The Evolution of the Feminist First-Person Essay, 2000-present

Catalog description

The internet age has coincided with the rise of new and reinvented modes of nonfiction writing by women online. The feminist first-person essay (what simply goes by 'personal essay' in the business) has transformed internet writing formally, politically, and economically. The explosion inpopularity and shareability of this nonfiction subgenre has generated a host of new media and catapulted a new coterie of women writers into prominence. Which authors have exerted the most influence upon this new subgenre, how does the emergence of the first-person essay by women signify a mainstreaming of feminist dialectic, and how has this emergence been received by both a popular readership and the media establishment? This discussion-based course will investigate how the growth of the feminist first-person essay has promoted new publications and modes of publication. It will trace the genesis of the online personal essay genre from public journals like LiveJournal, Blogspot, and Tumblr, via its codification in online publications like The Toast, The Rumpus, Gawker, Jezebel, Guernica, The Hairpin, The Awl, and xoJane, to its eventual breakthrough into established newspapers, magazines, and traditionally published memoirs and essay collections.We will investigate questions like: How can the rendering of one individual's story benefit the political mandate of the collective? What is the first person's effect, and affect, in interspersing an author's personal experience, and what feminist potential does it contain? How does the myth of journalistic 'objectivity' conflict with the presentation of the first person, and how has this objectivity myth descended from patriarchal tropes of legitimation? What do the terms 'confessional' and 'silence-breaking' connote? How has social media simultaneously empowered these new modes of public feminist dialogue and also exposed feminist public…