[[Image:Pagliaphoto.jpg|thumb|Camille Paglia]]

'''Camille Anna Paglia''' (born [[April 2]], [[1947]] in [[Endicott, New York]]) is a social critic, intellectual, author, and teacher. She is University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the [[University of the Arts (Philadelphia)|University of the Arts]] in [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]. She has been called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate", [[The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll|one of the world's top 100 intellectuals]] by the UK's [[Prospect (magazine)|Prospect Magazine]], and by her own description "a [[feminist]] [[bisexual]] egomaniac" .

==Introduction==

Paglia<ref>The name "Paglia" specifically describes the color of the straw that is produced in Italy, the same color that [[George Eliot]] had in mind in [[Daniel Deronda]] when she wrote of "the pale-golden straw scattered or in heaps." The "g" is silent, or as British feminist [[Julie Burchill]] once said: "The 'g' is silent -- the only thing about her that is."</ref> is an [[intellectual]] of many seeming contradictions: a [[classicist]] who champions art both [[high culture|high]] and [[low culture|low]], with a view that [[human nature]] is inherently dangerous, while at the same time celebrating [[Dionysus|dionysian]] revelry in the wilder, darker sides of [[human sexuality]].

She came to public attention shortly after the publication of her first book, ''[[Sexual Personae]]: Art and [[Decadence]] from [[Nefertiti]] to [[Emily Dickinson]]'', in 1990, when she began writing about [[popular culture]] and [[feminism]] in mainstream newspapers and magazines. As a public [[intellectual]], Paglia challenged the positions of the so-called "liberal establishment" at the time, which included figures in media, academe, activism and politics such as [[Gloria Steinem]], [[Andrea Dworkin]], professors at many Ivy League universities, and organizations such as [[NOW|National Organization for Women]] and [[ACT UP]].

She describes herself as a [[feminist]], and as a [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]] who voted for [[Bill Clinton]] and [[Ralph Nader]], but her world view embraced risque elements not typically associated with those groups, such as [[fetishism]], [[pornography]], and [[prostitution]]. She is a critic of contemporary feminists, comparing victim-focused feminists with the [[Moonies]]. As a proponent for the legalization of recreational drugs and prostitution, and the lowering of sexual consent laws, she identified herself with [[libertarian]] thought.

Critical of the influence that French philosophers [[Jacques Lacan]], [[Jacques Derrida]] and [[Michel Foucault]] had on the teaching of humanities in American academia, she supported [[comparative religion]], [[History of art|art history]] and the close reading of canonical literature being brought to the center of [[education]], with greater attentiveness toward chronology and facts in the student's approach to history.

Her most notable allies and supporters (for different reasons), were [[Andrew Sullivan]], [[Christina Hoff Sommers]], [[Virginia Postrel]], [[Harold Bloom]], [[Bill Maher]], and [[Matt Drudge]]. [[Elise Sutton]], a [[dominatrix]] who advocates female domination of males, describes Paglia as a female supremacist and a friend.<ref>{{cite web | title=Female Domination and Feminism: Questions about Politics| work=EliseSutton.com| url=http://www.homestead.com/elisesutton/politics.html| accessdate=January 12| accessyear=2006}}</ref>

In addition to writing books, she has been a columnist for [[Salon.com]] since its inception, is currently a contributing editor at [[Interview (magazine)|''Interview'' magazine]], and is on the editorial board of the classics and humanities journal ''[[Arion]]''. She continues to write articles and reviews for popular media and scholarly journals, such as her long article, "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s," published in ''Arion'' in winter 2003.

In September 2005, she was ranked #20 in a survey of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" in the world, in a list compiled jointly by editors of the journals "Foreign Policy" and "The Prospect" (UK). The list, which included only 10 women, also included feminist thinkers [[Germaine Greer]], [[Martha Nussbaum]], and [[Julia Kristeva]].

She is currently ([[as of 2006]]) writing a third essay collection for Vintage Books, and working on a book to serve as a companion piece to ''Break, Blow, Burn'', which will be concerned with the [[visual arts]] rather than poetry.

==Biography==

Camille Anna Paglia was born [[April 2]], [[1947]], at 6:57 PM<ref>Astrological chart, http://www.khaldea.com/charts/camillepaglia.shtml</ref> in [[Endicott, New York]]. She was the first of two daughters by Pasquale and Lydia Anne (Colapietro) Paglia. Her mother was born in [[Ceccano, Italy|Ceccano]], Italy. Her father's family came from [[Benevento]], [[Avellino]], and [[Caserta]].

The Paglia household had little money, but the parents exposed their daughter to classical Western art and culture; and throughout her childhood, she was drawn to several figures in art, popular culture and history. These interests would continue throughout her life, and deeply influence her work as a scholar and critic. For example, she said that the first music to leave an impression on her was [[Bizet]]'s ''[[Carmen]]'', an opera which, in her words, "struck me with electrifying force." <ref>"Music of my mind: Camille Paglia on the influence of music on her life and work," interview with Camille Paglia, "Interview Magazine," August 2002.</ref> She was three when she first heard it, but she was still enamored with the opera and was writing about it over 40 years later.

