GWS 280

Fall 2012

Part of Term 1
Aug 27-Dec 12
Women Writers
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Credit: 3 hours.

Same as ENGL 280. See ENGL 280.

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CRN Type Section Time Day Location Instructor Section Details
39526
Lecture-Discussion
M
9:30AM -10:45AM
TR
131 English Building
Bauer, D
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/27/12-12/12/12
Section Title:
U.S. Women Writers 1910-2012
Section Info:
Topic Section M: U.S. Women Writers, 1910-2012 This course examines 20th- and 21st-century US women?s writing in a variety of forms, and our emphasis will be on conceptions of cultural and literary style. We will focus on how literary works are simultaneously products of one author?s imagination and also participate in a set of historical norms, shaped by the cultural anxieties to which the author, in turn, responds; at the same time, we will define the vision of gender and history animating these works. We will start with women?s writing in the 1910s and move, decade by decade, into the present. Thus, this class will take a historical and cultural approach to US women?s writing, as well as illuminating various literary methodologies. The reading list will include canonical and noncanonical readings from various genres?poetry, memoir, romance, comedy, radical and conservative novels?in order to demonstrate both formal and thematic concerns in representative women?s texts.
51931
Lecture-Discussion
X
12:00PM -12:50PM
MWF
150 English Building
Baron, I
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/27/12-12/12/12
Section Title:
The Female Artist
Section Info:
Topic Section X: The Female Artist in Anglo Literatures For most of Western history women served as the inspiration and subject matter of great works of art, rather than being directly involved in the creation of these works. In England, women undermined this stranglehold of gender hegemony from time to time, writing poetry, painting, playing music and moving onto the stage. But it was not until the advent of the novel that women achieved recognition in England and its colonies as artists in their own right and began to explore the function of women and art through their fiction. In this course, we will study the genesis of the female artist in Anglo literatures over a two hundred year period. We?ll examine how novels frequently depicted women as self-determinant beings who could live independent lives off the labors of their creative endeavors, and as helpless domestic angels who were too delicate and fragile to consider any occupation that involved the marketplace of the imagination, often in the same piece. We?ll explore the lives of those women on both sides of the Atlantic who refused to be subjugated inside the home as decorative objects and who instead used art as the mouthpiece for feminist insurrection. We?ll focus on the impact that race and class have on women and their art, and on novels in which women have gained sociopolitical rights, but still compete in a phallocentric artistic paradigm as second-class citizens. And finally, we?ll discuss whether art is by nature a gendered act, or whether art is the byproduct of a creative genius that defies cultural notions of gender assignment altogether. Students should be prepared to regularly attend class and are expected to actively contribute to class discussions. Students will be required to write three short papers and to take a final exam. The following books/films may be included: Northanger Abbey, The Scarlet Letter, The Forsyte Saga, The Awakening, My Brilliant Career, To the Lighthouse, How To Make An American Quilt, The Reconstruction, Atonement.
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