Women and Literature

8G:15  Women and Literature (Humanities)

Virgin.  Whore.  Angel.  Witch.  Good girl.  Femme fatale.  As both writers and heroines, women have carried and confronted these labels, and this course will explore the vast and various positions of women as depicted in literature and experienced in the world.  By taking into account myriad differences like class, race, time, place, and culture, we will consider women’s performance of gender and identity.  How do heroines fall into or break out of prescribed social roles as they fall in love, express their sexuality, assert their independence, or pursue careers? How do women reveal, craft, represent, and even invent identities through narrative?  By the end of this course, we will shatter the stereotypes above and appreciate the complexity of female experience that literature can reveal.

Specific Course Description and texts used in recent versions of this course

Texts that have been used in recent years for this course.  (This is a comprehensive list.  During any particular semester, only a few of these texts or similar ones will be used for each specific section of 8G:15)

 

POETRY

Classical:

• Sappho, Sappho: A New Translation, tr. Barnard. Univ. of California

Medieval:

• Bogin, ed., Women Troubadours, Norton
• Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, tr. Newman, Conell Univ. Pr.

18th/19th Century:

• Browning, Aurora Leigh. Norton
• Dickinson, Final Harvest, Little Brown & Co.
• Rossetti, Choice of Christina Rossetti's Verse. Faber and Faber
• Wheatley, Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Oxford University Press

2Oth Century:

• Broumas, Beginning With O, Yale Univ. Pr.
• Chrystos, Not Vanishing, Press Gang
• Cortez. Coagulations: New and Selected Poems. Thunder's Mouth
• Rich. Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose, Norton
• Rose, Half-Breed Chronicles, West End Press
• Sexton, Transformations (Houghton Mifflin)

FICTION

Medieval:

• de Pisan, Treasure of the City of Ladies, Penguin
• Hanning and Ferrante, ed., Lais of Marie de France, Labyrinth Pr.

Renaissance:

• Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron, Penguin

17th/18th Century:

• Burney, Evelina, NAL
• Lennox, Female Quixote, Oxford Univ. Pr.
• Wollstonecraft, Maria or the Wrongs of Woman, Norton

19th Century:

• Alcott, Little Women, NAL
• Austen, Pride and Prejudice, NAL
• Bronte, Wuthering Heights, NAL
• Child. Hobomok & Other Writings on Indians, Rutgers Univ. Pr.
• Eliot, Mill on the Floss, NAL
• Gaskell, Mary Barton, Penguin
• Harper, Iola, Beacon Press
• Jewett, Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories, Doubleday
• Phelps, Silent Partner bd. with Tenth of January, Feminist Press
• Schreiner, Story of an African Farm, Bantam
• Stoddard, The Morgesons & Other Writings. Published & Unpublished, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press
• Stowe,Uncle Tom's Cabin, NAL
• Wilson, Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, Random House

20th Century:

• Acker, Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press
• Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina, NAL
• Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Bantam
• Atwood, Alias Grace, Fawcett
• Bambara, Gorilla, My Love, Random House
• Butler, Parable of the Sower, Warner
• Cather, My Antonia, Random House
• Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (Seal Press Feminist Pub)
• Emecheta, Second Class Citizen, Brazillet
• Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments, With Recipes, Romances and
  Home Remedies, tr. Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen (Doubleday)
• Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe (Ballantine/Random House)
• Forrest, Murder at the Nightwood Bar, Naiad Pr.
• Gaitskill, Two Girls. Fat and Thin, Bantam
• Gilman, Herland: A Lost Feminist Utopian Novel, Pantheon
• Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Harper Collins
• Jhabvala, Heat and Dust, Simon and Schuster
• Kincaid, Annie John, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• LeGuin, Left Hand of Darkness, Ace Books
• Lessing, Golden Notebook, Bantam
• Marshall, Brown Girl. Brownstones, Feminist Press
• Morrison, The Bluest Eye, NAL (Plume)
• Mukherjee, Middleman. and Other Stories, Fawcett
• Naylor, Women of Brewster Place, Penguin
• O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Harcourt Brace
• 0lsen, Yonnondio: From The Thirties. Dolacorte
• Petry, The Street, Beacon Pr.
• Piercy, He, She and It (Fawcett)
• Robinson, Housekeeping, Bantam
• Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies, Ballantine
• West, All Passion Spent, Carrol and Graf
• Wharton, House of Mirth, Macmillan
• WooIf, Orlando, Harcourt Brace

DRAMA:

Medieval:

• Bonfante, tr., Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandershelm, Bolchazy-Carducci Pubs.