Paglia's primary school years were spent in [[Oxford, New York]], a farming community in the [[Chenango River]] valley, where her family lived in a working farmhouse.<ref>"Arcadia," "The Financial Times," March 15, 1997, p22.</ref> Her father taught high school students at the Oxford Academy. When she was in the fifth grade, her family moved to [[Syracuse, New York]], where her father entered graduate school and then taught as a professor of romance languages at [[Le Moyne College]]. She attended the Edward Smith Elementary school, T. Aaron Levy Junior High and William Nottingham High School.<ref>"My Education," by Camille Paglia, "The Scotsman," (Edinburgh, Scotland), January 26, 2000, pg. 3</ref>

By all accounts, she was an excellent student at Nottingham High, devoted to her work. She spent her Saturdays in the Carnegie Library, absorbed in books and manuscripts. Carmelia Metosh was her [[Latin]] teacher for three years, and in 1992 recalled: "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now. She was very alert, `with it' in every way."<ref>"Hurricane Camille," Jim McKeever, "Syracuse Herald American" (Syrcause, New York), November 22, 1992</ref> Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgements to ''Sexual Personae'', and later described her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards."<ref>"My Education," by Camille Paglia, "The Scotsman," (Edinburgh, Scotland), January 26, 2000, pg. 3</ref>

During the summers, she went to Spruce Ridge Camp, a [[Girl Scout]] facility in the [[Adirondacks]] where, she later said, she had crushes on all the female counselers. She took different names when she was there, including Anastasia (her confirmation name, inspired by the [[Ingrid Bergman]] [[Anastasia (1956 movie)|film]]), Stacy, and Stanley. In one formative experience, she exploded the outhouse by pouring in too much [[Lime (mineral)|lime]]. She said, "It symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture..."<ref>"New York Observer," July 5 - 12, 1993.</ref>

The year 1963 was the beginning of her career as a feminist scholar. For her birthday that year, she received a copy of [[Simone de Beauvoir]]'s ''The Second Sex'' from a Belgian colleague of her father's, [[Josphina van Hal McGinn]].<ref>Paglia, "Sex, Art and American Culture", p. 112, 1992,</ref> The book had a tremendous influence on her and furthered her resolve to be an important feminist writer. On [[July 8]] of that year, ''[[Newsweek]]'' magazine published her letter about equal opportunity for American women. And on [[November 24]], she appeared in Syracuse's ''Herald American'' in a short profile about her outstanding achievements as a student, noting her longtime study of feminist icon [[Amelia Earhart]].

Paglia had been writing a book about Earhart, spending three years gathering materials and writing nearly 300 letters of inquiry to do so. She said, "I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime." <ref>"The M.I.T. Lecture: Crisis in the American Universities," (lecture, September 19, 1991), in "Sex, Art and American Culture," p. 257, Camille Paglia, 1992.</ref> But after reading ''The Second Sex'' she resolved to write a "mega-book that will take everything in", and stopped writing about Earhart. It was then that she began ''"Sexual Personae"''.<ref>"The M.I.T. Lecture: Crisis in the American Universities," (lecture, September 19, 1991), in "Sex, Art and American Culture," p. 259, Camille Paglia, 1992.</ref>

===College years===

====Binghamton University, Harpur College (1964 - 1968)====

She started attending [[Binghamton University]], called Harpur College in 1964, and graduated as [[valedictorian]] of her class in 1968. The essays she wrote during those years, on questions of "sexual ambiguity and aggression in literature, art, and history" formed the first beginnings of ''"Sexual Personae"''.

It was at Harpur, she later wrote, that she received her real education in poetry. There she took courses in [[Metaphysical]] poetry and [[John Milton]] from [[Arthur L. Clements]], an expert in 17th century literature. But the biggest impact on her thinking occurred in the classes of poet [[Milton Kessler]], who had studied under [[Theodore Roethke]]. "He believed in the responsiveness of the body, and of the activation of the senses to literature," she has said. "And oh did I believe in that. Probably from my Italian background -- that’s the way we respond to things, with our body. From [[Michelangelo]], [[Bernini]], there’s this whole florid physicality leading right down to the [[Grand Opera]], the great [[arias]]."<ref>"An Interview with Camille Paglia," Bookslut, April 2005, http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_04_005030.php </ref>

She wrote her senior thesis on [[Emily Dickinson]], and aspired to be a poet herself, inspired by the work of [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]] and [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]]. She submitted a reconfiguration of the [[Dido]] episode of [[Virgil]]'s [[Aeneid]] to the college literary magazine, but its editor, [[Deborah Tannen]] rejected it, saying that "Poets don't write like this anymore." <ref>"Prickly poet still battling status quo," Margaria Fichtner, "Miami Herald," (Miami, Florida), May 8, 2005.</ref>

While at college she became friendly with [[Bruce Benderson]] (who had also attended Nottingham High School), Stephen Jarratt and Stephen Feld, three gay men who would have a big influence on her. During a summer break, her father got her a job working the night shift at St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse as a secretary in the emergency ward. "It was unbelievable, like being in a war without any danger to myself," she later said. "I forced myself to look at every single horrible thing - once, OK? After a while, you start to adjust. It was pivotal because it's one of the reasons I'm not sentimental at all about death or disease."<ref>"Hurricane Camille," Jim McKeever, "Syracuse Herald American" (Syrcause, New York), November 22, 1992</ref>

At college, she did not fit the typical gender roles. When she was 19, she hit a young drunken stranger in the teeth with her right fist in order to protect a small student whom he and a friend were groping on the street. One semester she was put on probation for committing 39 pranks, a fact that she has been proud to share.<ref>"My Education," by Camille Paglia, "The Scotsman," (Edinburgh, Scotland), January 26, 2000, pg. 3</ref> She told an interviewer in 2003 that she follows the model of the "[[Hindu]] [[guru]]s, the aging masters and [[sages]]" because they're "Actually very funny. They're funny, they're prankish. [[Zen]] masters are known to be prankish." She said, "To me, comedy is a symptom of a balanced perspective on life, and people who are going around, like gloomy gusses, in that Sontag style of intellectual, these people are suffering from something coming from their childhood, it has nothing to do with the proper intellectual response to life..."<ref>"In Depth: Camille Paglia," Book TV (C-Span2, American Television), August 3, 2003 </ref>

====Yale Graduate School (1968 - 1972)====

She next went on to Yale Graduate School, just as the women's movement and gay liberation exploded into American consciousness, yet Paglia found conflict at the university due to her sexual orientation and sexually ambiguous persona. A friend of hers at the time, Robert Caserio, recalled in 1996:

:''"She did not act in a way that convention there dictated. Yale was an extremely genteel place. Camille wasn't genteel. She was so upfront and she wore pants in a very aggressive way. She was an out-feminist and identified with gay sexuality. We were all very much more discreet."''

