COURSE DESCRIPTION

“An investigation of women’s writings in English after 1800, through poetry, (auto)biography, fiction, drama, film, and theory written by women.”

This course tracks a chronological path of women’s writing through a cross-section of genres and an eclectic selection of pivotal works and authors. The intent is to examine how women writers’ voices emerged from the histories that buried them. How can we become attuned to the writers’ political and artistic motivations to appreciate how they represent and reimagine “woman” in literary works? As we follow this path, can we deepen our understanding of the notions and representations of gender in literature? Class discussions will also focus on how we might better appreciate the work of pre-21st-century women writers as we become increasingly distanced from the social contexts of their pasts and removed from their styles of literary expression.