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Posted 11/16/01
The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference
Edited by Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal, Assistant Professor of Art History, Liberal Arts, and Women's Studies
Princeton University Press, 2001
The Other Hogarth explores the etchings and paintings of English artist and satirist William Hogarth (1697-1764) who was famous for his satiric representations of high and low life. Some of his central artistic themes were the staging of otherness and difference. In this collection of essays, a group of international art historians and cultural theorists investigate this major yet overlooked dimension of Hogarth's art and aesthetics. Their 14 revisionist pieces describe how issues of class, gender and race reverberate throughout Hogarth's paintings and prints and inform his own innovation, the Modern Moral Subject. The book also contains an autobiographical testimony of a contemporary black feminist artist who took Hogarth's work as an inspiration. In her essay titled "Unfolding Gender: Women and the 'Secret' Sign Language of Fans in Hogarth's Work," Angela Rosenthal describes the meaning behind various postures of the folding fans held in women's hands, as follows:
Excerpt:With a "light touch" a fan could expand into a shield against unwanted gazes -- not only signaling the women's awareness of being looked at but literally trapping the gaze of others. Thus reading the fan simply as a defense against the desiring gaze of others would be shortsighted. Like the gesture of a Venus Pudica, the fan simultaneously deflects and attracts amorous glances. With this in mind, women armed with fans can be recast not only as targets but also as active participants in the visual field, for, with the flick of a wrist, a woman could transform eighteenth-century scopic hierarchies: the power of the gaze was, quite literally, in her hand.
The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis
Edited by John L. Campbell, Professor and Chair of Sociology, and Ove K. Pedersen
Princeton University Press, 2001
Four new paradigms in the field of institutional analysis have emerged while scholars have followed neoliberalism's rise on three continents. Defined as market deregulation, state decentralization, and reduced political intervention in national economies, neoliberalism is a new phenomenon, and the methods of studying it are maturing. At first isolated and critical of each other, the four paradigms -- rational choice, organizational, historical, and discursive institutionalism -- now converge to examine the changing role of governments in national economies. Each approach it from a different perspective, shining the beam of examination not only on neoliberalism, but on themselves as well, by virtue of comparison with the others. John Campbell and Ove Pedersen bring insights like the failure of deregulation to improve economic efficiency to play in the volume, which consists of essays by 13 scholars from the United States, England and Denmark. Campbell writes in his essay "Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy:"
Excerpt: Scholars have agreed that there is a strong tendency for excessively one-sided views to predominate in discussions of these issues, at the expense of comprehensive theoretical development. Indeed, despite the fact that both historical and organizational institutionalists are concerned with ideas as determinants of policy making, there has been astonishingly little cross-fertilization between these two perspectives. This is particularly striking insofar as the insights of each one often complement the blind spots of the other. One would expect that theoretical progress could be made by blending elements of these two perspectives. How can this be done to improve our understanding of the relationship between ideas and policy making?
Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity
Ella L.J. Edmondson Bell, Associate Professor of Business Administration, and Stella M. Nkomo
Harvard Business School Press, 2001
Eight years of research have resulted in a book that has taken a close look at the difference between black and white women's trials and successes on their way up the corporate ladder. First-person accounts of 14 of the journeys from childhood to early career development introduce the women who consistently represent the findings of the research population. A section then focuses on particular issues, with examples from more participants, revealing that gender discrimination is the biggest barrier to career advancement, race plays a smaller role and social class plays a much smaller role. Backed by a survey of more than 800 executives and managers, the research proves that more than gender shapes a woman's corporate climb: among women race and class are often wedges between them. White women are more reluctant than black women to label career obstacles as dicrimination, and sometimes align themselves with white men rather than black women. The excerpt below is from chapter 7, "Barriers to Advancement:"
Excerpt: An obvious question remains: How did the women feel about the overall career progress in corporate America? A large percentage of the black women felt they were behind where they should be while about the same percentage of white women felt they were ahead of where they expected to be. When we analyzed the black women's reasons for feeling they were behind in their career progress, we found that the majority attributed the lack of progress to being stalled in their companies. Karen Brown, a senior human resources executive, told us bluntly, "I am blocked here. Right now it doesn't trouble me ... but in two years it will."
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