GWS 280

Fall 2014

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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
P
11:00AM -12:15PM
TR
108 English Building
Baron, I
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/25/14-12/10/14
Section Title:
Woman as Artist
Section Info:
Topic Section P: Woman as Artist For most of Western history women served as the subject matter for 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: A Room of One?s Own, The Scarlet Letter, The Awakening, Mona Lisa Smile, The Hours, To the Lighthouse, How To Make An American Quilt, The Reconstruction, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent.
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