Module description
Feminism is one of the central movements in modern culture and politics. It has redefined women’s lives and our societies and how we think about both. At the same time, modern culture has been described by many as a civilisation of the self, and numerous strands of writing have taken selfhood and its possibilities and discontents as their motivation.
In this course we will be bringing these two central facets of the modern literary world together. Over the ten weeks, we will examine a series of era-defining works of Anglo-American fiction, non-fiction and poetry, focusing on works that have combined daring formal experiment with a radical rethinking of female selfhood, and everything that touches on. In the process we will think through the development and complexity of genres like autofiction and confessional writing as they emerge. Feminism from the beginning has been an intersectional movement and throughout the course we will look at the intersections between feminism and race and ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Topics and questions addressed by the course will include: Feminists wish to promote and to understand female selfhood, but to what degree does a concern with female selfhood exist in tension with the collective ambitions of feminism, and with the broader attempts at social transformation that the modern world has brought about? If the best works of literature tend towards complexity and ambivalence, does this mean that they will be in tension with polemical aims and goals? Throughout, we will consider the works under discussion both in relation to their own times and in relation to ours, asking how we can continue to be changed by these passionate exercises in cultural self-transformation, and how we as readers bring the topics of our time to bear on these works.
Assessment details
Presentation (15%) and 3,500-word essay (85%)
Teaching pattern
One two-hour seminar, weekly