The Moon is Feminist Art
Merve Emre is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (2017), Collective Criticism (2019), and The Personality Brokers (2018), which was selected as one of the best books of 2018 by The New York Times, The Economist, and The Spectator. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and London Review of Books.
This talk tracks the intimate relationship between representations of the Moon and female pain, pleasure, and perception. From the verses of Margaret Cavendish to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Mina Loy, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Bishop, the Moon—“the face of the sky,” “a silver Lucifer,” “a fossil virgin”—has offered itself as an emblem of all the exquisite dramas of femininity: birth, love, sex, motherhood, and death.
Date:
20 July 2019, 12:30 (Saturday, 12th week, Trinity 2019)
Venue:
Bodleian Library
Venue Details:
Lecture Theatre, Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Speaker:
Dr Merve Emre (Faculty of English, University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Rothermere American Institute
Organiser:
Dr. Karen Patricia Heath (Rothermere American Institute)
Organiser contact email address:
karen.heath@rai.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Lunar Activity Day
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Karen Heath
