We’re pleased to bring you the fifth issue of the Scholar & Feminist Online. As our guest editor, Barnard’s own Elizabeth A. Castelli, writes in her eloquent introduction, the essays and artwork presented here address the question, “what counts as violence?” “How does violence become visible and legible as violence?,” Elizabeth continues. “What are the conditions and rationalizations for violence? … Read more
To speak of violence is to speak of bodies and their capacities to wound and to be wounded. To speak of the relationship between the bodies of violence – the bodies that wound and those that are wounded – is to address multiple layers of intimacy and abstraction. In the first instance, the body itself … Read more
From FINAL GIRL Copyright © 2003 Daphne Gottlieb. Used by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc. Don’t answer the phone.Don’t answer the door.Don’t do it.No—really. Don’t. Too late. Don’t worry.You will make it through this.Stay calm. If you are reading this,you are here. You are here because you are in dangerand you are in danger … Read more
From FINAL GIRL Copyright © 2003 Daphne Gottlieb. Used by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc.“You got the choice, boy. Sex or the saw;you never know about sex, but the saw—the saw is family.”-Pa Sawyer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre II it sounds better than it is,this business of surviving,making it throughthe wrong placeat the wrong timeand living … Read more
From FINAL GIRL Copyright © 2003 Daphne Gottlieb. Used by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc. i die firstin every horror movie,before the innocent boyfriend, the too-curious best friendand the foolhardy pal.death comes blind fastand easy, familiar as the top button ofmy blouse popping openand suddenly i’m an angelon the cutting roomfloor, wearing gore,a blank … Read more
From WHY THINGS BURN Copyright © 2002 Daphne Gottlieb. Used by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc. She’skinky, and she’sgiven up dating. She’s fallen in love andgiven up dating andher whips as youthfulfoolishness. Her chaps are gathering dust in the closetand her corset sits like an empty saddle after the horse has left or runaway, … Read more
If the essays in this collection lean towards the positive side of feminist television studies, focusing primarily on the new gender scripts HBO makes possible in mainstream media, the following poems by Daphne Gottlieb sound a different note. I am drawn to them as well. Gottlieb’s most recent book of poems explores the concept of … Read more
A note on this essay. The pilot episode of Sex and the City situates itself at the close of an epoch, proclaiming the “end of love.” This positioning is complicated in the last season as the finale depicts Miranda and Charlotte happily married, the 40-something Samantha in what is probably her first committed relationship, and Carrie reunited, … Read more
Gay men understand what’s important—clothes, compliments, and cocks. —Samantha, Sex and the City Fabulousness—embodied in a web of cultural markers that signify status, wealth, style, confidence, attitude, glitter, and panache against the banal backdrop of everyday existence—plays a central role in the structure and success of Sex and the City. The attainment of fabulousness opens up possibilities … Read more
Charlotte: The women’s movement is supposed to be about choice and if I choose to quit my job, that is my choice.Miranda: The women’s movement? Jesus Christ, I haven’t even had coffee yet. The Trouble with Charlotte From the beginning of the series, Charlotte York is portrayed as the most innocent of the four women on Sex and … Read more
