CLASS DESCRIPTION
The symbol of the serpent has long represented evil, danger and chaos in western religious and mythological narratives - often associated with a particular type of female monstrosity in figures such as the biblical Eve and Lilith, or the mythological Gorgon queen Medusa. And yet, across the majority of world cultures serpents have also represented healing, regeneration and intuitive wisdom, as well as symbolising cycles of menstruation and fertility.
The killing or slaying of the serpent has been a recurrent metaphor for the triumph of religious, patriarchal and colonising forces, from the story of St Patrick killing snakes in Ireland and the suppression of sacred serpent deities in Africa, to the numerous tales of princes and heroes overcoming serpent monsters. Today, contemporary art and feminism has been interested in reclaiming the serpent as a symbol of empowerment and erotics that leads us beyond traditional frameworks of knowledge to more networked and embodied ones.
This lecture will look at an entanglement of serpent symbolism from a feminist and postcolonial perspective, exploring examples ranging from the snake goddesses of Minoan Crete to contemporary popular culture.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Catherine is an author, art historian and educator. She has held teaching positions at the University of Oxford, Sotheby's Institute, University College London and Chelsea College of Art. Her most recent book is 'Women in the Picture: Women, Art and the Power of Looking', and she is currently researching and writing a book about women artists and activism and one on women artists and the home.
INSTAGRAM: @womeninthepicture
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AUTUMN/WINTER TERM 2025
Monday 15th September
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Female Sexuality and the Male Gaze
Monday 22nd September
Dr. Kate Pickering (she/her)
Feminist Religious Worldbuilding in Contemporary Art
Monday 29th September
Julia Kotziamani (she/her)
Misogynist Bureaucracies: Administrative Erasure and the Feminist Body
Monday 6th October
Noelle Perdue (she/her)
The Evolution of Post-AI Pornography
Monday 13th October
Erin James (she/they)
The Real Housewives of Racist TV Tropes: a Black Feminist Reading of Reality TV
Monday 20th October
Jo Harrison & Holly Isard
RECORDING ONLY - Breastfeeding as work: the contradictions of breastfeeding under capitalism
Monday 27th October
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
The Vagina Dentata: Myths of The Monstrous Feminine
Monday 3rd November
Catherine McCormack (she/her)
Eve and the Serpent: Snake Symbolism and Repressed Histories of the Feminine
Monday 10th November
Dr. Lena Mattheis (they/she)
From Thou to They: Gender Nonconformity Pronouns in Literary History
Monday 17th November
Giulia Palladini (she/her)
The Feminist Before the Archive
Monday 24th November
Gudrun Filipska (she/her)
Eco-Feminist Art and Science Fiction
Monday 1st December
Anna Titov (she/her)
Clarice Lispector: Existentialism and Dark Feminisms
Monday 8th December
Jennifer Jasmine White (she/her)
Fashioning Labour: Feminist Art and The Industrial Body
Monday 15th December
Anna Johnson (they/them)
Writing Motherhood: An Embodied Understanding of our Own Oppression
RECORDING
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