Sara was miraculously in Philadelphia for the day yesterday. She came to Temple and we hung out in our super-awesome basement lounge. I had her listen to my Playboy presentation that I'm giving on Tuesday, and she suggested what parts needed to be strengthened, which was quite helpful. It was awesome just to get to see Sara, which is a rarity due to the insaneness of her schedule and the company she works for. Just to get four hours off (they were having a half-day anyway) she had to tell her supervisor that she needed to be in Philadelphia to provide emotional support to a friend whose parents had just died. True, my parents are dead, but they did not just die, and more importantly, you shouldn't have to tell your boss your business just to be able to use the personal time that you're entitled to!
After Sara left to go meet up with Adette, we had a makeup Byzantine/gender studies class, one of several we'll be fitting in this month because Dr. Bolman was in Egypt for most of March. Although having class at 4 on a Friday seemed like an onerous proposition, it turned out to be one of the most entertaining and interesting discussions we've had. Jasmine brought up the question of whether using the tools of gender studies can actually tell us anything about an art object itself, or whether they just help us read through the object to the culture that created it. How do we give the object agency, and look at it not just as a 'reflection' of cultural gender constructions, but as something that actively created and shaped those very constructions? She's working on Byzantine chalices, so I can understand why it's tough to get at it in that way. My project deals with the typikon of a convent in Constantinople that depicts the foundress in both lay and monastic garb; it's an object she (or her daughter) commissioned, so it's easier to see their hand in it and understand it as a construction of gender according to, in this case, the privileges of upper-class women, who could both have their monastic cake and eat it too.
After that, we wound up arguing about an even more fundamental issue: the role of feminism in modern scholarship. Gender studies owes its very existence to feminist scholarship, beginning in the 1970s. At the beginning of the course we read an introduction to a book on gender studies and Byzantium by Liz James, who identified three stages of feminist historical research: namely, "women in, women and the means of production; and beyond women--gender. " In other words, in the beginning, these feminist scholars realized that women have consistently been ignored in mainstream history, and they set out to give them voice. In Renaissance art history, that meant working on artists like Sofanisba Anguissola and Artemisia Gentileschi, as well as trying to recuperate other, lesser-known women. The second stage, which owes a lot to Marxism, was about identifying the ways in which women were marginalized and their achievements undermined. Finally, in the third stage, scholars recognized that if femininity is a cultural construction, so too is masculinity, and they began to look at gender construction overall.
Thus, gender studies has replaced feminist scholarship in many ways, and many of the names who were pioneering in feminist research a few decades ago moved into the gender studies category. But not all, and that's where it gets tricky; there are some older feminist scholars who are sticking with pure feminist studies, because as they see it, men have always been the default of history, so analyzing constructed masculinities on the same field as femininity is basically conceding the advantage back to men. Which I find ridiculous, frankly; the bulk of gender studies work is being done on women, not men, for the very reason that a lot of people find it difficult to justify working on the construction of masculine identities. Gender studies is not going to turn into man studies. Moreover, I just don't understand how you can justify only looking at at one half (or one-third, if you're thinking of adding eunuchs in) of the gender equation, unless you have a political agenda, which I think feminist scholars often do.
After that discussion was done, Dr. Bolman wound up letting us go early rather than lecture for the last half-hour on middle Byzantine architecture, as she had planned--something for which we were all clearly grateful. At that point a bunch of us headed out for some food and, more importantly, alcohol, at a pub downtown, which was a good time--I can't even remember the last time I laughed that hard. In the span of three hours, I wound up spending thirty dollars on drinks, and if I had had any more money on me I would have challenged Jeannine to another round. As it was, it was probably a perfect time to stop, because despite walking to the train station, waiting forty-five minutes for our respective trains, riding the train home for half an hour, and even getting off at the stop before mine so I could walk it off a little more, I still had to stay up another hour before I deemed it hangover-safe to go to sleep. But even if I'd had a hangover this morning, which happily I did not, it would have been totally worth it.
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