Essays & Speeches

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, is a feminist literary collection of essays, prose, poems, and transcripts on the experiences of women of color and Third World women, in a mainly United States context. While many of the contributors may have been lesser-known beforehand, this anthology has become a foundational text in feminist theory. Originally published in 1981, it set precedence by delving... Read This Bridge Called My Back Summary

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Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality was first published in 1905. Freud expanded it several times in later editions, and it reached its final form in 1924. The book occupies a major place in Freud’s body of work, but it was controversial when it first appeared. Freud pointedly blurs the line between perversions and normal sexual behaviors, and he develops a radically new and surprising theory of human sexuality—in particular, of childhood... Read Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Summary

Three Guineas is a book-length essay structured as a letter from Virginia Woolf to an unnamed correspondent who has asked her for help with his efforts to “prevent war” (3). Three years after receiving the letter, and amidst the rise of fascism across Europe, Woolf has finally decided to respond. As a pacifist, she feels compelled to find a way to prevent another World War, though she is perturbed by the correspondent’s ideas, which ignore... Read Three Guineas Summary

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Two or Three Things I Know for Sure is a 1995 memoir by American author and activist Dorothy Allison, a native of Greenville, South Carolina. A coming-of-age story that examines feminism and lesbian identity in the context of the patriarchal norms of the South, the book uses both narrative and photographs to tell the stories of the women in Allison’s family and their complex relationships with the men who both loved and abused them. Her... Read Two or Three Things I Know for Sure Summary

“Utilitarianism” is a philosophical essay written by English philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1863. In this long essay, Mill seeks to provide a definition for the moral philosophy of utilitarianism, which was originally developed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. As a philosophy, utilitarianism argues that a desire for happiness lies at the heart of all moral considerations. Mill’s essay expanded on the philosophical ideas initially proposed by Bentham and specifically sought to respond to common... Read Utilitarianism Summary

Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” originally appeared in the autumn 1975 issue of the British film journal, Screen. This study guide refers to the reprint of the essay included in Mulvey’s book Visual and Other Pleasures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition 2009).Part 1: “Introduction”In the “Introduction” to her 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey announces her agenda: to appropriate psychoanalytic theory “as a political weapon” to expose how “the unconscious... Read Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Summary

Walden opens with Thoreau’s explanation of his two-year independent living project on Walden Pond, which spanned from 1845 to 1847. He illuminates his desire to live a solitary, simple life outside of civilization. Over the course of these two years, Thoreau describes his experiences including his immersion in nature, the process of growing his own food, and the pleasure he derives from contemplating the beauty of the woods. He also reflects on the most basic elements... Read Walden Summary

The book opens with Berger’s take on Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Berger therefore establishes the Marxist bent of his work, particularly as he parses out the manner in which the ruling class, and a class of scholars which essentially do its bidding, attach an artificial and untruthful aura to original artworks. They do this as a bid to maintain their oppressive and morally-wrong socioeconomic status... Read Ways Of Seeing Summary

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“We Should All Be Feminists” is an essay by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie is also the author of the novels Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize, and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. “We Should All Be Feminists” is based on Adichie’s December 2012 TED talk. In the essay’s introduction, Adichie states that her aim in delivering the speech was to challenge stereotypical notions of feminism.Adichie... Read We Should All Be Feminists Summary

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy is a collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a regular contributor to The Atlantic and a commentator on matters of race, Black identity, and White supremacy. Published in 2017, the collection focuses on what accounts for America’s inability to escape its White supremacist past, the impact of the Obama presidency on American culture and the writer, and the enduring impact of slavery on the country; the... Read We Were Eight Years in Power Summary

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In “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” otherwise known as “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” Frederick Douglass outlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. Weaving together ethical, religious, and sociopolitical threads of argument, Douglass points out the ironies of American values, particularly regarding the existence of an economic system based on slavery. Originally drafted and given as a speech in... Read What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Summary