01  MW5  CAC  73105  SADOFF  SC-204

THIS COURSE SAME AS 988:357:01

Rewriting Womanhood

This course will try to answer the question, “Why study poetry written solely by women?”  To do so, we will read various theoretical inquiries into “the female tradition” in literature:  Is there an entity known as “women’s writing?”  If there is, how do we define and recognize it?  Why should women’s writing be studied or theorized apart from men’s writing?  Or should it not?  Is there a “female tradition” in poetry?  Do women from different class, racial, and national backgrounds write differently or in the same way, and why?  In what historical periods did women begin to write, and why?  What publication, marketing, and self-advertising structures or strategies support women’s writing?

We will read theory by critics such as Virginia Woolf, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Alice Walker, Patrocino Schweickart, Adrienne Rich, Helène Cixous, Valerie Smith, Chandra Mohanty, and Trinh T. Minh-Ha, among others.

Our literary texts will include poems by writers such as Phyllis Wheatley, Aphra Behn, Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Louise Erdrich, and Sandra Cisneros.

Attendance:  Regular attendance and participation required.  More than four absences will lower your grade.

Means of evaluation:  class participation, in-class and out-of-class writing assignments, two 7-8 page papers, and a final exam.