Dr. Rob McFarland, Associate Professor of German literature at BYU, will speak at this Global Women’s Studies Colloquium event. McFarland is the Co-Director of the Sophie Project, a digital library of works by German-speaking women writers. A faculty affiliate of the Global Women’s Studies program, he developed and teaches the GWS course “The Gendered Camera: Women and World Cinema.”

The 1991 film Thelma and Louise has gone down in history as a watershed moment for women in Hollywood. Not only did Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis’ characters become instant feminist icons, but the wildly popular road movie sparked wide-reaching debates about sexual violence, women’s mobility, and the role of women in Hollywood. Professor McFarland will follow the breaks and fissures left in the wake of Thelma and Louise’s car trip, and the surprising ways that women’s road movies have transformed the art of filmmaking over the last 30 years.