This 5-week interdisciplinary seminar for undergraduates revolves around two exceptional events: 1) an exhibition at the UC Berkeley Art Museum featuring the work of Romaine Brooks, a lesbian expatriate artist working in Paris in the 1920s, and 2) a related symposium,"The Modern Woman Revisited." The course will provide a context within which to consider the social and cultural alternatives envisioned by Brooks and other key members of Paris’s lesbian and gay communities. (2 units)

Requirements
In addition to attending all five weekly seminar sessions and keeping up with the assigned readings, students will be expected to attend a field trip to the Berkeley Art Museum on Saturday, Oct. 14^th and to participate in symposium events held on the Stanford campus on Saturday, Oct. 28th.

Writing assignments
Two short (approx. 3 pages) position papers.

Dates and Times
Seminar, Mondays 4:15-6:05, Oct.2-30.
Field trip to Exhibition: Saturday, Oct. 14, PM.
Symposium: Saturday, Oct. 28, AM and PM.

Textbook
Course Reader

Session #1
Introduction: Gay Subcultures and Expatriate Communities in Paris between the Wars
Reading: Benstock, Shari, Chapter 1, "Women of the Left Bank," Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. Austin: UTP, 1986. 3-36.

Session #2
Romaine Brooks: Heritage and Legacy
Reading: Elliott, Bridget and Jo-Ann Wallace. "Fleurs du Mal or Second Hand Roses: Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, and the ‘originality of the avant-garde’", Women Artists and Writers: Modernist (im)positionings. London and NY: Routledge, 1994. 31-55.

Elliott, Bridget. "Performing the picture or painting the Other: Romaine Brooks, Gluck and the question of decadence in 1923," in Women Artists and Modernism, Katy Deepwell, ed. Manchester and NY: Manchester UP, 1998: 70-82.

Field Trip: Saturday, October 14th
Romaine Brooks Exhibition, Berkeley Art Museum
Attendance mandatory.

Writing Assignment #1
Write a tightly conceived, 3-4 page analysis of the Romaine Brooks exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum. You should draw explicitly on our course readings as well as your own observations about the artworks and their presentation. Ask yourself the following questions: What curatorial position (or thesis) does the exhibition appear to advance? How does the organization or display of the art support the curator’s point of view or interpretive emphasis? Does the curator build on, or depart from, territory explored by the authors of your course readings? What questions, if any, do the paintings in the exhibition raise in your own mind? Are these questions addressed by the course readings? Or by the curatorial statements in the wall text of the exhibition? What would you do differently if you were the curator?

This assignment will be due on Monday Oct. 24^th, the second-to-last class session.

Session #3
Fashion and Sexual Politics in 1920s Paris
Readings: Gubar, Susan. "Blessings in Disguise: Cross-Dressing as Re-Dressing for Female Modernists." The Massachusetts Review 22 (Autumn 1981): 477-508.

Matlock, Jann. "Masquerading Women, Pathologized Men: Cross-Dressing, Fetishism, and the Theory of Perversion, 1882-1935." Fetishism as Cultural Discourse. Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. 31-61.

Newton, Esther. "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman." Signs 9:4 (Summer 1984): 557-575.

Session #4
The Performance of Same-Sex Desire
Readings: Latimer, "A Skirted Issue: Diaghilev’s Sexual Orientation" Stowitts Museum & Library, Essays on the History of Dance (Pacific Grove, CA: Park Place Publications, 1998).

Apter, Emily. "Acting Out Orientalism: Sapphic Theatricality in Turn-of-the-Century Paris." Performance and Cultural Politics. Elin Diamond, ed. NY and London: Routledge, 1996. 15-34.

Capstone Event:
Saturday, Oct.28, Annenberg Auditorium, 10-5
Modern Woman Revisited Symposium
Attendance mandatory.

Participation in a discussion group mandatory.

Writing Assignment #2:
Imagine that you are a reporter covering GLBT beat for the Stanford Daily. Write a 2-3 page overview of the Modern Woman Revisited Symposium. Your review should comment on each presentation, providing a brief (two or three sentences) description of each topic. Your article should also provide a slightly more detailed account of the discussion group you chose to attend: focus on the gay-cultural implications of the topic under consideration. Finally, evaluate (critique) the symposium from a feminist perspective and from a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender-studies perspective. The deadline for your article is Oct. 30^th.

Session #5
Post-Symposium Debriefing
Bring your review of the symposium to seminar. We will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the symposium, the Romaine Brooks exhibition, and the Cultural Alternatives course material. We will try to imagine together the kinds of courses, events, and scholarship that might better serve those of us who would like to learn about feminist, lesbian, and gay histories--particularly interventions into the cultural sphere. Refreshments will be served.