Camille Paglia (born April 2, 1947, Endicott, New York, U.S.) is an American academic, aesthete, and self-described feminist known for her unorthodox views on sexuality and the development of culture and art in Western civilization.
Paglia was the daughter of a professor of Romance languages and was valedictorian of her class at the State University of New York at Binghamton (B.A., 1968). She became a disciple of the outspoken critic and educator Harold Bloom at Yale University, where she earned a Ph.D. in 1974. She was a teacher of literature at Bennington (Vermont) College (1972–80) and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (1980), and she was a visiting lecturer at Yale (1981–83; 1984). From 1984 she was affiliated with the University of the Arts, Philadelphia (formerly the College of Performing Arts), where from 1991 she was a professor of humanities and media studies. She was also a contributing editor for Interview magazine and a contributor to the online magazine Salon.com.
In the early 1990s Paglia published three books that embodied her unconventional opinions: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays (1992), and Vamps & Tramps: New Essays (1994). Her public persona and iconoclastic views angered many academics and feminists and titillated audiences of television talk shows and college lecture halls as well as those who read her magazine essays and op-ed contributions.
Paglia expounded a theory, based on comparisons from Greek myths, of the duality of Western culture: the rational, orderly Apollonian aspect of society feels threatened by the Dionysian, chaotic forces of nature, which are murky and earthbound (her term is chthonic). An admirer of the works of Sigmund Freud, Sir James Frazer, and Charles Darwin, Paglia claimed that perversions in sexual behaviour came not from social injustice but from natural forces.
Paglia advocated the decriminalization of prostitution, abortion, drug use, and pornography. She urged the revamping of the U.S. educational system by institution of a core curriculum based primarily on the classics. She also called for the abolition of such highly politicized college majors as African American studies and women’s studies.
In 2006 Paglia published Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World’s Best Poems, which reexamined classic and contemporary poetic works. Her later books included the essay collections Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars (2012), Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism (2017), and Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education (2018).