CAMILLE PAGLIA Biography - Writers

 
 

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CAMILLE PAGLIA

Name: Camille Paglia                                                                   
Born: April 2, 1947 (age 60)                                                           
                                                                                       
Camille Anna Paglia (born April 2, 1947 in Endicott, New York) is an American           
social critic, author and teacher. She is a professor of humanities and media           
studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Paglia             
completed her undergraduate studies at Binghamton University and graduate               
studies at Yale. She has been variously called the "feminist that other                 
feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist feminist," one of the world's top 100         
intellectuals by the UK's Prospect Magazine, and by her own description "a             
feminist bisexual egomaniac."                                                           
                                                                                       
Pagliais an intellectual of many seeming contradictions: she is an atheist             
who respects religion and a classicist who champions art both high and low,             
with a view that human nature has an inherently dangerous Dionysian aspect,             
especially the wilder, darker sides of human sexuality.                                 
                                                                                       
She came to public attention in 1990, with the publication of her first book,           
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Her               
notoriety as the author of this book made it possible for her to write on               
popular culture and feminism in mainstream newspapers and magazines. Paglia             
challenged what she saw as the "liberal establishment" of the day including             
figures such as Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, prominent academics and advocacy       
groups such as National Organization for Women and ACT UP.