#scholarly source

Hopewell, K. (2000). Lady writes the blues. call and response in the poetry of afro-american women. Equal Opportunities International, 19(2-4), 93-102. Retrieved from https://login.intra.mills.edu:2443/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.intra.mills.edu:2443/docview/199661929?accountid=25251

This source links the poetry of Black women to the Blues tradition, as well as emphasizing the importance of the poet’s relationship to her audience. Valuable to anyone interested in poetry and/or African American literature, Hopewell’s text includes analysis of Anne Spencer, Ma Rainey, Nikki Giovanni, Ntozake Shange, and more. Hopewell argues that Spencer was of a group of poet who wrote firmly within the white male tradition, and that this was due to the influence of W.E.B. Du Bois. 

Casting as Queer Dramaturgy by Meghan Brodie

This article discusses a case study of a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando. The director discusses her casting choices and how those choices furthered the examination (and rejection) of cisheteronormativity already strongly apparent in the play. This will be useful in making casting decisions for our production of Eurydice.

Classics in the Modern World: A Democratic Turn? edited by Lorna Hardwick and Stephen Harrison

This book features a series of essays on ways that the ancient Greek and Roman cultures continue to have an impact in this day and age. I will be using two essays from it. One essay is on modern stagings of ancient dramas, which (although Eurydice is not in itself an ancient play) will provide perspective on bringing ancient stories into the modern world through theatre. The second essay focuses on feminist reinterpretations and will prove useful for examining modern portrayals of the character Eurydice.

Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth edited by John Warden

This book examines the cultural context of various adaptations of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, both discussing the presiding interpretation(s) of each historical period and delving into the specific details of period-appropriate works focusing on the character. While this book has a heavy focus on Orpheus, examining Eurydice mainly as a side note, it does provide a comprehensive and relatively compact history of representations of the myth from our earliest knowledge to the Renaissance, as well as the historical context that influences each interpretation.

Eurydice’s Body: Feminist Reflections of the Orphic Descent Myth in Philosophy and Film by Liz Locke This dissertation examines the myth through a feminist lens, as well as examining how several different adaptations reflect (or don’t reflect) feminist values. Locke argues that Eurydice is a “negative space” whose existence is only defined in relation to Orpheus and that defining her personhood is a responsibility of adaptors of the myth.

This source discusses a case study of the experiences of women in the STEM educational and professional system in Switzerland. It brings to light the fact that most women who graduate with a STEM degree will not continue to pursue a STEM career, but would rather go into the field of teaching simply because it may be less of a hassle for women to succeed in. This issue is known as the leaking pipeline (Makarova, Aeschlimann, Herzog, pg.2). The study calls into question the social role theory. According to this theory, society has its own shared opinion of what men and women are meant to do with their lives and careers. These views of what men and women are supposed to do have been engraved in the minds of most individuals of society. Since so many people share this view of gender roles, for one to abide such roles is viewed as something natural and normal (Makarova, Aeschlimann, Herzog, pg.3). The social role theory helps to explain why both men and women face difficulty when transitioning into fields of study and work that weren’t “meant” for them to be in. These people aren’t doing their gender. They aren’t acting in ways that correspond to their assigned gender which creates conflict within gendered organizations. Gendered organizations are “tactics of divisions of labor that keep the technology in men’s control and maintain ‘the definition of skilled work as men’s work and unskilled work as women’s work’ (Makarova, Aeschlimann, Herzog, pg. 4).

During the study, conductors initially analyze the treatment women in STEM education and professions then analyze the way in which women respond to their treatment. From the data provided, eight categories were created; Four to generalize the treatment women faced, and another four to summarize the women’s reaction to their treatment. The four treatment categories were described as wrong sex in which men make women feel that they don’t belong, exotic sex in which women are being treated as a minority by the men, and archetypal sex in which the men point out the differences between men and women based on stereotypes concerning the natural careers for the sexes. There is also the weak sex in which women are discriminated against through comparison of men making them look like inferior beings. The four response categories were named resilience in which women become tough to deal with the behaviors of men, and assimilation in which women become more masculine to fit in with the male dominant career., Women also respond with excellence by excelling in their field of work, and avoidance in which women try to go unnoticed. Most women in STEM training respond with resilience, while most women in STEM education respond by assimilating (Makarova, Aeschlimann, Herzog, pg.12)