L207 24441 WOMEN AND LITERATURE
Christine Farris

4:00p-5:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.
This class will count as one of the two allowed substitutions in the Gender Studies major.

In this course we will read selected novels, short stories, poetry, and essays by British and American women authors from the nineteenth century to the present. We will examine various issues represented in literature through the lens of gender, including class, race, work, education, domesticity, the body, sexuality, and motherhood in different historical and social contexts. In particular, we will investigate how women authors have used writing similarly and differently to resist stereotypes, represent women’s experience, and revise literary traditions. Texts will likely include Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Chopin’s The Awakening, Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Rhys’s Wide Saragasso Sea, Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Plath’s poetry and The Bell Jar, and Allison’s Bastard Out of North Carolina. Required coursework will include a number of short response papers (1-2 pages long), a major paper, a mid-term, and a final exam.