Sex, Art, and American Culture

by PAGLIA, CAMILLE

• ISBN13: 9780679741015
• ISBN10: 0679741011
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1992-09-08
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

A collection of twenty of Paglia's out-spoken essays on contemporary issues in America's ongoing cultural debate such as Anita Hill, Robert Mapplethorpe, the beauty myth, and the decline of education in America.

Author Biography

Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. A regular contributor to Salon.com, she is the author of Glittering Images; Break, Blow, Burn; Sexual Personae; Sex, Art, and American Culture; and Vamps & Tramps.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Madonna I: Animality and Artifice	p. 3
Madonna II: Venus of the Radio Waves	p. 6
Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood's Pagan Queen	p. 14
Rock as Art	p. 19
Homosexuality at the Fin De Siecle	p. 22
The Joy of Presbyterian Sex	p. 26
The Beautiful Decadence of Robert Mapplethorpe: A Response to Rochelle Gurstein	p. 38
The Strange Case of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill	p. 46
Rape and Modern Sex War	p. 49
The Rape Debate, Continued	p. 55
Cleopatra Sold Down the River: Lucy Hughes-Hallett's Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions	p. 75
Alice in Muscle Land: Samuel Wilson Fussell's Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder	p. 79
The Critic at Graceful Ease: Wendy Lesser's His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art	p. 83
The Big Udder: Suzanne Gordon's Prisoners of Men's Dreams	p. 86
Brando Flashing: Richard Schickel's Brando: A Life in Our Times	p. 91
What a Drag: Marjorie Garber's Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety	p. 96
Sexual Personae: The Cancelled Preface	p. 101
Milton Kessler: A Memoir	p. 125
East and West: An Experiment in Multiculturalism	p. 136
Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf	p. 170
The M.I.T. Lecture: Crisis in the American Universities	p. 249
Appendices	p. 299
A Media History	p. 301
Cartoon Personae	p. 309
Profiles, Interviews, Debates, Exotica	p. 315
Index	p. 326
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