ENGL 659 - Women’s Literature

3 Credit(s)

Description:
In the context of unprecedented discussion of sexual assault and women’s authority in the public sphere, feminist questions wield a new vitality and significance. Imaginative literature has long been a forum for women to intervene in political discourse, well before they had the vote, and in some cases, before they were liberated from slavery. This course provides both a survey of women’s literature as well an introduction to key developments in feminist theory. From sentimental fiction to graphic novels, we will consider how women writers contend with the pressures of heteronormativity, the problems and pleasures of embodiment, and the anxieties of authorship itself. We will examine how female experience cannot be disentangled from considerations of racial difference or economic stratification, and we will ask: what, if anything, unifies this tradition of literature, and how might feminist methodology offer a way of reading and grappling with the various forms of subjugation that structure contemporary life.

016159:1