Women Writers - Honors

Catalog description

English 194H will constitue 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. Rosetti, 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. 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.