Agenda:
     Review Unit 1
     Review Unit 2
         Lerner
         Allen
         Enheduanna, "Venus" figurines
     Unit 3
         Arkins
         Sappho
         Lyrics
     Tuesday
        Research Report
        Women in Egyptian Economy

Unit 1

Contact Zone: place where two cultures collide and meet.

• Positive aspects: further understanding, open horizons, more acceptance, richness of language/culture.
• Negative aspects: misunderstanding, racism, competition, violence, decreased tolerance.
• Tucson is a contact zone: language/religion/culture/food.

Orientalism: concept of exotic "other." Helps construct notions of Western identity: the "other" is everything we are not.

Unit 2

Gerda Lerner, "A Working Hypothesis."

• She is attempting to answer the question, "Where does patriarchy come from?" (Patriarchy, according to Lerner, is the social structure wherein men as a group have power over women as a group.)
• She assumes that, rather than having always existed, patriarchy was developed over a very long period of time, and men and women shared in its invention.
• Judging by its near-universality, it seems to have been a successful system in its way; but does it serve our needs now? Is it the most affective way to utilize the talents of all people?
• Lerner argues that bipedalism (walking on two legs) plus the development of agriculture made human beings develop the system we know know as patriarchy. Bipedalism makes the birth canal narrower so that the baby is born helpless, necessitating a longer period of intense mothering. With the development of agriculture, children become an asset to these societies because the more labor (children) one can draw on, the more crops one can grow. Since women create the babies, they come to be slowly seen as that which can produce labor. Ultimately they themselves, not just the laborers, are seen as something that can be owned as well. (This is a very brief overview of Lerner's complex argument; consult the argument for the full thesis.)

• Allen's article provides a challenge to Lerner's thesis by arguing that patriarchy was not universal. Indeed, within recent history there have been, not matriarchies, but matrifocal and gynocentric  communities that put women at the center of decision-making.
• Allen suggests that tribal communities, in what is now present day U.S., had a complimentary gender social structure in place.
• She notes that such societies also had goddess at the center--not "fertility" goddess merely, but goddesses that were central to many Native American creations myths: spider woman, sky woman, thought woman, hard beings woman.

Enheduanna

• The first writer whose name we know. She was a priestess of Inanna, another goddess who was both creator and destroyer.

The readings for this unit look at women and culture in Archaic Greece (800-500 BCE) and Ancient or Classical Greece (500-300 BCE). Follow the links to learn more about this time in history.

Brian Arkins, "Sexuality in Fifth-Century Athens"

• Arkins argues that Athens political system was also a sex/gender system in which political power is expressed through sexual organization centered on the body and desires of the adult citizen male.
• For that male, everybody except the wives of other citizen males were available sexually.
• The terms we use in the present, such as homosexual/straight/bisexual, do not apply because of different social structures. One could be married and might have many lovers, both male and female. There was no sense of a single "sexual identity."

• Lived on the island of Lesbos in the archaic period. Had relationships with women, but was married to a man and had a child.
• she was highly revered as a poet in ancient world, and many books of her lyrics were collected and preserved.

• A lyric is apoem meant to be sung and accompanied by a lyre.
• Lyric is often opposed to epic. Epics are large, long poems, a story of a hero whose destiny is wrapped up with some national destiny. Epic values include honor, courage, strength, and loyalty on the battlefield, so the heroes of epics are men. A lyric has a much smaller scope and is usually about love/sex/desire, personal feelings and experiences.

Research Report: Make sure you understand the terms of the assignment: begin with a correct citation of your resource, followed by Summary, Analysis, Evaluation, and Synthesis. Don't guess about the terms of this assignment. Review your copy of it or look again online. Remember that there is an example of the research report online!!! check it out!

If you are celebrating the holiday on Tuesday, you may drop off your paper in the Women's Studies office (Communication 108) on Monday, or you may email it to Prof. McBride (kari@email.arizona.edu). Remember that you must turn in a xerox of the resource you used for your report.

The next two readings are about other women in the ancient world--Egyptians and Romans. Don't look for similarity between these women or between them and the ones we've already studied. Rather, notice the spectrum of differences between societies.