20th Century:

• Churchill, Vinegar Tom, in Plays One: Owners, Traps, Vinegar Tom, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud Nine (Routledge)
• Hansberry, Raisin in in the Sun, NAL
• Hellman, The Children's Hour (Dramatists Play Service) (publisher does NOT provide desk copies)
• Henley, Crimes of the Heart, (Dramatists Play Service) (publisher does NOT provide desk copies)
• Klein, Sargent, & Zinn, ed., Playbook: Seven Plays about Women and Work. Culture and Revolution. South End Press
• Norman, 'Night. Mother. Hill and Wang
• Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Macmillan
• Trambley, Sor Juana and Other Plays. Biling Rev-Pr.
• Wagner, Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Harper and Row
• Wasserstein, Heidi Chronicles, Dramatists Play

NON-FICTION

Medieval:

• Fox, ed., Hildegard of Bingen's Book of Divine Works with Letters & Songs. Boar & Co.
• Radice, tr., Letters of Abelgard and Heloise. Penguin
• Windeatt, tr., Book of Margery Kempe, Penguin

Renaissance:

• Rice, ed., Public Speaking of Queen Elizabeth. Selections from Her Official Addresses, AMS Press

17th/18th Century:

• Culley, ed., Day at a Time: the Diary Literature of American Women from 1764 to the Present, Feminist Press
• Montagu, Selected Letters of Lady Mary Wortlev Montagu. 1708-1762, Penguin

19th Century:

• Boyd, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison (Louisiana State University Pr.)
• Ferguson, ed., History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (Univ. of Michigan Pr.)
• Hamilton, ed., Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors: Nineteenth-Century Writing by Women on Women
  (Broadview Press)
• Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself, Harvard University Press
• Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Oxford Univ. Pr.)
• Nightingale, Cassandra, Feminist Press

20th Century:

• Gornick, Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (Beacon Press/Houghton Mifflin)
• Harrison, The Kiss: A Memoir (Avon)
• hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist. Thinking Black, South End Press
• Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (Harper Collins)
• Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted (Random House)
• King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady (St. Martin's Pr.)
• Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Pr.
• Mandela. Part of My Soul Went With Him, Norton
• Mankiller, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, St. Martin's Press
• Moraga, Loving in the War Years. South End Press
• Rosen and Davidson, ed., Maimie Papers, Feminist Press
• El-Saadawi, Memoirs from the Women's Prison, Univ. of California Press
• Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography, L. Hill Books
• Walker, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. Harcourt Brace
• Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Harcourt Brace)

GENERAL ANTHOLOGIES

• Bell-Scott, ed., Life Notes: Personal Writings Bv Contemporary Black Women, Norton
• Breen, ed., Victorian Women Poets, C.E. Tuttle (Everyman)
• Breen, ed., Women Romantic Poets, C. E. Tuttle (Everyman)
• Conway. ed., Written by Herself, Random House
• deZapata, ed., Short Stories by Latin American Women: The Magic and The Real, Arte Publico Pr.
• Gilbert and Gubar. ed., Norton Anthologv of Literature by Women. 2nd edition (contains Sula, Jane Eyre, The Awakening, The Yellow Wallpaper. and poetry by women of all periods ). Norton
• P. Gunn Allen. Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales & Contemporary Writing by Native American Women, Fawcett
• Hamer and Hamer, ed., Centers of the Self: Short Stories bv Black American Women from the 19th Century to the Present., Mill and Wang
• Moraga and Anzaldua, ed., This Bridge Called Mv Back: Writing's by Radical Women of Color, Kitchen Table Pr.
• Nestle and Holoch, ed., Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction, NAL (Plume)
• Silvera, ed., A Piece of My Heart: Lesbian of Color Anthology, Inland Books
• Smith, ed., Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Kitchen Table Pr.
• Wilson, ed., Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, Univ. of Georgia Pr.

The following are recommended texts that you might petition.

• Adnan, Sitt Marie-Rose (Post Apollo Pr.)
• Brantenberg, What Comes Naturally (Salem House Pub.)
• Brown, Terrible Girls (City Lights)
• Davis, Autobiography of Angela Davis (Int. Pubs. Co.)
• Ferguson, First Feminists: British Women Writers, 1578-1799 (Indiana Univ. Pr.)
• Fox, Servant's Tale (Penguin)
• Grafton, A is for Alibi (Bantam)
• Grand, Heavenly Twins (Univ. of Michigan Pr.)
• Hall, Well of Loneliness (Doubleday)
• Hogan, Seeing Through the Sun (Univ. of Massachusetts Pr.)
• Larsen, Quicksand and Passing (Rutgers Univ. Pr.)
• Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (Warner)
• Lorde, Cancer Journals (Aunt Lute)
• Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Crossing Press)
• McMillan, Waiting to Exhale (Pocket Books)
• Munro, Lives of Girls and Women (NAL)
• Nwapa, Idu (Heinemann)
• Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton)
• Rodereda, Time of the Doves (Graywolf)
• Tan, Joy Luck Club (Ivy Books/Random House)
• Walker, Meridian (Pocket Books)
• Winterson, Written on the Body (Random House)