Overview

As the semester is closing and I reflected on this course, I realized how much I have learned about women globally. Each week we examined how women were affected by their location physically and socially. As a woman, it was very interesting to see a plethora of resources that were highlighting women experiences and accomplishments. This class exposed me too much more artwork, literature, and ideas that women created themselves. It helped me think much more about my role as a woman in society. Expect to learn a lot about women in many different settings, from a variety of cultures, with different backgrounds that express their oppression in a plethora of outlets. It is a class you will learn more about the truth of society than one will realize. I have learned a lot about women globally and think about it in comparison to the lives women have here.

Looking back on all of my blogs, the most common idea is how women expressed themselves from the conditions of oppression they lived through. We analyzed literature, films, and artwork that allowed women to have a voice and an outlet from being the second best to men all over the world. Each piece we looked at brought awareness to different issues women are faced with. The film Boys Don’t Cry illustrated the pain and inner conflict that transgender individual’s to find their comfortable sexual identity. Not many people treated Brandon the same when they found out he was a transgender. It also gives you an inside look of the rural working class in Nebraska.

This class brought light to the amount of power men have in most societies. We started off the course with watching the documentary, Killing Us Softly that illustrates how the entertainment world expects women to be perfect, live up to standards that are unachievable. American women have a lot of freedom but are still looked at as second fiddle to men. America’s society has an underrated male dominance within society. Not only was Frida Kahlo’s disability and the physical pain of her impairment but also being a women going through the pains of love molded her paintings. Mexican women used quilts to depict their worries of immigration and their hopes to live the American Dream. Artwork can speak for its self and tell so much simply through a picture. 

I enjoyed the fact that we had to go to a museum, the National Museum of Women’s Art in Washington, DC where you saw the artwork up close and in real life setting in comparison to on the computer and less detailed. The content of our in class lectures were always a thought provoking discussion. When we discussed the issues of the Iraqi war from the novel Baghdad Burning, we would discuss the event of 9/11 and how that one-day was like everyday in Iraq. When we were asked to replicate Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, I was brought out of my comfort zone and went with the shock value of feminism. I learned much more than expected in this class and I would take this class if I could all over again.