Spring 2006
HUSL 6372.001
Wed. 3:30 - 6:15 p.m.
JO 4.914 American Women Writers
This course is both an
historical survey of American women’s writing from the early Republic to the
present and a critical consideration of the place of these texts in the
American literary tradition. We will discuss how gender, sexuality,
race/ethnicity, and class have influenced access to education and the
literary marketplace. We will examine the creation of an American
literary canon in
the 1940s and 1950s that excluded most women writers and the “rediscovery”
of many of these authors by feminist critics in the 1970s and 1980s. Topics
include: the rise of the novel, best-selling 19th-century
sentimental fiction, gender and notions of genius, local color writing,
proletarian fiction and other “political” writing, the creation of cultural
hierarchies (“Literature,” bestsellers, “trash”), the significance of
national literary traditions, and the connections between book
publication and other media (magazines, radio, film, and television).
Texts:
Susanna Rowson,
Charlotte Temple (1791) |
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (1855) |
Sarah Orne Jewett,
Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) |
Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) |
Gertrude Stein, 3
Lives (1909) |
Anzia Yezierska,
Salome of the Tenements (1923) |
Willa Cather, The
Professor’s House (1925) |
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were
Watching God (1937) |
Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks
(1950) |
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
(1984, 1993) |
Julia Alvarez, In
the Time of the Butterflies (1995) |
Monique Truong, Book of Salt
(2003) |
A “Chick Lit” title of your own
choosing |
All texts are available at
the UTD Bookstore and at Off-Campus books.
All secondary readings are on
e-reserve at McDermott Library at:
http://utdallas.docutek.com/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=57
COURSE
REQUIREMENTS/EVALUATION CRITERIA:
*seminar attendance,
preparation and participation |
*class presentation
(including 1-page handout of 3-5 questions for discussion) |
*Final Project |
*prospectus (3 pages) and bibliography due Wed. 15 Mar. |
*final paper (20 pages) due Wed.
26 April |
|
Course Schedule:
Wed. 11 Jan. |
Intro. to
Course
|
Wed. 18 Jan. |
Rowson, Charlotte Temple
Cathy Davidson, chap. 4, “Literacy, Education, and the Reader”
in Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America
(New York: Oxford UP, 1986): 55-79 (e-reserve).
|
Wed. 25 Jan. |
Fern, Ruth Hall
Susan Coultrap-McQuin, chap.
1, “Why Try a Writing Career?: The Ambiguous Cultural Context for
Women Writers of the Mid-Nineteenth Century” in Doing Literary Business: American Women
Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina
P, 1990): 1-26 (e-reserve). |
Wed. 1 Feb. |
Jewett, Country
of the Pointed Firs
Richard
H. Brodhead, chap. 5, “Jewett, Regionalism, and Writing as Women’s Work” in
Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in
Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993): 142-76
(e-reserve). |
Wed. 8 Feb. |
Chopin,
The Awakening
Gayle Rubin, chap. 3,
" The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy of Sex'"
in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda
Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1997): 27-62 (e-reserve). |
Wed. 15 Feb. |
Stein, 3 Lives
Shari Benstock,
chap. 1, “Women of the Left Bank” in
Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (Austin: U of Texas P,
1986): 3-36 (e-reserve). |
Wed. 22 Feb. |
Yezierska, Salome
of the Tenements
Nan Enstad, chap.
2, “Ladies of Labor: Fashion, Fiction, and Working Women’s Culture” in
Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture,
and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (NY:
Columbia UP, 1999): 48-83 (e-reserve).
|
Wed. 1 Mar. |
Cather, The
Professor’s House
Nina Baym,
“Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction
Exclude Women Authors” in The New Feminist Criticism, ed. Elaine
Showalter (New York: Pantheon, 1985): 63-80 (e-reserve).
Sharon O'Brien,
chap. 10, “Becoming Noncanonical: The Case Against Willa Cather”
in Reading in America: Literature and Social History, ed.
Cathy N. Davidson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989): 240-58
(e-reserve).
|
Wed. 8 Mar. |
SPRING BREAK |
Wed. 15 Mar. |
Prospectus and Bibliography
Due
|
|
Hurston, Their Eyes Were
Watching God
Barbara Johnson, chap. 9, “Metaphor, Metonymy and Voice in Their Eyes
Were Watching God” in Black Literature and Literary Theory,
ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Routledge, 1984): 205-19
(e-reserve)
Alice Walker, “In
Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” in In Search of Our Mothers’
Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt, 1983): 231-43
(e-reserve). |
Wed. 22 Mar. |
Torres,
Women’s Barracks
Yvonne Keller, “’Was
It Right to Love Her Brother’s Wife So Passionately?’: Lesbian Pulp
Novels and U. S. Lesbian Identity, 1950-1965,” American Quarterly
57.2 (June 2005): 385-410 (e-reserve).
Lillian Faderman,
chap. 5, “’Naked Amazons and Queer Damozels’: World War II and Its
Aftermath,” in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian
Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Penguin, 1991): 118-38
(e-reserve). |
Wed. 29 Mar. |
Erdrich, Love Medicine
(1984, 1993)
E. Shelly Reid, “The
Stories We Tell: Louise Erdrich’s Identity Narratives,” MELUS
25. 3-4 (Autumn-Winter 2000): 65-86 (e-reserve).
|
Wed. 5 Apr. |
Alvarez,
In the Time of the Butterflies
Gloria Anzaldúa, “Preface” and chap.
2, “Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan”
(15-23) in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San
Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987) (e-reserve).
|
Wed. 12 Apr. |
Truong, Book of Salt
(2003)
David L. Eng, “Out
Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies,”
Social Text 52/53 (Autumn-Winter 1997): 31-52 (e-reserve). |
Wed. 19 Apr. |
A “Chick Lit” title of your own choosing
Janice Radway, chap.
4, "The Ideal Romance: The Promise of Patriarchy" in Reading the
Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: UNC P, 1991): 119-157 (e-reserve).
Angela McRobbie,
“Post-Feminism and Popular Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 4.3
(2004): 255-64 (e-reserve).
Anne E. Stein,
“Chick Lit’s Offspring: Genre that pays homage to the urban single life
sets off in new directions,” Chicago Tribune 20 July 2005, Sec.
8, 1-2 (e-reserve).
Alison Neumer,
“Author critical, conflicted when it comes to the fiction that made her
famous,” Chicago Tribune 20 July 2005, Sec. 8, 1-2 (e-reserve).
Felicia Lee,
“Pioneers of black chick lit are moving into midlife and taking their
characters with them,” Chicago Tribune 20 July 2005, Sec. 8, 3 (e-reserve).
|
Wed. 26 Apr. |
Final Papers due in my office by 4:00 p.m. |
Grad Guide to Reading
Final Paper Handout
ON CHICK LIT
Lecture Announcement
|