Topics in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Gender Reconstruction--Manhood and Womanhood after the Civil War
Nancy Bentley profile
TR 10:30-12
In The Bostonians, Henry James rewrote the War between the States as a
war between the sexes. In doing so, he recognized links between
gender and national identities, intersections that scholars have
recently confirmed and explored. This course will examine some of
those links as they are represented in literature written during U.S.
Reconstruction and its aftermath. Our readings, primarily novels and
stories, place constructs of gender in a context of historical
reconstructions. North and South were reconciled around a policy of
Jim Crow segregation; we will ask how an American fiction of "separate
but equal" citizenship was reproduced and contested in specific
American fictions, especially in portraits of African American manhood
and womanhood, and in stories of the realations between white men and
women. We will explore the revival of interest in militarism and
military literature during the 1880s and 1890s and the implications
for American manhood. Another area of special emphasis will be the
way new roles for women were represented in fictions of the
marketplace. Readings will include works by Kate Chopin, Henry James,
Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Rebecca Harding Davis, Stephen Crane,
Pauline Hopkins, Sui Sin Far, Owen Wister, Edith Wharton, W.E.B. Du
Bois, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser.
updated 2006-10-05
