The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History

ISBN-13: 9781628922127 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 376 str.

Senior Lecturer Emma L. E. Rees

Opis

From South Park to Kathy Acker, from Lars Von Trier to Sex and the City, women's sexual organs are demonized. In The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History, Emma L.E. Rees investigates the evolution of this demonization: she considers how writers, artists and filmmakers contend with the dilemma of he vagina's puzzling 'covert visibility' and how the 'c-word' is an obscenity that both legitimates and perpetuates the fractured identities of women globally. In our postmodern, porn-obsessed culture, vaginas appear to be everywhere, literally or symbolically but, crucially, they are as silenced as they are objectified. Even common slang terms for the vagina can be seen as an attempt to divert attention away from the reality of women's lived sexual experiences: slang offers a convenient distraction from something taboo. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History is an important contribution to the ongoing debate in understanding the feminine identity.

Recenzje

Rees' book is the kind of work we need more of if we are to challenge and reconfigure how we understand women and sexuality in contemporary discourse. Shahidha Bari, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Times Higher Education 20130815

Spis treści

1. Revealing the Vagina: Introduction2. Revealing the Vagina: Antecedents3.Revealing the Vagina in Literature4. Revealing the Vagina in Visual Art (1): Judy Chicago5. Revealing the Vagina in Visual Art (2): Birth's Wide Berth6. Revealing the Vagina on Film and TV7. Revealing the Vagina in Performance Art8. Revealing the Vagina: ConclusionRevealing the Vagina: BibliographyIndex

O autorze

Emma Rees is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Chester. Her first book, Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Genre, Exile was published in 2004 and since then she has had many other publications in the field of gender and representation. She is an accessible, strongly interdisciplinary writer.