Just a few months after beginning her studies she attended a party in the home of [[R. W. B. Lewis]], one of her teachers, and ended up being insulted by a prominent Yale psychiatrist named [[Robert Jay Lifton]] and his wife for being a lesbian. Lifton, at that time, was the Foundations' Fund Research Professor in Psychiatry at Yale, a position he held until 1984. His attack seems to have emboldened her not only to be out as a lesbian, but to be in everyone's face about it. She has repeatedly noted she was publicly out as a lesbian at [[Yale Graduate School]], and was actually the only open lesbian there from 1968 to 1972.<ref> As told to [[Dan Savage]], "The Stranger" (Seattle, Washington), September 28 - October 4, 1992: ''"I took the career price for that. I shoved my lesbianism down people’s throats when I wasn’t getting any pleasure from it; I couldn’t find anyone to be with! There is the irony, I took all the negatives without any of the positives! I tried. I tried to pick up women, I tried. In 1969 I traveled Europe with the handbook, ''The Gay Guide to Europe''. I went from place to place, every city, and I thought, "What is the problem here?" All the gay men are finding contacts everywhere! You can’t avoid it! Bus terminals, toilets, diners, everywhere! Finally I had to conclude, after so many decades of frustration, that lesbians are not looking for sex. It’s not about sex. They think it’s about sex. It’s about mommy! It’s about mommy is what it’s about!"''</ref>

While studying at Yale, Paglia quarreled with [[Rita Mae Brown]], whom she later characterised as "then darkly [[nihilism|nihilist]]", and fought with the [[New Haven|New Haven, Connecticut]] Women's Liberation Rock Band because they dismissed the [[Rolling Stones]] as "sexist."<ref>"Letter to the Editor," Camille Paglia, "Chronicle of Higher Education," June 17, 1998.</ref> She also "had two close encounters with [[Kate Millett]] (author of ''Sexual Politics'') just after she became famous, in [[New Haven, Connecticut]], and [[Provincetown, Massachusetts]], but she was too morosely self-absorbed to notice." Because of what she saw as Millett's "careless" attitude toward scholarship, Paglia became critical of her and those who supported her work.

Her study of sexuality in Western literature continued to develop with her reading of [[D. H. Lawrence]]'s ''[[Women in Love]]'' and [[Edmund Spenser|Edmund Spenser's]] ''[[Faerie Queene]]'' (1590). In 1970, she wrote a 160-page paper for her last graduate seminar at Yale entitled "Male and Female in [[Virginia Woolf]]." Her original projection for her book "Sexual Personae" was that it would end with her study of Woolf and Lawrence.<ref>Paglia, "Vamps & Tramps," p. 329, 1994.</ref>

She discovered [[Kenneth Clark|Kenneth Clark's]] ''The Nude'' (1956) while browsing the shelves of Yale's [[Sterling Library]] in 1971, a book which would have a profound impact on her writing. "If ever I was in love with a book, it was with this one," she wrote in ''Sex, Art & American Culture''; and in an article for ''[[Women's Quarterly]]'' in 2002, she called it "the best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art." <ref>''"The best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art. The Nude is a beautifully written work of sophisticated connoisseurship that analyzes art in its own terms rather than imposing strident, politicized categories on it. It outlines the major body types, male and female, in Western art and, via a wealth of illustrations, trains the reader's eye to detect and evaluate proportion. This book reveres art-- an attitude all too rare at universities these days. Students who read Clark will be safely inoculated against the worst excesses of feminist theory, with its prattle about "[[objectification]]" and "the male gaze"-- terms cooked up by ideologues with glaringly little knowledge afar feeling for art."''</ref> The book influenced her writing in her Yale [[dissertation]] and subsequent works.

In 1971 she received a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Yale, and began looking for a teaching job. In May 1972 she was hired by Bennington College, thanks to a recommendation by [[Harold Bloom]].<ref>"[[Girlfriends magazine]]", Heather Findlay (interview), September 2000.</ref> In the meantime, she continued to work on her Ph.D dissertation, which at this point was being written under the title of "The Androgynous Dream: the image of the androgyne as it appears in literature and is embodied in the psyche of the artist, with reference to the visual arts and the cinema."<ref>Letter, Camille A. Paglia to Professor Carolyn Heilbrun, February 13, 1972 (Knopf Archive, Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas.)</ref> Bloom, her mentor and adviser, found one fault in the draft he read in 1971. He cautioned in the margin that one passage was "Mere Sontagisme!" Paglia later wrote, "It saddened me, but I knew Bloom was right. [[Susan Sontag]], who could have been [[Jane Ellen Harrison|Jane Harrison's]] successor as a supreme woman scholar, had become synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing."<ref>Paglia, "Vamps & Tramps," p. 345, 1994.</ref>

