Women's Writing II
Class Information
Instructor: Hughes, William
Time: MWF 12:10-1:00
Description
This class is about sexuality, gender, and race in British women?s writing in the 19th century. The 19th century witnessed an explosion of women?s writing in the same moment as critical questions about race, gender, and sexuality were being addressed. We will read texts by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bront?, Mary Seacole, Olive Schreiner, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper). As we read and write, we will be particularly interested in thinking about how these texts and writers address sexuality, gender, and race in terms of one another, that is, intersectionally. In order to understand gender in the 19th century, this class will assert that we need to think about the relationships between gender and race as well as gender and sexuality. Furthermore, the 19th century, and particularly the Victorian period, is often thought of in terms of repressed sexuality, but we will consider Michel Foucault?s assertion that the 19th century brought about a proliferation of discourses of sexuality, and we will think about these discourses of sexuality in terms of their relationship to gender, race, and literary form.
Grading
In-Class Writing
Reading Quizzes
Midterm Paper
Final paper
Final Exam
Texts
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Jane Eyre , Charlotte Bront
The Story of an African Farm, Olive Schreiner
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Mary Seacole
Poems, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poems, Christina Rossetti
Poems, Michael Field