Department of English

This course embraces "the multiplicity of female expressions and preoccupations" through a close reading of texts by women novelists publishing in the twentieth century. Authors are primarily American, including Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Amy Tan, but also include three Australians--Henry Handel Richardson, Franklin Miles, and Janette Turner Hospital--and two seminal French writers, Colette and Marguerite Duras. Through active class discussion we will consider issues pertaining to subject matter, narrative perspective and structure, and the author's understanding and representation of time (linear/historical/cursive versus cyclical/mythic/monumental time).

Requirements: class attendance and participation, a series of short papers (3-4 pages), and a final paper (8-10 pages).