The 34th Talk of IWLC-DFLL Lunch Talk

Tiffany Ball, a postdoctoral fellow of Tsinghua-Michigan Society of Fellows, gave a talk on the topic “Pedagogies of Exposure: Knowledge, Gender, and Sexuality in Henry James’s The Awkward Age”, on Dec.6th, 2018 in the meeting room 204 in Wennan Building. This marks the beginning of the 34th talk of theIWLC-DFLL Lunch Talk Seriescoheld by the Institute for World Literatures and Cultures and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. 

Tiffany Ball argues that the social power represented by “market marriage” exerts a powerful influence on transforming and shaping women as object, through her exploration into Nanda, the young girl in The Awkward Age, who undergoes a process of perceiving sex and gender and acquires her sex knowledge. Based on that, she explained how women’s self-realization, in spite of their subjectivityof“desire consumption”, is delineated and illustrated from the view of sex and gender. Redemption, over centuries, is considered as the central component of power which produces, regulates and delivers sex knowledge. However, an assumption posed by Tiffany Ball plants a question in us: what will happen when your redemption is not expected and ignored. Actually, voice from women and topics about women, in the early period of 20th century, were eradicated with indifference and even detested with arrogance, which was conventional practice. Therefore, to probe into women’s self-realization under such a condition is intriguing in the first place, not least when it is related to sex, gender and sex consciousness. Furthermore, Tiffany Ball revises Lanser Susan’s concept of “sexual imbalance”, with her study of The Awkward Age, to explainhow the production of sex knowledge went from motivating women’s interest to exposing them to sex.

The lecture was hosted by Harry Adams, postdoctoral fellow of Tsinghua-Michigan Society of Fellows and well receivedby teachers of Humanities and students who have interest in sexuality study. Participants shared their opinions on the topic of sexuality and The Awkward Age.

Tiffany Ball gives lunch talk

Teachers and students attend lunch talk

(written by Tong Chenchuan)