In a letter dated February 13, 1972 to [[Carolyn Heilbrun]] at [[Columbia University]], Paglia asked for information about her forthcoming book on [[androgyny]]<ref>Letter, Camille A. Paglia to Professor Carolyn Heilbrun, February 13, 1972 (Knopf Archive, Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas.)</ref>; Heilbrun responded with a letter saying that her book would not be able to deal with all available material on that subject. Asked about Paglia's inquiry several years later, Heilbrun did not remember receiving the letter.<ref> Email, Carolyn G. Heilbrun to Damion Doohan, February 13, 1996: ''"I have no recollection of receiving a letter in 1972 from Paglia, which doesn't mean that I didn't. I hear she has said nasty things about me, but I haven't read them. I have no respect for her; certainly I would not have welcomed mean statements about Millett."'' Heilbrun had been informed that in the 1972 letter, Paglia has been critical of Millett, saying that her "shabby and humorless attempts at literary criticism in "Sexual Politics" have severely discredited Women's Liberation."</ref> When "Toward a Recognition of Androgyny" came out, Paglia gave a thoroughly negative assessment of it in a review for the Summer 1973 issue of the journal the ''[[Yale Review]]''. "Heilbrun's book is so poorly researched that it may disgrace the subject in the eyes of serious scholars," she wrote. She noted that "the most distinguished commentators on androgyny are [[Mircea Eliade]] and [[G. Wilson Knight]]"; and criticized Heilbrun for her reliance on the work of [[Joseph Campbell]], and for including "four flattering references" to [[Kate Millett]] while making "fifteen glib jibes" at [[Sigmund Freud]]. The article showed that the reviewer was an expert on the history of sexual androgyne, but as it was the journal's policy for reviews to be published without attribution, few people knew that Paglia wrote it.

===Teaching career===

In the fall of 1972, she began her first semester teaching at [[Bennington College]]. There she met [[James Fessenden]], a philosophy instructor from Columbia University, who started teaching at the same time as Paglia.<ref>Paglia, "Vamps & Tramps: New Essays," 1993, p. 202. </ref> In January 1997, Mark W. Edmundson, now a professor at the University of Virginia, recalled attending Bennington while Paglia was there:

:''"She was appointed as my faculty advisor in her first term. I went in for my advisorial visit and she was entirely herself, talking very fast about many things I knew nothing about. I ran in fear. Alas, I was too puzzled to take any of her classes, which seemed to be full of very sophisticated people from LA and from New York."''<ref>E-mail message, Mark W. Edmundson to Damion Doohan, January 23, 1997</ref>

Writer [[Heidi Schmidt]], who attended her classes, recalled in 1996:

:''"She was thought of as peculiar. She was so full of excitement and so intense. She would light one cigarette and then forget about it and light another, so she was waving two cigarettes. I think people took her quite lightly, she was thought of as eccentric."''

Another student at Bennington while Paglia was there was [[Judith Butler]], who went on to a very successful career in academe, a success that was not well deserved in Paglia's estimation. As she explained to one interviewer:

:''"She was a student when I was at my first job at Bennington in the 70s, and I saw her up close. And I know what she knows. I mean, she transferred from there, to Yale, and her background in anything is absolutely minimal. She started a career in philosophy, abandoned that, and has been taken as this sort of major philosophical thinker by people in literary criticism. But has she ever made any exploration of science? For her to be dismissing biology, and to say gender is totally socially constructed -- where are her readings, her studies? It’s all gameplay, wordplay, and her work is utterly pernicious, a total dead-end."''<ref>"An Interview with Camille Paglia," Bookslut, April 2005, http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_04_005030.php </ref>

In 1973, she achieved her first scholarly publication. Originally a term paper for a class taught under [[Maynard Mack]], who urged her to seek its publication, "[[John Hervey|Lord Hervey]] and [[Alexander Pope|Pope]]," eventually appeared in the journal ''[[18th Century Studies]]'' (a ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' cover story on Lord Hervey, November 2nd, praised the paper as "brilliant.") In April, she traveled to see Susan Sontag lecture at [[Dartmouth College]] and later invited her to Bennington. Sontag spoke there on October 4th, an event that caused much controversy at the college since she read a short story instead of giving a cultural lecture, as she had agreed to. Paglia later commented, "I was stunned because I thought she was going to be a major intellectual," and then wrote about the meeting at length in a catty essay entitled "Sontag, Bloody Sontag," published in "Vamps & Tramps".

Another intellectual disappointment for Paglia was [[Marija Gimbutas]], who published ''[[The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe]]'' in 1974. At the same time, Paglia launched "a detailed attack on an exhibit at Bennington's Crossett Library, '[[Matriarchy]]: The Golden Age,' which used appallingly shoddy feminist materials alleging the existence of a peaceful, prehistoric matriarchy, later supposedly overthrown by nasty males."<ref>"Letter to the Editor," Camille Paglia, "Chronicle of Higher Education," June 17, 1998.</ref>

Through her study of the classics and her reading of the scholarship of [[Jane Ellen Harrison]], [[James George Frazer]], [[Erich Neumann (psychologist)|Erich Neumann]] and others, Paglia had developed a theory of sexual history that was in opposition to the ideas in vogue at the time, which is why she was so critical of Gimbutas, Heilbrun, Millet and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and many other topics in her dissertation ''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art,'' which she completed in December 1974, at the age of 27.

In March of 1975, she drove from Vermont to [[Albany, New York|Albany]] to see [[Germaine Greer]] speak. She was disappointed, reporting later that "During the question period, I nervously raised my hand from the crowd and asked if Greer, a former English professor, would be writing on literary subjects again soon. Her reply was stern and swift: 'There are far more important things in the world than literature!'" (Needless to say, both Paglia and Greer went on to publish extensively on literature.)

