WGS 376/LIT 316
Global Women Writers
Summer 2007
Introduction
Global Women Writers introduces students to literature that is not represented in the Western canon. The politics of gender and culture are foundational to the course, and theoretical viewpoints--postcolonial, feminist, and transnational--are integrated into the readings, lecture, and class discussion. The course therefore challenges students to address unfamiliar, complex, and intellectually rigorous debates and concepts.
Learning Goals
WGS 376/LIT 316 reflects the core values of WGS and English in their commitment to cross-cultural explorations, leading to a greater understanding of the possibilities, limitations, and challenges of cross-cultural encounters and a greater respect for the cultural and intellectual diversity of the world. In focusing on women writers, students will gain a greater awareness of underrepresented voices and the politics of self-representation. In focusing on several structures of power--for example, those structured upon gender and nation--students will be challenged to break free of reductive representations of "the Other" and "the foreign" as well as stereotypes of gender roles. Furthermore, in addressing concepts such as "patriarchy" and "colonialism," students will build an interdisciplinary vocabulary, conceptual framework, and multi-disciplinary methodology.
This course incorporates the following WGS program learning goals:
- Analyze historical and contemporary systems of privilege and oppression, with special attention to the ways gender intersects with race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and nationality
- Understand how all fields of knowledge are partial, situated, and have a political nature
- Apply feminist theories and current research to transcultural and transnational analysis of gender, systemic oppression, and women's resistance and agency
This course incorporates the following English Department learning goals:
- Apply linguistic, literary, rhetorical, and cultural theory to texts and their contexts in order to elucidate complex issues and to suggest additional avenues of critical inquiry
- Bring their understanding of language to bear on their discussions of writing, whether literary or otherwise
- Recognize the impact of cultural environments upon language, respecting and understanding language diversity
Summer '07: The Summer Reading Version
To provide a route for our explorations this summer, I have chosen books recommended to me as "delicious" reads--books the reader might easily get lost in as time flies by. You'll find suspense, adventure, humor, tragedy, tenderness, passion, and, yes, sex and violence between the covers of these books. They also weave together as a kind of traveling history: we start with a novel by the great science fiction writer Octavia Butler, in which a contemporary young American woman time-travels to meet her enslaved African ancestor. We'll then meet another culturally and geographically displaced woman, the witch Tituba as reimagined by Caribbean author M. Conde, and find out how she survives the witch scourge in colonial Salem, Massachusetts. From 17 th century New England, we'll head south and forward in time, and read journalist/novelist Laura Restrepo's account of a community of prostitutes serving oilfield workers in 20th century Colombia. We leave the Western Hemisphere to be enchanted by Fatima Mernissi's stories about growing up in a harem in Morocco. Finally, we'll go to contemporary Delhi for a romp with Abha Dawesar's brainy bisexual heroine--who will test everything we know by then about theory.
Required Readings
Butler, Octavia. Kindred .
Condee, M. I Tituba Black Witch of Salem .
Restrepo, Laura. The Dark Bride. 2001. ISBN 0-06-008895-8
Mernissi, Fatima. Dreams of Trespass. 1994. ISBN 0-201-48937-6
Dawesar, Abha. Babyji. 2005. ISBN 1-4000-3456-6
Hopps, M.L. Dictionary of Theoretical Terms [link] http://mlhopps.faculty.tcnj.edu/GWWTermsDict.htm
Required readings on SOCS:
Hall, Donald. "Feminist Analysis" in Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder and You-me Park. "Postcolonial Feminism/Postcolonialism and Feminism" from Postcolonial Studies. Schwarz. Blackwell.