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Cultural Essays

  • 1995 – present

Cultural essays such as “When Men Look at Women: Sex in an Age of Theory” (The Hudson Review, Autumn 1995) and “Two Stories About the Body: On a Photograph by George Steinmetz” (The Gettysburg Review, Autumn 2005) treat a range of topics, including photography, film, advertising, fashion, sex, and religion.

“When Men Look at Women,” in fact, is a sort of nonfiction companion to Schultz’s novel, The Madhouse Nudes.  One thinks discursively, the other through story.

Male gaze theory, with its focused political intentions, has made an excellent starting point for reflection and action, troubling men out of the crystalline jail of unexamined fantasy. But neither men nor women will be satisfied with a theory that cannot imagine a guiltlessly gazing man or an actively desiring woman.

– From "When Men Look at Women: Sex in an Age of Theory"