Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia is an American academic and social critic. Paglia’s work is often controversial, and she prides herself on her overt politics and opinions. She quarrelled with peers as an undergraduate at Harpur College at Binghamton University, and as a graduate student, mentored by Harold Bloom, at Yale, where she claims to have been the only openly lesbian student from 1968-1972. As a professor at Bennington College, Paglia developed a theory of sexual history that addressed matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, and sadomasochism. Paglia has published seven books: notably, her first, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press, 1990), which argues that the primary conflict in Western culture is the binary split between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Paglia was a digital guest at The Kitchen’s second Electronic Cafe, Cafe Barbie, in 1994.