ENGLISH
399: WOMEN WRITERS—COMING OF AGE
Shawn Maurer
Fall 2004
Course
Description and Goals:
This
course examines how women writers and filmmakers from varying class, racial, ethnic, religious, and regional backgrounds
represent female adolescence. In
addition to a range of novels and films, we will read a selection of critical
essays to investigate the literary, cultural, and political contexts that shape
both the novels themselves and the situation of women writers. To help us better understand those contexts,
students will do outside research related to writers’ backgrounds and
historical situations. We will generate
the research topics together; reports will be both oral and written. Other assignments include weekly journal
entries and three papers.
Required
Texts
(please buy the editions specified):
Edith
Wharton, Ethan Frome
and Summer [1917] (Riverside)
Jo
Sinclair, The Changelings [1955] (Feminist Press)
Harper
Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird [1960]
(Warner) and film [1961]
Toni
Morrison, The Bluest Eye [1970] (Plume)
Maxine
Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior [1975] (Vintage)
Jeanette
Winterson,
Sandra
Cisneros, The House on
Danzy Senna,
Marjane Satrapi,
Course
Requirements:
Attendance and participation [10%]: This is a
discussion-based course, which depends upon a high level of student
involvement. Please come to class having
carefully read and thought about each day’s assignment. Because your participation plays such an
important part in this course, more than two unexcused absences will lower your final grade.
Oral presentation with
outline
[5%]: Topics for presentations might focus
on a specific writer (biographical information, a discussion of other books she
has written, contemporary responses to her work); her historical period (e.g., women’s
education in the early twentieth century for Wharton; immigration in the 1950s
for Sinclair and Morrison); or issues related to her background: Jewish
(Sinclair), southern (Lee), African-American (Morrison), Asian-American
(Kingston), West Indian (Kincaid), Latina (Cisneros), British (Winterson), bi-racial (Senna),
Iranian (Satrapi).
Your presentation should last no more than five minutes; you should also
include a hand-out for the class that contains both the presentation’s main
points and two discussion questions connecting your presentation to the work at
hand.
Papers:
Weekly journal entries [25%]: Entries (at
least 1-2 pp.) should combine personal reflection with critical analysis, and
are generally due on Thursday of each week.
They should be typed, and will be graded on a check, check-plus, or
check-minus basis.
Late Paper
Policy:
Unless you have a prior extension from me (please note:
extensions, for whatever reason, will not be granted on the day a paper is due)
or a dean’s letter, late papers will be accepted at my discretion. If I accept one, it will be marked down one
half-grade for each day it is late (for example, a “B” paper that is two days
late will receive a “C+”).
A Critical Note on Academic Honesty: I expect that any work
you submit for this class will be your own and will be prepared specifically
for this class. Whenever you make use of
outside sources (including web-sites,
articles, books, roommates) for language or ideas, you must acknowledge them in formal citations (that is,
footnotes or bibliography). Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism, a serious academic
offense that will result in your receiving a failing
grade for the assignment and may result in suspension or even expulsion from
the college. If you are confused about what needs to be cited and what does
not, please see me.
Note: All
essays available on ERes
Sept. 2 R Introduction
to the course
7 T Literary Mothers
·
Virginia
Woolf, from A
Room of One’s Own [1928]
·
Tillie
Olsen, from Silences [1978]
·
Alice
Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” [1974]
9
R Theoretical Perspectives on Coming of
Age
·
Susan Fraiman,
“Is There a Female Bildungsroman?”
·
Eve Tavor Bannet, “Rewriting the Social Text: The Female Bildungsroman in Eighteenth-Century
14
T Discussion of essays continued. Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party” [1922]
(ERes)
Selection of presentation topics
Journal entry #1 due
16 R No class: Screening of “Thirteen”
21
T Discussion of film.
Edith Wharton, Summer Chs.
1-10.
23 R Summer
Chs. 11-18.
“Beatrice Palmato” fragment.
Journal entry #2 due
28
T Jo Sinclair, The Changelings, Chs. 1-6.
“Between a Rock and Hard Place: Relations between
Black and Jewish Women”
30 R Changelings
7-14.
Journal entry #3 due
Oct. 5 T Changelings 15-20; Afterword.
7 R Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, Part I (1-11)
Angela
Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist”
Close reading essay due
Oct. 12 T Columbus Day—no class
Film screening: To Kill A Mockingbird, time and place tba
14 R To Kill A Mockingbird,
Part II (12-31) and film
Journal entry #4 due
19 T Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, beginning—p. 93.
21 R The Bluest Eye,
95-206 and Afterword
Journal entry #5 due
26 T Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, 1-110.
Mitsuye Yamada, “Invisibility
is an Unnatural Disaster”
28 R The Woman Warrior,
111-209.
Journal entry #6 due
Nov. 2 T
Kincaid,
“Girl” (ERes)
4 R Annie
John, Chs. 5-8.
Journal entry #7 due
9 T Sandra Cisneros, The House on
Cordelia Chavez-Candelaria, “The ‘Wild Zone’ Thesis”
11 R Mango Street, continued
Analytic essay due
16 T Jeanette Winterson,
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
beginning—p. 89
Bonnie Zimmerman, “What Has Never Been: An
Overview of Lesbian Feminist Criticism”
Final paper topic due
18 R
Journal entry #8 due
23 T Danzy Senna,
Thanksgiving
Break
30 T
Journal entry #9 due
Film Screening: Osama (date and
time tba)
Dec. 2 R Marjane Satrapi,
Journal entry #10 due
7 T
Final paper due