Westminster English Professor to Give Bleasby Colloquium
Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005
Dr. Bethany Hicok, assistant professor of English at Westminster College, will present "Stalking the Lesbian: Poets, Women's Collleges, and Literary Crossdressing" Thursday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. in Sebastian Mueller Theater located in the McKelvey Campus Center.
"This talk focuses on female friendships, lesbian identity and the increasing homophobia that marked the experience of the American women's college in the first half of the 20th century," Hicok said. "I look particularly at how three women poets Marianne Moore at Bryn Mawr, 1905-1909; Elizabeth Bishop at Vassar, 1930-1934; and Sylvia Plath at Smith 1950-1955 developed as writers within this environment and responded to its challenges."
Hicok will argue that their development reflects their struggle to position themselves in the literary marketplace in the context of increasing sexism and homophobia, both in the larger culture and within the women's college itself.
"This presentation is part of a book that I have just finished called 'Degrees of Freedom: American Women Poets and the Women's College, 1905-1955,'" Hicok said. "My book argues that the intellectual, social and cultural educations of Moore, Bishop, and Plath in the women's college were crucially important to their development as writers, both in terms of the subject matter they chose to write about, as well as how they wrote about these things."
This colloquium is the first in a series of events scheduled for the George Bleasby Colloquia, a series of literary events in honor of Dr. Bleasby, who chaired the Department of English at Westminster from 1954-75.
Hicok will also give this talk at Faculty Forum, Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 11:45 a.m. in the Sebastian Mueller Theater located in the McKelvey Campus Center.
Hicok, who has been with Westminster since 2001, earned her undergraduate degree from Russell Sage College, and her masters' and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.
Contact Hicok at (724) 946-6349 or e-mail hicokbf@westminster.edu for more information.
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