Global Women Writing

Catalog description

What does it mean to be a "woman writer"? This course will explore and examine that phrase, which has for centuries been used as cause for marginalization and silencing. Students will explore what women's writing from around the world might reveal about the relationships between gender, authority, creativity, power, mobility, and tradition. Do we assume, for instance, the existence of an essential "female" way of writing, shared by women across time and geography? Drawing on both literary and critical materials, students will also consider the complexities and challenges of reading across literary tradition(s) and the ways in which writing from multiple historical and cultural situations represents intersections of gender, race, class, nation, and sexuality. Writers to be considered in this course may include Virginia Woolf, Sor Juana, Mary Wollstonecraft, Lady Murasaki, Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldua, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, among others.