| This is a project about failure, about failed beings. Namely, it is about women, who are failed men, and witches, who are failed women - but it is not simply about defining those categories. I also aim to demonstrate how these failed creatures use their status as "other" to overcome that limitation and define their lives on their own terms.;My dissertation focuses on two powerful women in literature who are traditionally seen as witches, Euripides' Medea and Bulgakov's Margarita. Their use of "other" knowledge (witchcraft) allows them to resist the hegemonic forces at play within their texts and to serve as examples of resistance to those outside reading the text.;These witches are not meant to serve only as merely esoteric exercises . I intend to demonstrate how their isolation and frustration is felt by women today as well as to highlight the fact that women still are marginalized and denied full entry in humanity. They will prove that examples in literature can provide answers to the questions of gender, sex, and sexuality that reverberate in the 21st century.;The significance of this project is not restricted to gender, however; it also addresses the power of the humanities and reaffirms their importance in today's world. The 21st century has seen an intensification of the troubling conversations about the role the humanities should play in higher education and in the world. The value and practicality of the humanities has been questioned in these troubled economic times; they have been dismissed as serving no real purpose and for leaving its disciples allegedly ill-equipped to face our rapidly changing and technologically charged world. With these arguments, I must however respectfully and forcefully disagree---for what could be more vitally important, more urgently charged than to discuss and discover what makes us human?... |