Another time at Albany, Paglia "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's-studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior. These women (whose field was literature) attributed my respect for science to 'brainwashing' by men."<ref>"Letter to the Editor," Camille Paglia, "Chronicle of Higher Education," June 17, 1998.</ref> Similar sorts of fights with feminists, lesbians, chauvinists, homophobes, and academics would continue for years, reaching a high point in an event in 1978 which led to her resignation from Bennington a year later.<ref>As explained by Paglia to [[Heather Findlay]], in a cover story for ''[[Girlfriends magazine|Girlfriends]]'' magazine, September 2000. While at Bennington, Paglia had two girlfriends. The second one, a theatrical young woman named Patty, was a former student. The couple went to a school dance one evening when a rich student from Chicago came out of nowhere and physically attacked them. Paglia said ''"I went to the police and filed a report. Then her parents went ballistic. There was an enormous to-do from her rich parents telling the administration, 'Open homosexuals shouldn't be employed by a college. We're not sending our daughter to a place where there are gays like this on the faculty.'"'' After a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned a year later, in 1979.</ref>

In the early 1980s, Paglia finished her book but couldn't get published and was supporting herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. She taught night classes at the [[Sikorsky Helicopter]] plant. Her paper, "The [[Apollonian]] Androgyne and the Faerie Queen," was published in ''[[English Literary Renaissance]]'', Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "[[Wuthering Heights]] and the Ellipses of Interpretation," in ''[[Journal of Religion in Literature]]'', but aside from that, not much was happening with her academic career at a time when her peers were moving on to important positions at major universities. In a letter of March 1993 to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (''The Advocate'') in the early 1980s.<ref>Feminist writer [[Naomi Wolf]] was an intern for the Advocate in the early 1980s.</ref> There was an article on the historic pizzerias of the town and also one on an old house that was a stop on the [[Underground Railroad]]."<ref>Letter, Camille Paglia to Boyd Holmes, March 1993.</ref>

She got a teaching job at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts in 1984, which merged with its next-door neighbor, the Philadelphia College of Art, to become the [[University of the Arts]] in 1987. She took some time off to visit Europe, and while in Germany noted that "The women, stern-faced, melt the submissive heart...All look like [[Lotte Lenya]]!"

<ref>Postcard, "Camille" to James Fessenden, August 18, 1984: "Dahlink! Never in [[Germany]] before! I rather like it. Fabulous old castle in Romantic ruins. [[Bavarian]] frivolity of architecture elsewhere. The women, stern-faced, melt the submissive heart... All look like Lotte Lenya! [[Paris]], [[Geneva]] before-- now on to [[Rome]]."</ref>

==Works==

===''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art'' (1974)===

This is the dissertation she presented to the Graduate School of Yale University in candidacy for her Ph.D in December 1974, and which formed the basis for her 1990 book by the same name. The 451 page study, broken up into four chapters, examined the appearance of sexually ambiguous figures in art and literature from classical antiquity to the modern period. She wrote that her thesis was based on the assumption that "the inner dynamic of all artistic creation is a psychic union between masculine and feminine powers." She described her method as interdisciplinary, as it combined "literary criticism, art history, and psychology in what I believe is a new synthesis."

===''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' (1990)===

The two-volume manuscript of ''Sexual Personae'' was completed in February 1981 and then rejected by seven publishers and five agents throughout the 1980s before its final acceptance by Ellen Graham for [[Yale University Press]] in 1985. For the next few years,<ref>She cites only three books that were published in the 1980s: "[[Michelangelo]]: A Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images" (New Haven, 1983); "The Diary of [[Virginia Woolf]]" (London, 1980); and "The Complete Notebooks of [[Henry James]]" (New York, 1987.)</ref> she continued to teach while perfecting volume one of the book for its eventual publication in February 1990, and releasing a few additional portions of it in other journals and books.

Her paper "[[Oscar Wilde]] and the English [[Epicene]]" was published in 1988 in ''Oscar Wilde's [[The Importance of Being Earnest]]'', edited by Bloom; '"Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art", was published in 1988 in ''Western Humanities Review''; and "Sex," was published in the ''[[Spenser Encyclopedia]]'' by A. C. Hamilton in 1989.

After the release of ''Sexual Personae'' on [[February 15]], [[1990]], the book received little publicity from its publisher, as was typical of university presses at the time, but it sold well for months, prompting Yale University Press to send it into a second printing by November 1990. It was nominated for a [[National Book Critics Circle Award]] that year, and then reprinted in paperback by Vintage Press in 1991. It became a best-seller, as did her subsequent books ''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992) and ''Vamps and Tramps'' (1994).

In ''Sexual Personae'', and in subsequent media statements and campus appearances throughout the early 1990s, Paglia aroused controversy by making statements against leaders of the American feminist movement, claiming they were ignorant of art, science, and history, that they were hostile to men, and doing harm to young women by teaching them to see themselves as nothing but victims. Her views on issues such as date rape, pornography, gay rights, and educational reform mostly angered people on the political left, who accused her of such things as [[misogyny]], [[homophobia]] and [[Neoconservatism (United States)|neoconservatism]]. A selection of her articles, lectures and other writings from this period appeared in her next book, ''Sex, Art, and American Culture''.

