Martha Mockus, Irwin Chair and visiting assistant professor of women's studies, presented a paper at the "Music, Justice, and Gender" conference at Syracuse University in September. This event brought together scholars, performers and activists from the worlds of women's studies, performance, composition, historical musicology and ethnomusicology with faculty and students from the universities involved in the newly instituted Upstate New York Humanities Corridor – the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester), Syracuse University and Cornell University.
Mockus's paper, titled "Carla Lucero's Wuornos: Feminism, Violence and Lesbian Redemption," explored the operatic representation of Aileen Wuornos (1956-2002), dubbed "the lesbian serial killer," who was executed after spending 11 years on death row in Florida for killing seven men. Her story attracted attention from feminists, prison activists, born-again Christians, sex worker advocates, biographers, documentary and feature filmmakers (notably Patty Jenkins's Monster in 2004), all of whom found in Wuornos a tragic heroine whose life thematized a number of politically charged social problems. This paper shows how Lucero's opera performs a feminist critique of violence against women (both domestic and state-administered) yet maintains an ambivalence about female violence itself.
The Music, Justice and Gender conference was part of the Syracuse Symposium on Justice, "a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining, and creating, presented by the College of Arts and Sciences to the entire Syracuse community. This symposium explores the meaning of justice as an ideal we envision and the realities of justice and injustice in the world we inhabit, through a diverse array of lectures, performances, exhibits, and other special events."
Mockus's paper, titled "Carla Lucero's Wuornos: Feminism, Violence and Lesbian Redemption," explored the operatic representation of Aileen Wuornos (1956-2002), dubbed "the lesbian serial killer," who was executed after spending 11 years on death row in Florida for killing seven men. Her story attracted attention from feminists, prison activists, born-again Christians, sex worker advocates, biographers, documentary and feature filmmakers (notably Patty Jenkins's Monster in 2004), all of whom found in Wuornos a tragic heroine whose life thematized a number of politically charged social problems. This paper shows how Lucero's opera performs a feminist critique of violence against women (both domestic and state-administered) yet maintains an ambivalence about female violence itself.
The Music, Justice and Gender conference was part of the Syracuse Symposium on Justice, "a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining, and creating, presented by the College of Arts and Sciences to the entire Syracuse community. This symposium explores the meaning of justice as an ideal we envision and the realities of justice and injustice in the world we inhabit, through a diverse array of lectures, performances, exhibits, and other special events."
