English 347-B: Studies in American Literature - Special Topic: Early American Women Writers

This course offers an introduction to literature by American women from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Over the fourteen weeks of the course, we'll ask a series of questions: How have female authors deployed literature to advocate for civil rights, combat sexism, and give artistic shape to their varied lived experiences? How have writers exploited the possibilities of their preferred literary genres to challenge artistic, social, and political conventions? At the same time, what constraints have women faced in their attempts to make their voices heard? How has literary history privileged and excluded certain kinds of writing by women and why? Finally, how have writers navigated intersectional identities of gender, race, and sexuality? Readings will cover a range of genres and styles, from poetry and short stories to essays and novels, sentimentality to realism, gothic ghost stories to utopian fiction, as we explore the developing tradition of American women's writing. The authors treated will change regularly though will likely include writers such as Hannah Webster Foster, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Fanny Fern, Margaret Fuller, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Jacobs, Kate Chopin, Pauline Hopkins, Emma Lazarus, Sui Sin Far, Marianne Moore, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.