Throughout the 1990s, she said that a second volume to ''Sexual Personae'' would be forthcoming, this volume was also to have included her thoughts on sports and popular culture.<ref>Letter, Camille Paglia to Boyd Holmes, March 1993: ''"Re: the second volume of Sexual Personae. It was completed with the entire book in February 1981 and is entirely on modern popular culture. The contents, in order, are: movies, television, sports, rock music. I wanted to write a book that began with cave art and ended with the Rolling Stones. The title isn't totally fixed for the second volume yet; these things change up to the last minute. The subtitle to Volume One, for example, was a matter of mass hysteria, between Yale Press and me and my advisors. More items went in and out of that subtitle! Then literally at production deadline, the marketing department tried to get the main title changed (as an obscure Latinism that would limit sales), leading to a major crisis. Thank heavens the executive editor of Yale Press took my side, and the title Sexual Personae (which has now entered the language even of ad copy and captions in fashion magazines) was spared. It will probably be several more years until Volume Two appears; Yale Press will release it in hardback. Thousands more note cards have accumulated in the intervening 14 years, and I am in the process of working them in. I try to avoid subjects too recent, as those tend to date quickly. As with Volume One, I want the book to be a more permanent statement."''</ref> Eventually, she decided not to proceed with the book, as it would need to undergo so many revisions, reflecting her changing attitude towards popular culture.

===''Sex, Art, and American Culture'' (1992)===

Whereas the 24 chapters of ''Sexual Personae'' looked at the study of decadence in art and culture from [[History of Egypt|Egyptian history]] to the late [[19th century]], ''Sex, Art, and American Culture'' (1992), exposed readers to Paglia's views on contemporary figures such as [[Madonna (entertainer)|Madonna]] ("the future of feminism"), [[Elizabeth Taylor]], [[Robert Mapplethorpe]], and [[Anita Hill]].

Two chapters of the book were devoted to [[date rape]], which the author said contemporary feminists had been incapable of preventing. "Rape is an outrage that cannot be tolerated in civilized society," she wrote, "Yet feminism, which has waged a crusade for [[rape]] to be taken more seriously, has put young women in danger by hiding the truth about sex from them."

===''Vamps and Tramps'' (1994)===

Her next book, also an essay collection, was titled ''Vamps and Tramps''. This book collected all of her writings since her previous essay collection, and the critical response, which was mixed, tended to be that she had written too much on too wide a variety of topics. It included a theoretical manifesto about sex, "No Law in the Arena". It also included transcripts of her TV and film appearances of the previous years, including her [[1993]] collaboration with [[Glenn Belverio]] in his short film ''"Glennda and Camille Do Downtown,"'' which played at the [[Sundance Film Festival]] and won first prize for best short documentary at the [[Chicago Underground Film Festival]].

The book was a bestseller and exposed a wide readership to her scathing views on contemporary matters such as [[feminism]], academia, the [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] presidency, the life of [[Jacqueline Kennedy]], and the career of [[Barbra Streisand]]. Paglia explains her title thusly:<blockquote> "I want a revamped feminism. Putting the vamp back means the lady must be a tramp. My generation of Sixties rebels wanted to smash the bourgeois codes that had become the authoritarian totems of the Fifties. The 'nice' girl with her soft, sanitized speech and decorous manners had to go. Thirty years later, we're still stuck with her -- in the official spokesmen and the anointed heiresses of the feminist establishment...Equal opportunity feminism, which I expouse, demands the removal of all barriers to woman's advance in the political and professional world -- but not at the price of special protections for women which are infantilizing and anti-democratic."</blockquote>

===''The Birds'' (1998)===

In 1998 her fourth book was published, its subject a single film: [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[The Birds (film)|The Birds]]''. She wrote it for the [[British Film Institute]]'s "Film Classics Series".

===''Basic Instinct'' commentary track (2001)===

In 2001, Paglia recorded a commentary track for the DVD of one of her favorite films, ''[[Basic Instinct]]''. She speaks about the idea that society has destroyed the tension between the sexes, which Paglia says ''Basic Instinct'' captures perfectly. "Today, the ideal male is the gay man," she says, "and the ideal female is the worker female, the woman who can work in a coal mine just like all the other men."

In analyzing what she calls "the strange sexual world of Basic Inctinct" she notes that "Sharon Stone's performance as the vamp, Catherine Tramell, is in the mainline of [[femme fatale]] portrayals in old Hollywood from [[Theda Bara]] and [[Marlene Dietrich]] on." She praises almost everything about the film, even the credits and score, which she says are an "homage to Alfred Hitchcock, one of the master directors of the 20th century, and the one who first fused gory crime drama with scintillating, titillating, sexual intrigue and glamour." The lyrical music by [[Jerry Goldsmith]] "seems to record mystery, ambiguity, sexual pursuit of female by male, and then the stalking of male by female."

===''Break, Blow, Burn'' (2005)===

In 2005 Pantheon Books published her study of poetry, entitled ''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems''. The book contains full texts of the 43 poems, each followed by an essay. The title is from a line in "Holy Sonnet XIV" by [[John Donne]]. It was named as one of the "New York Times Notable Books of the Year" for 2005, and was on the bestseller's list for Amazon.com, ''Booksense'', ''The New York Times'', The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association", and ''Toronto Globe & Mail''.

