Seven Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom

Sundays, March 2 - April 13, 2025
2 - 4 pm ET (NYC Time)
Admission: $150 (Paid Patreon members) / $175 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will be recorded for those who cannot attend live.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the femme fatale (the deadly female) has been a powerful concept in the visual and literary representations of world cultures. The woman who is both a seductive source of creative inspiration and a surreptitious force transgressing the boundaries of established rationality and social morality is central to elite and popular culture. This dangerous, beautiful female (whether human or supernatural) functions as a foil for saints, heroes, and other protagonists, especially as a symbol of temptation bringing personal ruin and even death. A fantastic projection of the Great Mother who brings forth all life and takes it back at will, the efflorescence of the femme fatale can be read as both a celebration of ancient female power as well as a dark reflection of the patriarchal project of global imperialism. Its enduring popularity suggests a key to understanding patriarchy’s structure and a potent reminder of its fragility.

Each generation recreates the femme fatale for its own specific purposes, and sometimes these can be subversive and liberating.

In this course—a sequel to an initial foray by the same instructor— participants are invited to take a dive deep into the histories and anthropological roots of six specific femme fatale archetypes that have been the sources of a complex legacy influencing the arts and cultures of the West, especially since the Romantic period when mass culture as we know it began to flow through global communication networks—The Vamp(ire), The Wicked Stepmother, The Amazon, The Phantom Lover, Beastly Beauty and The Immortal She.

Through image rich lectures and suggested readings and viewings, students will be invited to question and discuss the materials and offer their own reflections. In the final class, participants will be encouraged to share a final project (in any medium they choose) that engages with or touches on the archetypes and materials covered in this course.

Jason Lahman is an artist and cultural historian specializing in the history of technology, science and the occult. He has taught a number of classes for Morbid Anatomy including A Cultural History of Robots, A History of Fairies and The Femme Fatale.

Images: Love and Pain (Vampire) (Detail), Edvard Munch, 1895; Evil stepmother in Disney’s Snow White, 1937