The Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Department of English are co-hosting a talk by Qian Zhang on May 4 from 1:30–2:45 p.m. in Room 404 of Neville Hall.
The talk is titled “Witching Time: Motherhood and Counter-colonial Narrative in “The Witch (2016),” and is described by Qian Zhang thusly:
“Motherhood, when considered as a temporal concept, is often associated with repetition and timelessness. Maternal time in cinema — the temporal experience associated with motherhood represented in films — is usually understood, implicitly or explicitly, as heteronormative reproductive time. In the past decade, however, motherhood-themed films reveal a rising tension within the relationship between motherhood and heteronormative reproductive time.
“One exciting example, Robert Eggers’ “The Witch (2016)”, features what I call “witching time” and so to subvert colonial myths that subordinate gendered bodies to the historical narrative. I ask: how does witching time challenge dominant ideological associations between reproductive futurity and settler colonial time and in ways that call attention to historical trauma among Native Americans?”
This presentation is free and open to the public.
