Introduces students to the work of women writers and the importance of gender as a category of literary analysis. Issues covered may include: images of women in literature by women and men; impediments women writers have faced; women's writing in historical/social context; feminist literature; intersections of race, class and gender. May be repeated for credit with a different topic.

Fall Semester information

264A: Women & Lit: Women Writers of the African Diaspora

In this course, we will focus on contemporary women writers of African descent, particularly their postcolonial experiences in the Caribbean, Latin America, the U.S., and the U.K. Our readings will cover a variety of genres, including fiction, memoir, drama, and poetry. Some of the authors we study may include Jamaica Kincaid, Edwige Danticat, Safiyah Sinclair, Helen Oyeyemi, Bernardine Evaristo, and recent performance poets. This is an interdisciplinary course that will require active reading and participation.

264B: Women & Lit: US Women's Autobiography

This interdisciplinary course explores how American women narrate and represent their lives across media, including literature, film, and fine art. We will pay particular attention to women¿s autobiographical practices that employ both image and text to address the complexities of self-representation and the intersectionality of culture, memory, fiction, and history within these practices. Course themes include: definitions of national belonging; intertextuality and the construction of self; transformation and conversion narratives as social/political critique; and loss of innocence as a counter-hegemonic feminist strategy.