Wednesday 4/4: What are the Feminist Ethics of AMC’s Mad Men?

Dear all,

 

We are pleased to invite all who are interested to join the latest conversation of the feminist discussion group, Locating Lysippe (http://locatinglysippe.wordpress.com/) this Wednesday evening, 5:00 – 7:00 at the Sitting Room.

 

The topic of the evening will be the AMC show Mad Men: is it feminist? There is also a brief article, accessible here as well as on our blog: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/08/AR2010100802662.html?sid=ST2010101103521

 

You need not identify as a feminist, or have a background in feminism, to attend. Whether you are an ardent supporter of feminist interests, or a wary observer, you need only be interested in exploring feminism! Varied perspectives are welcomed, and this scintillating show promises to be ripe for conversation.

 

The Sitting Room is located at 2025 Curtis Drive, just off Petaluma Hill Road. Further directions, and parking information, is located here: http://www.sittingroom.org/location-parking.html

 

If you have any questions please contact us at locating.lysippe@gmail.com.

 

Sincerely,

 

Erica and Christy

 

Wednesday 2/29: bell hooks, “Selling Hot Pussy”

Hello Lysippians,

That got your attention, right? …Our next meeting, on Wednesday 2/29 from 5-7, is just around the corner. This week we’ve decided to take a look at bell hooks’ piece “Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace.” This wonderful essay has it all: race, sexuality, film, literature, and pop culture. Please feel free to download the essay here.

Erica and I look forward to seeing you at the Sitting Room this Wednesday.

Yours,

Christy

LL Gathering, Saturday 2/11 11-1pm

Please join Erica and I this Saturday, February 11th, from 11am-1pm for our first installation of Locating Lysippe this spring.

 

Given that Planned Parenthood has made recent headlines with some frequency, Jill Lepore’s wonderful, and important article entitled “Birthright: What’s Next For Planned Parenthood” seems an apropos topic for discussion. Lepore’s article appeared in the November 14th edition of The New Yorker; if you happen not to have back issues of The New Yorker at your disposal, please feel free to download it here.

 

We hope to see you at 2025 Curtis drive this Saturday.

 

I’ll leave you with the following from Margaret Sanger herself:

 

“Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.”

Yours,

 

Christy

 

 

LL Meetings, Spring 2012

Hello Lysippians!

Erica and I are back and ready for Locating Lysippe to resume this spring. Below are our meeting dates:

Wednesday January 25th 5-7pm

Saturday February 11th 11-1pm

Wednesday February 29th 5-7pm

Saturday March 17th 11-1pm

Wednesday April 4th 5-7pm

Saturday April 28th 11-1pm

We’ve returned to an alternating schedule in hopes of casting a wider net from SSU students and faculty, in addition to the community at large. I’ll be posting information about upcoming readings very soon; Erica and I look forward to seeing you in the coming months.

Yours,

Christy

LL Sunday 11/6, Feminism and Technology

Please join Erica Tom and me for our next installment of Locating Lysippe on Sunday from 1-3.

This week we will be examining feminism and the internet; exploring feminist websites of all incantations. We encourage you to bring your laptops, as the Sitting Room is now equipped with wifi. A sampling of the websites we will review and discuss include Jezebel, Feminist Ryan Gossling, Feministe, and Feministing, in addition to mainstream internet media.

For now I’ll leave you with a few words from Adrienne Rich:

“How shall we ever make the world intelligent of our movement? I do not think that the answer lies in trying to render feminism easy, popular, and instantly gratifying. To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.”  On Lies, Secrets, and Silences

We hope to see you on Sunday!

-Christy

P.S. Don’t forget — the Sitting Room is located at 2025 Curtis Drive in Penngrove

Sunday 10/9 Meeting: Exploring the Realm of Sex Research with Mary Roach

Dear all,

 

Locating Lysippe will be meeting this Sunday, October 9th from 1-3pm at the Sitting Room (located at 2025 Curtis Drive in Penngrove).

 

For this installment of LL we will be discussing “The Princess and her Pea,” which is the third chapter in Mary Roach’s most recent book, Bonk. Feel free to bring your own copy of the text, if you have it. Or, you can download the reading by clicking here: Roach, “The Princess and Her Pea”.

 

As always, we promise to have a lively discussion.

 

“Nobody ever sees the inside of their body, … It’s wild … it’s not nearly as orderly as you think it’s going to be.” — Mary Roach.

 

See you at the Sitting Room on Sunday!

