Paris, only to fall gradually into virtual obscurity as her contribution was interpreted in terms of a feminine mystique. This essay examines her artistic trajectory in the light of Michel de Certeau’s distinction between tactics and strategies, relating the former to Luce Irigaray’s notion of mimetism, to explain some of the problematics faced by women in the avant-garde circles, whose artistic identities were often constructed, and still are to some extent, around the idea of the primitive.

This chapter is co-written by an art therapist and a member of the therapeutic art studio, Studio Upstairs. Holding in mind their different roles and perspectives, the authors set out to explore the experience of making art alongside each other in the studio, where it is part of the ethos that art therapists are also practicing artists and make their own artwork in the group. The chapter is based around conversations between the authors and first distils some points about the benefits and problems of this practice in their community setting. Artist identity is found to be a shared place of overlap where shifts in role can happen, contributing to a more flattened hierarchy in the studio between staff and members. The authors then use four of their artworks to look at retrospectively together. In looking together, they discover that the artworks ‘spoke’ to each other both in the studio group and anew in the intersubjective space of their conversation. Here, artworks brought up personal, social, and political points of connection for exploration; gender, feminist thinking, motherhood, and being women artists.

Contemporary French-speaking literatures are enriched by creative voices whose dif-ferent forms of expression show the renewal and permeability of literary and artistic genres. In this theoretical context, we frame our proposal which entails the analyze of the themes outlined in Le Piano oriental (2015) by Zeina Abirached (Beyrouth, 1981), a Franco Lebanese artist, living in Paris since 2004. This graphic novel explores the experience of exile and intercultur-ality by means of autofiction. Zeina Abirached discovers and accepts the coexistence of two languages and two cultures as elements of her social identity and the hybridization of drawings and words as a mark of her artistic identity.

The aim of the study is to identify the fantastic elements of a new genre of literature - litRPG (literary role-playing game). The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the genre features of fiction in the works of litRPG are systematized and described using the example of several Russian authors’ works. The study presents a comparative analysis of the fantastic elements of the novels “The Rule of the Clans” by Dem Mikhailov, “Play to Live. Disruption” by D. Rus, “The Way of the Shaman. The Beginning of the Way” by V. Makhanenko (the title books in the key series were selected). The author considers the original nature of the created virtual worlds and finds a common vector of their development. As a result, it is proved that litRPG develops according to the general laws of fiction, and the genre-forming element is a computer game: the conditional reality of the events taking place in the new genre is replaced by the virtual reality of multiplayer computer games; the newly created worlds are an imitation of Medieval Europe combined with fiction; the main character is an ordinary person who enters the Other (virtual) world and acquires a new personality - a game character; in each novel, there are parallel game and earthly worlds that interact and change each other, and in addition to the combat storyline, there is a love one.

This paper addresses how, since the 1960s to the present, part of women's video art has broken the traditional representation of women’s body and proposed new forms of recording women's images, explicit or symbolic, using body part close-ups, and not sparing any efforts to ensure the prevention of the cataloguing of women’s bodies according to normative categories, such as gender, race and age, and in this way challenging the Western representation codes that objectify women. The methodology employed had as its primary purpose the examination of the association existing between the micro-sociological level of body gestures and performances in women's videos and the macro-sociological level of social forces such as the dimensions of gender and sexuality. This study concluded that narratives of identity and self-determination are present in women's video pieces contributing to women's empowerment through visual discourses that could possibly point to the production of new signs and symbols, new values and models, but also for the formation of new types of social roles and even a new type of interpersonal relationships. Keywords : Video art, feminism, the Subject, self-determination, gender, body.

Drawn from the Ground. Sound, Sign, and Inscription in Central Australian Sand Stories - By Jennifer Green

This article calls for a research agenda which looks at narrative challenge and disruption from within, that is, within political elites. Merging ontological security studies (OSS) with insights from narrative studies, we introduce the idea of political elites as being split between disruptors and defenders of identity narratives. This is different from conventional accounts of OSS which usually and often implicitly attribute the role of ontological repairers to political elites. We argue that members of the elite sometimes intervene in political debates through disruptive language which challenges established identity narratives and pushes the boundaries of acceptable foreign policy discourse. We conceptualize this type of disruption as ontological nuisance: a predictably recurring disturbance to biographical narratives from within the narrating elite. The article illustrates ontological nuisance empirically by systematically analyzing how populist radical right parties (PRRPs) engage with elite narratives about foreign policy and identity. By foregrounding contestation in the discourse among political elites, we show how interventions by PRRPs can call into question the relative elite consensus across the political spectrum. Specifically, we show how articulations by the German radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) tap into fundamental pillars of the ongoing foreign policy discourse about the national “Self” (internal dimension), relations with “significant Others” (intersubjective dimension), and the nature of the international order (systemic dimension). In this way, opposition parties can shape the nature of the debate about biographical narratives without ever being in government.