In this book, she wrote a chapter on each of the following poems:

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* [[William Shakespeare]], [[Sonnet 73]]

* William Shakespeare, [[Sonnet 29]]

* William Shakespeare, [[The Ghost's Speech]] from ''[[Hamlet]]''

* [[John Donne]], ''[[The Flea]]''

* John Donne, [[Holy Sonnet I]]

* John Donne, [[Holy Sonnet XIV]]

* [[George Herbert]], ''[[Church-Monuments]]''

* George Herbert, ''[[The Quip]]''

* George Herbert, ''[[Love (poem)|Love]]''

* [[Andrew Marvell]], ''[[To His Coy Mistress]]''

* [[William Blake]], ''[[The Chimney Sweeper]]''

* William Blake, ''[[London (poem)|London]]''

* [[William Wordsworth]], ''[[The World Is Too Much With Us]]''

* William Wordsworth, ''[[Composed Upon Westminster Bridge]]''

* [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], ''[[Ozymandias]]''

* [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], ''[[Kubla Khan]]''

* [[Walt Whitman]], ''[[Song Of Myself]]

* [[Emily Dickinson]], ''[[Because I Could Not Stop For Death]]''

* Emily Dickinson, ''[[Safe In Their Alabaster Chambers]]''

* Emily Dickinson, ''[[The Soul Selects Her Own Society]]''

* [[William Butler Yeats]], [[The Second Coming (poem)|The Second Coming]]

* William Butler Yeats, ''[[Leda and the Swan]]''

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* [[Wallace Stevens]], ''[[Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock]]''

* Wallace Stevens, ''[[Anecdote of the Jar]]''

* [[William Carlos Williams]], ''[[The Red Wheelbarrow]]''

* William Carlos Williams, [[This Is Just To Say]]

* [[Jean Toomer]], ''[[Georgia Dusk]]''

* [[Langston Hughes]], ''[[Jazzonia]]''

* [[Theodore Roethke]], ''[[Cuttings (poem)|Cuttings]]''

* Theodore Roethke, ''[[Root Cellar]]''

* Theodore Roethke, ''[[The Visitant]]''

* [[Robert Lowell]], ''[[Man and Wife]]''

* [[Sylvia Plath]], ''[[Daddy (poem)|Daddy]]''

* [[Frank O'Hara]], ''[[A Mexican Guitar]]''

* [[Paul Blackburn (U.S. poet)|Paul Blackburn]], ''[[The Once-Over]]''

* [[May Swenson]], ''[[At East River]]''

* [[Gary Snyder]], ''[[Old Pond]]''

* [[Norman H. Russell]], ''[[The Tornado]]''

* [[Chuck Wachtel]], ''[[A Paragraph]]''

* [[Rochell Kraut]], ''[[My Makeup]]''

* [[Wanda Coleman]], ''[[Wanda Why Aren't You Dead]]''

* [[Ralph Pomeroy (poet)|Ralph Pomeroy]], ''[[Corner (poem)|Corner]]''

* [[Joni Mitchell]], [[Woodstock (song)|Woodstock]]

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While speaking at events during the 2006 promotional tour for the paperback version of her book, she attacked the positive reputations that poets [[John Ashberry]] and [[Jorie Graham]] have enjoyed in academe. Of Graham she said, "Maybe she had some talent early on... She is like a mirror to the professors; they look into her and see themselves." <ref>"The Heckler and the Diva," Jeffrey McDaniel, PoetryFoundation.org, May 2006, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/dispatches/dispatches.reading.html?id=178147 </ref>

She also spoke of how badly she felt for not including any poems by [[Allen Ginsberg]] in the book, since she was a fan of his since reading "[[Howl]]". She said that she tried to excerpt the first hundred lines of "Howl", but that it gave the wrong impression of the work. The poem also did not entirely meet her standards. As she told a reporter for the "Toronto Star": "''Howl'', when I reread it, came across as so garish, stagey, hammy. It didn't work for this book."

She also considered including Ginsberg's "The Blue Angel" (1950), which begins with the line, ''"[[Marlene Dietrich]] is singing a lament for mechanical love."'' As she said to the [[Commonwealth Club]] of San Francisco in 2006, it's "an early poem that was not well known," and is "oddly conventional in its format." She said "it's about Marlene Dietrich as a kind of [[automaton]], representing a robotic woman. And I thought this is really interesting, in sort of sexual terms about media, et cetera. But I refrained from doing it because I thought, well, people will just say I put it in because it's about a Hollywood star. And you know -- probably I would, probably it's true! I mean, probably Marlene Dietrich means much more to me than it would to the general readership."

Another Ginsberg poem she said she admires is "America" (1956). In 2005 she told an audience in San Francisco's [[Haight Ashbury]] district that this poem, which includes the line ''"I'm addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by [[Time Magazine]]?"'' is a rare example of quality writing about the media, which goes "from Ginsberg to Chuck Wachtel with a lot of crap in between." Her reference to Chuck Wachtel specifically concerned his poem "A Paragraph", which is featured in ''Break, Blow, Burn''. Ginsburg's "A Supermarket in California" was also considered too long for inclusion.<ref>"An Interview with Camille Paglia," Bookslut, April 2005, http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_04_005030.php </ref>

She wanted to include a poem by a friend of hers from Yale, [[Mark Strand]], but she decided that her selection ("Courtship," a "wonderful poem about his penis when he’s courting the woman he would marry") simply did not belong in a book that included Yeats's "The Second Coming."<ref>"An Interview with Camille Paglia," Bookslut, April 2005, http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_04_005030.php </ref>

==Influences on Paglia's work==

Scholars, critics and other writers whose work has strongly influenced Paglia's thought include:

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*[[Gaston Bachelard]]

*[[Simone de Beauvoir]]

*[[Harold Bloom]]

*[[Brigid Brophy]]

*[[Norman O. Brown]]

*[[Kenneth Clark]]

*[[Patrick Dennis]]

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* [[Sandor Ferenczi]]

*[[Leslie Fiedler]]

*[[James George Frazer]]

*[[Sigmund Freud]]

*[[Germaine Greer]]

*[[Jane Ellen Harrison]]

*[[Carl Jung]]

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*[[G. Wilson Knight]]

*[[D. H. Lawrence]]

*[[Mary McCarthy]]

*[[Marshall McLuhan]]

*[[Erich Neumann]]

*[[Friedrich Nietzsche]]

