 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
worth repeating |
Helen Klebesadel, painter and women’s study scholar at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, was a visiting artist for the Center for Humanities and Arts and the Women’s Studies Institute earlier this month. She gave several public lectures, including the regular women’s studies Friday talk. Some excerpts: “Women’s studies gave me the vocabulary to understand what I was experiencing as an artist. That’s why my work is as it is. Women’s studies is important to me as an artist, and I do consider my art to be my research. . . . “The women’s movement, the women’s art movement and the women’s studies movement are three different entities that have been parallel for the past 30 years. . . . They are not ‘one thing.’ . . . The women’s movement, historically, was committed to activism, really trying to change the culture. The women’s studies movement has been focused on bringing the study of women’s lives and concerns, and a gendered analysis, to the curriculum. And the women’s art movement has kind of been both—they’ve worked in the academy and out of the academy. “None of this has been an easy or comfortable fit all the time, because different programs have different feelings about just exactly how things like activism and scholarship fit together. Philosophies in programs vary, and in some programs there is a kind of tension between people who want to ‘take it to the streets’ and the people who feel like just the act of teaching feminist work in the academy is activism. “That’s actually a healthy tension, and it should exist in all programs.” |
|
—Beth
Roberts |
|