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Art and Feminine Power


The British Museum has recently opened the exhibition "Female Power: the Divine to the Demonic" which shows how women have been represented throughout history in various mythologies around the world.

Here you can find a 3 hour lesson plan about Art, which complements unit 7B of English File C1.1, O.U.P.  The first lesson includes some speaking activities to discuss Art, exhibitions and Public Art; a power point presentation of local Public Art in Zaragoza and an intensive listening comprehension task, based on a clip of Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (17/05/22), which is more suitable for C2 students.  The second lesson is focused on Street Art and it includes some conversation questions about Art, education etc., and another power point presentation about Street Art in Zaragoza. You can access the list of key words below in Word format here and the 5' recording of the Today radio report here.

Some of the key words you will come across in the recording are: a goddess, a she-devil, a saint, a witch, to be betrayed, a blood-thirsty warrior, divine,
demonic, to be installed, a gargoyle, a bronze sculpture, to crawl, about to pounce,
attached to [the wall], [female] defiance, to refuse to submit to [Adam], the
Garden of Eden, happily ever after, to rebel, depiction, faiths and mythologies, a
painted terracotta dating from [500 BC], snake-like hair, fangs, to stick [her]
tongue out, to have [someone] round for dinner, to reassess [things after Me Too],
a survivor of rape, female rage, a statement of power, to be rageful, to be sexually
assaulted, a male-dominated [industry], an all-boys club, gratitude, to put up
with [a lot of stuff], to range from, an orgasm machine, to impress my bosses, [everyday]
sexual harassment, micro-aggressions, an admission price [to being a woman], stepped
into my rage, bulbous eyes, [to die in] childbirth, to be engaged in a battle,
to long for [children], yearning and shaped [by her lack of children], to open
up [about a personal failure], universal resonance, my soul, millennia of
patriarchy, to strive against [that], a cohesive narrative to [this exhibition].

If you want to read some stories of fascination and fear of the deites shown in the exhibition, you can check this article from BBC Culture and learn about Sulis (England), Minerva (Rome), Sekhmet (Egypt), Kali (India), Kannon (Japan), Coatlicue (Mexico), Inanna (Mesopotamia), Athena (Greece), Venus (Rome), Lamashtu (Sumeria), Cihuateteo (Mexico), Lilith (Israel), Persephone (Greece), Shri-Lakshmi (India), Sati (India) and Circe (Greece), 

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