A Room of one's own by Virginia Woolf
Creating a life: professional women and the quest for children by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Lois Weber: the director who lost her way in history by Anthony Slide
About the books
Essay by Virginia Woolf, published in 1929. The work was based on two lectures given by the author in 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, Cambridge. Woolf addressed the status of women, and women artists in particular, in this famous essay which asserts that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write. Woolf celebrates the work of women writers, including Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontes. In the final section Woolf suggests that great minds are androgynous. She argues that intellectual freedom requires financial freedom, and she entreats her audience to write not only fiction but poetry, criticism, and scholarly works as well. The essay, written in lively, graceful prose, displays the same impressive descriptive powers evident in Woolf's novels and reflects her compelling conversational style. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --
Founder of the National Parenting Association, Hewlett reports on new data showing nearly half of the most successful women in corporate America are childless, mostly contrary to their heartfelt desires. Hewlett begins with interviews of high-powered women--lawyers, journalists, scholars, doctors, businesswomen--who wanted children but ran out of time to begin their families. She reviews recent data on career women and their odds of marrying and raising a family, noting that despite promising medical technology, most women over the age of 40 aren't able to conceive and deliver healthy babies. According to the author, "most of the heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause." Finally, she presents strategies on how young women can avoid the fate of the previous generation and what corporations can do to support women who want both careers and families. -- Booklist --
A major contribution to film scholarship and women's studies, this is the first critical biography of America's first native-born female director. It fully documents the career of Lois Weber as a director from 1908 through 1934 and notes the impressive number of short subjects and feature films that she made. Largely forgotten and often maligned, Lois Weber has received scant attention in recent years, yet this study points out that she was one of the cinema's genuine auteurs, not only directing, but also writing and often starring in her films. She was one of the first committed filmmakers who utilized the motion picture to express her views on subjects as varied as birth control, abortion, capital punishment, hypocrisy, and racial intolerance. Lois Weber's career is an extraordinary one, arguably unsurpassed by any other woman director before or since. Acclaimed film historian Anthony Slide presents us with an important reminder of the role women played in the American silent film industry and places Weber's preeminence in film history. -- Amazon --
Speaker: Mrs Regina Ip, GBS, JP, Secretary for Security
Moderators: Ms Evelyn Ng, Women's Studies Research Centre, HKU
Date: Thursday, 5 June 2003
Time: 7:15 - 9:00 pm
Venue: Special Collections, 1/F Main Library New Wing
Language: English