Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A fascinating illustrated history of one of the strangest, and cruelest, cultural institutions ever devised. A worldwide best seller, translated into twenty-five languages.
I was born in a konak (old house), which once was the harem of a pasha," writes Alev Lytle Croutier. People around me often whispered things about harems; my own grandmother and her sister had been brought up in one."
Drawing on a host of firsthand accounts
Language
English
Description
One of Canada's most celebrated authors and short story writers, Margaret Laurence was born in a small prairie town in Manitoba. She was a founder of the Writer's Trust of Canada, a nonprofit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. She is best known for her novel The Stone Age, set in fictional Manawaka. This classic documentary film traces her life from the early days. The images of her small Presbyterian hometown...
Language
English
Description
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has achieved distinction internationally as both a poet and a novelist. She is the author of more than 50 volumes of poetry, children's literature, fiction, and nonfiction and is perhaps best known for her novels The Edible Woman, The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride, and The Blind Assassin. Despite the fact that her work has been published in more than 40 languages, Atwood remains one of Canada's most elusive literary...
Language
English
Description
After every war, someone has to clean up...someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road so the corpse-filled wagons can pass, writes Wislawa Syzmborska in "The End and the Beginning." Called the Mozart of poetry, she is known for her use of deceptively simple language that slowly builds to a powerful revelation, especially in poems that were inspired by wartime events in her native Poland. This compelling program acquaints viewers with the...
Language
English
Description
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec. This internationally acclaimed author has achieved distinction as a poet and as a novelist and is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees. She is the author of more than 50 volumes of poetry, children's literature, fiction, and nonfiction - and is perhaps best known for her novels The Edible Woman, The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride, and The Blind...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Aphrodite was said to have been born out of the sea, rising out of a froth of white foam. But long before the Ancient Greeks conceived of this voluptuous blonde, she existed as an early spirit of fertility on the shores of Cyprus-and thousands of years before that, as a ferocious warrior-goddess in the Middle East. She's been a carnal symbol to Sappho, a Humanist muse to Renaissance artists, and a raunchy but subversive Shakespeare heroine. Proving...
Language
Español
Description
Recognized from an early age as a poet of remarkable ability, the writer who was to become known as Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American woman to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize, in 1945. Composed of archival footage and commentary from scholars and friends who discuss the personal events that affected her life and infused her work with its themes of tragic love and unfulfilled maternal love, this program provides an in-depth portrait...
Language
English
Description
Has feminist literature gone mainstream? And what place do women's presses have in society as it is today? This program offers valuable insights but no consensus as Gloria Steinem; Germaine Greer; Naomi Wolf; Lynn Crosbie, editor of Click: Becoming Feminists; Virago Press' Lennie Goodings; and Althea Prince, of Women's Press, Canada's oldest feminist publishing house, address these and other issues. Additional topics include personal "click" moments,...
Language
English
Description
Taking inspiration from science and technology as well as art history, Anna Campbell Bliss developed a style that synthesized many of the movements of early 20th-century modernism. This film traces the broad spectrum of Bliss's life and work, ranging from the influences of her early childhood and her groundbreaking career as a Harvard-trained architect to her emergence as a cutting-edge artist fusing a wide range of elements - mathematics, computers,...
Language
Español
Description
As a child of the Spanish Civil War and the repressive post-war era, Carmen Martin Gaite found kindred spirits among the Madrid literati, led by her future husband Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, during the '50s. In her long and uninterrupted literary career, Gaite chose socially critical topics such as the relationship between the sexes and the differences between provincial and city life. Using modes of expression that became increasingly more personal...
Language
Español
Description
Raised within the socially restrictive mores of a transient middle-class family and troubled with a stammering problem, Ana Maria Matute took refuge in literature. At 17, she began to use her experiences to probe the themes of lost childhood, injustice, and the lives of the marginalized. She soon developed a fresh prose style that deftly blended fantasy and realism, revitalizing the mid-20th-century Spanish literary scene. This landmark program features...
Language
English
Description
Surveying the uncompromising life and career of the erstwhile Amandine Aurore-Lucie Dupin, this program familiarizes viewers with her literary output, political beliefs, and the widely varied circles she inhabited. Beginning with her birth in Paris, the film describes Sand's semi-aristocratic upbringing, stifling marriage, turbulent romances, creative evolution, and visionary proto-feminist stance. Sand's memoir excerpts and artworks are featured;...
Language
English
Description
They come from diverse backgrounds and represent a cross-section of global culture, yet they all share a passion for the written word. In this documentary, authors Gloria Steinem, Doris Lessing, Amy Tan, Isabel Allende, Bharati Mukherjee, Harriet Doerr, June Jordan, and Mona Simpson speak out about their personal lives and openly share their thoughts and feelings on the themes of childhood; love, marriage, and children; starting out as writers; the...
14) Zoe Valdes
Language
Español
Description
Born in Cuba to Chinese parents, award-winning novelist Zoe Valdes has achieved worldwide recognition for portraying the struggles and dreams of women. This program highlights her upbringing, education, and influences, as well as examining several of her most important books, including La Hija del Embajador and Te Di La Vida Entera.
Language
English
Description
This moving dramatization of Tillie Olsen's frequently anthologized "I Stand Here Ironing" is an unvarnished exploration of an impoverished single mother's ambivalence toward her worth as a parent and her 19-year-old daughter's future. Rich in subtext, the highly metaphorical story-penned in a stark and dramatic fashion devoid of cliche and sentimentality-raises important questions about individual identity, the role of women in society, the effects...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The official publication celebrating Judy Chicago's feminist art masterpiece ... and an introduction to outstanding women in history. Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party is a defining work of feminist and contemporary art that brought women's history to light on the national stage when it was completed in 1979. Published to coincide with Chicago's 75th birthday and a nationwide series of events and exhibitions, the book features newly commissioned photography...
17) Women
Language
English
Description
The feminine form has inspired artists for thousands of years-but have the results done justice or injustice to women? What specifically does the history of sculpture tell us about attitudes toward womanhood and ideas of feminine beauty? British art critic Waldemar Januszczak addresses those questions in this challenging, eye-opening program. After tracing the representation of women from the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf and Venus de Milo to Marc...
Language
English
Description
In this compelling program, world-renowned author Toni Morrison candidly answers questions regarding how she became a writer, the pain of empathizing with her characters, the sensual nature of her novels, and how it felt to win the Nobel Prize. In addition, she pulls no punches discussing how she first became aware of her racial otherness, how writing for a black audience has kept her work from becoming derivative, the societal uses of racism, and...
Language
English
Description
When Maxine Hong Kingston was growing up in California, she listened to her parents' stories and memories of their native China. In her highly acclaimed memoirs, The Woman Warrior and China Men, she linked those tales of tradition to the story of her own American experience, blending childhood memory, meditation, and magic. They are the most widely taught books by a living American author on college campuses today. In this program with Bill Moyers,...
Language
English
Description
Flannery O'Connor is often likened to Faulkner for her portrayal of the character and lifestyle of the South, Kafka for her fascination with the bizarre, and Beckett for her dark humor-comparisons that underscore the fact that her voice has a unique place in the canon of American literature. This program provides a biographical sketch of O'Connor that illuminates her efforts to come to terms with what she perceived as the fundamental absurdity of...