*[[Dorothy Parker]]

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*[[Walter Pater]]

*[[Plutarch]]

*[[Denis de Rougemont]]<ref>Article in "Women's Quarterly," Autumn 2002. About de Rougemont's "Love in the Western World": ''"A sweeping overview of the idiosyncratic sexual themes and drives in Western culture, tracing the influence of Christian mysticism on the courtly love tradition and showing the ominous intertwining of love and death in our most romantic stories, from [[Tristan and Iseult]] to [[Romeo and Juliet]]. Learned and urbane, this elegant book is an excellent example of the old standards in humanities scholarship that were swept away in the past thirty years by poststructuralism and postmodernism, with their contorted jargon and nonsensical theories about sex."''</ref>

*[[Susan Sontag]]

*[[Oswald Spengler]]

*[[Rod Serling]]

*[[Oscar Wilde]]<ref>"Washington Post," December 2, 2001: ''"My favorite book for refocusing the mind in times of stress is The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited in 1952 by Alvin Redman with an introduction by Wilde's son [[Vyvyan Holland]]. (It was less elegantly retitled "The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde" for an American edition published by Dover.) I stumbled on it in a secondhand bookstore when I was a teenager in Syracuse and have been studying it with profound rewards ever since. The material has been drawn from Wilde's plays, essays, letters, interviews, conversation and trials, and is organized by theme -- "Art," "Beauty," "History," "Time," "Work," "Love," "Sin," "Youth and Age," even "Smoking" -- so that one gets a sweepingly synoptic view of human experience from the table of contents alone. For me there is nothing more bracing or provocative than Wilde's chiseled axioms, showing his exuberant spirit, penetrating insight and graceful fortitude in terrible crisis."''</ref>

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==References and footnotes==

<div class="references-small">

<references />

</div>

==Bibliography==

*''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art'' (Dissertation: 1974)

*''[[Sexual Personae]]: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' (1990)

*''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992)

*''Vamps and Tramps: New Essays'' (1994) ISBN 0679751203

*''[[The Birds (film)|The Birds]] (BFI Film Classics)'' (1998)

*''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' (2005) ISBN 0375420843

==News articles==

===Articles by Paglia===

<!--please add date of article to give these links some semblance of order-->

* [http://dir.salon.com/topics/camille_paglia/index.html Salon Articles by Camille Paglia]

* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050827/ai_n14900926 No fairy-tale ending for Madonna] article by Paglia

* [http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article309925.ece Hurricane Katrina has demolished this administration's mask of confidence] article by Paglia

* [http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article308372.ece Guardsmen's deaths strike at the heart of America] article by Paglia

*[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28PAGLIA.html?ex=1126843200&en=4967aded3fac9e3c&ei=5070 'The First Poets': Starting With Orpheus] Paglia's ''NYT'' review of Michael Schmidt's ''The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets.''

*[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/books/review/14PAGLIAL.html?ei=5070&en=a625078c99b2d246&ex=1126843200&pagewanted=print&position= 'Zappa': Freak Out!] Paglia's ''NYT'' review of ''[[Frank Zappa|Zappa]]'' by Barry Miles

===Interviews===

<!--please add date of interview to give these links some semblance of order-->

* [http://outrate.net/camillepaglia.html Outrate.net Paglia Interview July 2006]

* [http://privat.ub.uib.no/BUBSY/playboy.htm Playboy's Paglia Interview]

*[http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article_camille_paglia_interview_break_blow_burn.htm Break, Blow, Burn - Camille Paglia discusses poetry] Interview with Camille Paglia (October 2005)

* [http://www.oasismag.com/Issues/9606/oasis-coverstory.html Teen Talk with Camille Paglia]

* [http://desires.com/1.2/sex/docs/paglia4.html Interview with Paglia: "The Prostitute, the Comedian &mdash; and me" by Tracy Quan]

===Articles about Paglia===

* ''Racy radical; The fiesty, fast-talking Camille Paglia declares victory over the feminist establishment. Nothing is sacred to Camille Paglia. She's battled the left and the right. And now she's taking on academia.; [SOUTH SOUND Edition], JEN GRAVES. '''The News Tribune''', Tacoma, Wash.: Apr 17, 2005. p. E.01

* ''Ten great female philosophers: THE THINKING WOMAN'S WOMEN; Radio 4's 'Greatest Philosopher' poll yielded an all-male Top 20. But is philosophy really a female-free zone? On the contrary, insists Camille Paglia and "here are 10 to prove the point";'', [First Edition], '''The.''', Jul 14, 2005. p. 18.19

* ''Cover Story: Malcontent of Sexual Politics'', Donahue, Deirdre. '''USA TODAY'''. McLean, Va.: May 12, 1992. p. D1

* ''AN AMAZON'S RUTHLESS, REVAMPED FEMINISM''; [FINAL Edition] Jeff Simon - News Book Reviewer. '''Buffalo News'''. Buffalo, N.Y.: Nov 27, 1994. pg. G.7

* ''Our sometime sister, now our queen''; Books, Nigella Lawson. '''The Times''', London (UK): Mar 30, 1995. pg. 1

==External links==

===Discussion groups===

* [http://groups.google.com/group/paglia Camille Paglia discussion group at GoogleGroups]

* [http://topica.com/lists/camillepaglia/ Topica.com Camille Paglia discussion group]

* [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sexualpersonae Yahoo groups Camille Paglia discussion group]

* [http://communities.livejournal.com/camillepaglia Livejournal.com] Camille Paglia discussion group

===Other links===

* [http://www.breakblowburn.com/] The Official Website of Camille Paglia

* [http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/camille_paglia.html] Paglia Quotations

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