Department of English

In this course we will focus on literary representations of the "new woman," a construction that emerged in the late 19th century "woman's era" and that developed alongside of and in response to first-wave American feminisms. We will read a few overtly political texts (selections from the writings of Anna Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, Susan Anthony, Margaret Sanger); the remainder of our time will be devoted to mapping the variously-constructed or -suggested intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and nationality through a body of primarily woman-authored fictions. Writers will likely include Chopin, Hopkins, Wharton, Harper, Dreiser, Gilman, Larsen, Cather, Hurston, among others.