Women Writers

Catalog description

Short stories, novels, poetry, drama, and essays by English, American, and other English-speaking women writers. ENGL (WMNST) 194 Women Writers (3) (GH;US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. English 194 will constitute a wide ranging study of works by American, British, and other English-speaking women writers, including novels, short stories, poems, plays, and prose. The class will approach this literature from a variety of thematic, historical, and/or generic vantages. Authors under consideration will vary from class to class, but may include writers such as Bradstreet, Wollstonecraft, C. Rosefti, M. Shelley, Austen, C. Bronte, E. Bronte, G. Eliot, D. Wordsworth, Dickinson, Wharton, Stowe, Freeman, Jewett, Fuller, H.D., Moore, Sitwell, Bishop, Brooks, Plath, Cather, Woolf, Stein, Lessing, Bowen, O'Connor, Welty, Porter, Oates, Olsen, Sarton, Gordimer, Atwood, Morrison, Kinkaid, McCarthy, and Churchill. The course seeks to make students aware of the extensive body of literature written by women through the analysis, evaluation, and appreciation of specific works by women writers. The course also seeks to help students understand the female perspectives-the varying values and interests of women--reflected in the texts at hand and to position these perspectives within wider social, historical, and political contexts. The course also seeks to make students aware of the special problems faced by both women writers and the female inhabitants of the societies they describe in their work. As a course in women's literature, ENGL/ WMNST 194 concerns itself with questions of gender. In so far as some of these women writers are black or women of color, it concerns itself with questions of race and ethnicity. In as far as the course looks at women's literature in the context of men's literature, it is concerned with the inter-relationship between dominant (male) and non-dominant (female) culture in the United States as well as in Britain. In so far as the course covers lesbian writers, it is concerned with sexual orientation. Topics under consideration will vary from class to class, but may include a chronological introduction to the development of women's literature, a consideration of a principle theme or themes common to women's literature through a number of works from across a number of historical periods, a consideration of a number of women's works in the context of historical events central to their creation, a consideration of a number of women's works in the context of formal or aesthetic elements common to those works and their various effects. This class will prepare students for advanced courses in women's literature as well as other academic courses that engage in the verbal and written analysis of complex written texts.