#whm2019

Many of the works we found—well, nobody knew they were there. Nobody knew anything about the artists. … They weren’t important, but rather beholden to their fathers, mothers, and husbands. They had no voice.  

- Jane Fortune, Founder of Advancing Women Artists (AWA)

“The paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures the late Jane Fortune refers to above were discovered in museum storage spaces throughout Florence.

Many of their female creators were acclaimed during their lifetimes. By the time Fortune set about restoring their work—and visibility —to the public view, they were virtually unknown, even to museum staff.

That may change as early as the fall of 2019, when A Space of Their Own, an illustrated online database of over 600 female artists working in the US and Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries, launches.

In preparation for their reintroduction, many of the works appearing on A Space of Their Own have undergone extensive restoration, courtesy of Jane Fortune's nonprofit Advancing Women Artists.

Read the full piece here

Saint Catherine with Lily by Plautilla Nelli

Helen Considers Leaving Troy --Jeanann Verlee

after a bottle of chianti Don’t mistake me, I’ve pondered this before. But tonight I’m serious. One bottle and the end is certain. Tomorrow: Lawyer. Boxes. Road map. More wine.

while walking the dog Paris won’t even notice. I’ll feed the pup, pack a quick bag, take out the trash, and slip away into the night. Home to Sparta. Or Santa Monica. An island off the southernmost tip of Peru. Disappear. Like fog from a mirror.

while paying the bills Guess I’ll have to give up that whole new career plan. Academic dreams. House-and-yard dreams. Stay on like this a few more years. Or forever. Face the bottomless nights in solitude. Wither. Drink. Write poems about dead ends. Drink more. Work. Pay rent. End.

when Paris comes home drunk Call Clytemnestra. Make a plan. Move a few things into Clym’s spare room, storage for the rest. Set up arbitration. File what needs to be filed. Head to Athens. Or back to Crown Heights. Maybe find a roommate in Fort Greene. All I know is out out out. Sure, I can blame the past or the scotch or my own smartmouth or my worst rage, but blame is a word. I need a weapon.

when Menelaus writes a letter As if.

Agnes Varde

director. photographer. installation artist.

“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t see myself as a woman doing film but as a radical film-maker who was a woman. Slightly different.” (3)

Check out some of her work:

Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961)

Vagabond (1984)

The Gleaners and I (2000)

Faces Places (2017)

Read more about her:

1. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/the-life-and-times-of-international-treasure-agnes-varda

2. https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/agnes-varda-interview-faces-places-last-film-jr-1201884036/

3. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/21/agnes-varda-i-am-still-alive-i-am-still-curious-i-am-not-a-piece-of-rotting-flesh

4. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/agnes-varda-is-still-going-places

5. https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/interview-agnes-varda/

Faces Places:

Photos:

First photo - Edouard Boubat/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/agnes-varda-interview-whole-world-sexist/

“The women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces — better known as the Night Witches — had no radar, no machine guns, no radios, and no parachutes. All they had onboard was a map, a compass, rulers, stopwatches, flashlights, and pencils. Yet they successfully completed 30,000 bombing raids and dropped more than 23,000 tons of munitions on advancing German armies over the course of four years during World War II. 

The all-female Night Witches squadron was the direct result of women in the Soviet Union wanting to be actively involved in the war effort. Many Soviet women had grown weary of playing a support role during the war and wanted to be engaged in combat on the front lines.

From the very inception of the war, Colonel Marina Raskova, a pilot who was known as the “Soviet Amelia Earhart,” began receiving letters from women who wanted to be involved. Raskova took their pleas seriously and petitioned Joseph Stalin to be able to organize a regiment of female pilots to fight against the Germans (and lobbied for Soviet women to be eligible for the draft).”

Read the full piece here

WEBSITE AIMS TO TRANSFORM THE PHILOSOPHY CANON BY HIGHLIGHTING WOMEN

“Project Vox is a  website that “seeks to recover the lost voices of women who have been ignored in standard narratives of the history of modern philosophy.”

Led by a Duke philosophy professor with a team of staff and students, along with colleagues at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, the site aims to intervene at a few different points in the “vicious cycle” that keeps early women philosophers’ work marginalized within the canon.

From Lady Masham, Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway in England to Émilie Du Châtelet in France, many women played significant roles in the development of modern philosophy, but their contributions have often gone unnoticed. The website has three primary goals. First, it seeks to provide students at all levels with the materials they need to begin exploring the rich philosophical ideas of Cavendish, Conway, Du Châtelet and Masham. Second, it aims to provide teachers with the material they need to incorporate these four figures into their courses. Third and finally, it aims to help transform our current conception of the canon.

It also has the happy side effect of making loads of information —biographies, out-of-print texts, sample syllabi — easily accessible to those of us who aren’t in academia. So if you want to get your self-taught Ph.D. in early modern women’s philosophy, get on it.”

Read the full piece here