Background
Battersby, Christine was born on March 3, 1946 in Carshalton, Surrey, England. Daughter of Thomas and Beatrice Kathleen (Yates) Battersby.
(During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, women were bl...)
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, women were blamed for having too much passion, imagination and sexual appetite. By the late eighteenth century, however, these qualities had been revalued and appropriated for male artists. The virtues attributed to the Romantic"genius" made him like a woman but not a woman. He belonged to a third, supermale sex. As new and old concepts of woman and genius clashed, there evolved a rhetoric of sexual apartheid which today still affects our perceptions of cultural achievement. Genius from the time of the Greeks has been defined as male. In this study, Christine Battersby traces the history of the concept of genius from ancient Rome to the present day, showing how pagan myths linking divinity with male procreativity have survived into our own time. The author explores the dilemma faced by female creators who have resisted the idea that Art requires "feminine" qualities of mind but male sexual energies. GENDER AND GENIUS argues, against those currently seeking to establish an aesthetics of the "feminine," that a feminist aesthetics must look to the achievements of women artists in the past as well as in the present.
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Battersby, Christine was born on March 3, 1946 in Carshalton, Surrey, England. Daughter of Thomas and Beatrice Kathleen (Yates) Battersby.
Bachelor in Philosophy and English, York (England) University, 1967. Postgraduate, Philipps University, Marburg, Germany, 1968. Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy, Sussex University, Brighton, England, 1978.
Administrative assistant, Greater London Council, 1968-1969; lecturer in philosophy, Warwick U., Coventry, England, 1972-1993; senior lecturer in philosophy, Warwick U., Coventry, England, since 1993.
(During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, women were bl...)
Fellow Royal Society Arts (London). Member Society Women in Philosophy, Kant Society.