 

Yours,

 

Christy

Sunday 9/18, Reading

This week we will be focusing on an article published in the September issue of National Geographic magazine entitled “Machisma: How a mix of female empowerment and steamy soap operas helped bring down Brazil’s fertility rate and stoke its vibrant economy.” This article is sure to incite a really fantastic discussion.

 

There are a couple of options available to you when it comes to obtaining the text: you can purchase a copy of National Geographic (the September cover reads “Can We Fly?”), or you can download the PDF (which is even more appealing as the Sitting Room is now equipped with wireless internet). Please feel free to bring your computer (and save yourself the printing fees).

 

Everyone is welcome to attend.

 

Erica and I are looking forward to seeing you on Sunday at 1pm!

 

Best,

 

Christy

 

(*Don’t forget that the Sitting Room has moved to 2025 Curtis Drive, Penngrove)

Fall 2011 Meeting Dates

Welcome back Lysippians!

After a restful summer Erica and I are looking forward to getting back into the swing of things at the Sitting Room. Below you’ll see our recently decided upon schedule for fall, and information about upcoming meetings. Be sure to note LL in your calendars,  you wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to chat feministe!

Fall 2011:

September 18th

October 9th

November 6th

December 11th

All meetings will be held on Sundays from 1-3 pm at the Sitting Room.

Don’t forget, the SR has moved to 2025 Curtis Drive in Penngrove. If you have any questions, suggestions or concerns don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or send an mail to Erica and me at Locating.Lysippe@gmail.com.

As always, I like to end my posts with something to chew on. In this instance I turn Virginia Woolf who stated: “As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”

Yours,

Christy

LL Wednesday 4/6 with Special Guest Noelle Oxenhandler

Erica and I hope to see you on Wednesday April 6th at 6pm when Noelle Oxenhandler will be reading a selection from her acclaimed book The Eros of Parenthood. We will be working with “Ashes,” a part of a bigger section entitled “Beneficent Boundary Loss” which concludes the text.

Oxenhandler’s work was born out of an article she published in the New Yorker in 1996 by the same name. If you’re interested in reading that piece, you can find it here: \”The Eros of Parenthood,\” New Yorker article

Download “Ashes” here: Eros of Parenthood

To entice, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Eros:

“But Eros, the god of love in Greek mythology is the god who presides here. His mother is Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. His father is Hermes, the messenger god, the god of interconnection, who–being playful and quite unreliable–likes to mix people up, even as he keeps them in touch with one another. Eros exists as a force of attraction, bringing people together and enticing them, through the pleasure of mingling, to step out of their separate skins. Like his mother, he is quite irresistibly beautiful. Like his father, he is playful, a trickster in his own right, and he can be dangerous. As the Roman Cupid, he carried a quiver of arrows and pierces unsuspecting men and women with desire. Once pierced they are altered. Prone to impulsive, unpredictable behavior, they are apt to change directions suddenly, to forsake old ties. Forgetting what is appropriate, what belongs to whom, an old man begins to act like a young person, another man covets his neighbor’s wife, and ugly dwarf thinks that even the most beautiful maiden must have him, a god takes on the shape of a bird or a bull that makes love to a mortal girl. Indeed, in the most ancient myths, Eros is not Aphrodite’s child, but rather, one of the primordial gods who springs directly from Chaos” (5).

Looking forward to seeing you at 2025 Curtis Drive on Wednesday.

Yours,

Christy

Sunday 3/20: Laura Mulvey

Hi Everyone,

 

For our upcoming gathering on Sunday March 20th we will be reading “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey. While Mulvey wrote this piece in 1973 it was first published in 1975 as an article in Screen, and was later included in a collection of Mulvey’s works entitled Visual and Other Pleasures (published in 1989).

 

Download the PDF here: LauraMulvey

 

I’ll leave you all with a quote about women and film:

“We keep coming back to the question of representation because identity is always about representation. People forget that when they wanted white women to get into the workforce because of the world war, what did they start doing? They started having a lot of commercials, a lot of movies, a lot of things that were redoing the female image, saying, “Hey, you can work for the war, but you can still be feminine.” So what we see is that the mass media, film, TV, all of these things, are powerful vehicles for maintaining the kinds of systems of domination we live under, imperialism, racism, sexism etc. Often there’s a denial of this and art is presented as politically neutral, as though it is not shaped by a reality of domination.”

-bell hooks

 

Erica and I are looking forward to seeing you at The Sitting Room (2025 Curtis Drive) this Sunday at 1pm.

 

Yours,

 

Christy