Feminism and Culture in Twentieth Century American Novels - A Panel Discussion

This event is virtual. Register to attend online

This panel will discuss two feminist, American novelists in the twentieth century. Vaughn Joy’s paper examines the life of Ira Levin’s 1972 satirical feminist novel The Stepford Wives as it was reimagined and adapted for screen in 1975 (dir. Bryan Forbes) and 2004 (dir. Frank Oz). Situating each of these iterations in their appropriate contemporary contexts of social and cultural evolutions, Joy's paper will analyze these three versions of the story for how they present and address larger societal questions around how nostalgia shapes our culture, whose nostalgia is centered, and how reality can become a twisted, constructed weapon. Emily Hunter’s essay examines novelist Kathleen Thompson Norris (1880-1966) who was once dubbed “America’s most popular woman [romance] writer.” In her bestselling fiction, Norris took a strikingly progressive approach to marriage, divorce, female sexuality, family planning, the sexual double standard, and women’s self-actualization. Norris was also a devout Catholic who subscribed to a liberal religious tradition known as modernism. Hunter’s essay situates Norris’ romance novels within the sociocultural and religious context of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America.  

Join the conversation at the Dina G. Malgeri Modern American Society & Culture Seminar. 
Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Purchasing the $40 seminar subscription gives you advance access to the seminar papers of all seven seminar series for the current academic year. Subscribe at www.masshist.org/research/seminars. Subscribers for the current year may login to view currently available essays.