Paglia, Camille

Camille Paglia is well-known both for her controversial ideas and for the signature incendiary style in which she delivers them. Born on April 2, 1947, in Endicott, New York, Paglia earned a Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1974, where Harold Bloom supervised her dissertation. She is currently a professor of humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Paglia became famous as both a popular and scholarly figure with the publication of her contentious first book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990). Here, Paglia reinterprets works from the early Greeks through the English, French, and American literary canons. Sexual Personae was rejected by seven major New York publishers before being accepted by Yale University Press.

[Page ...