Department of English

This course will look at the concept and construction of Southern womanhood in all its incarnations, from "belle" to "mammy" to "poor white trash" as well as more realistic and contemporary roles. We'll look at both Southern women writers and classic Southern female characters. Looking at literature, film, and essays, we will examine questions of how female identity has been differently constrained and structured in the American South, and why myths of Southern womanhood have been so persistent, as well as more general questions such as genre definitions in regional writing. Authors will include Wm. Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Dorothy Allison and Shirley Abbott. We will also examine the film *Gone With the Wind* as cultural phenomenon and source of tenacious stereotypes.