English 105
Hair Raising: Hair in World Literature and Film
From the Judeo-Christian story of Samson and Delilah through the writings of a seventeenth-century Mexican nun, a blond bombshell, a Colombian Nobel Prize Laureate, an African-American girl, an Algerian novelist, and a Holocaust poet, this course will explore hair as a major site of self definition on personal, gender, racial, and socio-political levels, considering how its symbolic value supports or subverts specific forms of authority. Each text has been carefully selected from varied cultural areas throughout the world for the ways in which it might help students enter into a rich and meaningful discussion on the topic of the course theme. Throughout the quarter, we will be challenged to link notions such as blond vs. brunette, good hair vs. bad hair, and long vs. short to identity politics, the deformation of a positive self image, as well as dignity, violence, madness and disease. In addition, our discussions will also consider hair in the construction of figures who have long peopled carnivals and sideshows, such as the Bearded Lady and the Wolf-man.
Required Texts
Loos, Anita. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady (Penguin, 1998)
Morrison, Toni. Bluest Eye (Penguin)
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The Answer/La respuesta (The Feminist Press, 1994)
Marquez, Gabriel García. Of Love and Other Demons (Vintage Books, 1995)
Selection from Assia Djebar’s The tongue's blood does not run dry: Algerian stories (will be available on PDF)
Selected poetry from Primo Levi and Janina Degutytė’s “Auschwitz Hair” (1966); (will be available on PDF)
Samson and Delilah (from King James Bible, will be available as a handout)
Required Films
*depending on availability, the films will be on reserve at YRL.
Chris Rock’s Good Hair (2007) (only clips)
Nadine Labaki’s Caramel (2007)
Suggested Reading
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Bernice Bobs Her Hair.
Little, Benilde. Good Hair.
Allende, Isabel. The House of Spirits.
Recommended Viewing
Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1944)
Howard Hawk’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Tim Story’s Barbershop (2002)
