CIEE Global Institute London Course name: British Women s Literature Course number: LITT 3002 LNEN Programs offering course: London Open Campus (Literature and Culture Track) Language of instruction: English U.S. semester credits: 3 Contact hours: 45 Term: Spring 2018 Course Description This class considers how women writers have been constrained by--but have also exploited--literary traditions. It traces the indexes of conformity and subversion in their writing by placing them in contexts of prevailing discourses on femininity. Students will examine constructions of femininity in the visual arts and conduct writings. Key texts include fiction by Eliza Haywood, Mary Wollstonecroft, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, poetry by Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and labouring women poets such as Mary Leapor and Ann Yearsley, and the 'Turkish Embassy' letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Students will visit a selection of London s centers for the written word, including the Sir John Ritblat Gallery at the British Library and the Women s Library at the London Metropolitan University. Learning Objectives This course will enable students to: Learn about the key authors, styles, and genres of British women s writing Trace the historical development of British women in literature See how representations of women evolved in writing over the centuries Critically evaluate the development of the role of the woman during the period Encourage comparative thinking about literary and creative processes across cultural boundaries. 1
Course Prerequisites None. An introductory-level literature, critical theory, or gender and cultural studies course is helpful but not required. Methods of Instruction The methodology of our course will be informed by critical theory, gender studies and literature. Through class discussions and debates, critical readings of key primary and secondary texts, and students written reactions, the students will enhance their ability to read approaches to critical theory and literary deconstruction. Engaged student participation is crucial and productive controversy will be encouraged. As excursions we will visit a selection from the numerous literary museums in London. Assessment and Final Grade Presentation 20% Book Review 20% Midterm Essay 20% Final Essay 20% Participation: 20% Course Requirements Class activities and essays Debates, discussions, text and audiovisual analysis, social dynamics these activities will be both individual and collective. They will be assessed based on the student s ability to compose texts and reflect on their personal progress in the construction and reflection of those texts. The essays (in the function of midterm and final) should contain key points of what students have learned and what they think are the most important insights. A case story will help to formulate an own opinion that should be justified by own arguments. 2
Book Review Students should critically engage with themes and arguments within the text, using theories covered during the class. Final presentation Each student should present their final project in class, building on the resources the professor will have pointed to in the course. The project should include a current case study or example that shows how gender, race, sexuality and popular culture intersect. Reflecting on what students have learned, the presentation should give a possible look in the future and show how these aspects could develop. Participation As part of your work in this course, students should demonstrate learning beyond the submission of written assignments or presentations. As such, all students receive grades based upon participation. Participation is valued as meaningful contribution in the digital and tangible classroom, utilising the resources and materials presented to students as part of the course. Students receive grades based upon their contributions both in the classroom and in the Canvas course. Meaningful contribution requires students to be prepared, as directed by the Instructor, in advance of each class session. Students must clearly demonstrate they have engaged with the materials where directed. This includes valued or informed engagement in, for example, small group discussions, online discussion boards, peer-to-peer feedback (after presentations), interaction with guest speakers, and attentiveness on co-curricular and outside-of-classroom activities. Attendance Policy Regular class attendance is required throughout the program, and all unexcused absences will result in a lower participation grade for any affected CIEE course. Due to the intensive schedules for Open Campus and Short Term programs, unexcused absences that constitute more than 10% of the total course sessions will also result in a lower final grade. Students who transfer from one CIEE class to another during the add/drop period will not be considered absent from the first session(s) of their new class, provided they were 3
marked present for the first session(s) of their original class. Otherwise, the absence(s) from the original class carry over to the new class and count against the grade in that class. For CIEE classes, excessively tardy (over 15 minutes late) students must be marked absent. Attendance policies also apply to any required co-curricular class excursion or event, as well as to Internship, Service Learning, or required field placement. Students who miss class for personal travel will be marked as absent and unexcused. No makeup or re-sit opportunity will be provided. An absence in a CIEE course will only be considered excused if: a doctor s note is provided a CIEE staff member verifies that the student was too ill to attend class satisfactory evidence is provided of a family emergency Attendance policies also apply to any required class excursion, with the exception that some class excursions cannot accommodate any tardiness, and students risk being marked as absent if they fail to be present at the appointed time. Unexcused absences will lead to the following penalties: Percentage of Total Course Hours Missed Equivalent Number of Open Campus Semester classes Minimum Penalty Up to 10% 1 No academic penalty 10 20% 2 Reduction of final grade More than 20% 3 content classes, or 4 language classes Automatic course failure, and possible expulsion Weekly Schedule NOTE: this schedule is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor to take advantage of current experiential learning opportunities. Week 1 Orientation Overview of course and introduction to key authors and concepts. How has the role of women developed over time in British literature? What is today s snapshot of women in literature? 4
Readings: C.M. Meale, 2001; C. Batt, 2001; C.A. Lees & G.R. Overing, 2001 Week 2 The Classics This week examines the role of women writers in the Victorian reception of ancient Greece and Rome, showing that they had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previously been acknowledged. The restrictions that applied to women's access to classical learning liberated them from the repressive and sometimes alienating effects of a traditional classical education. Women writers' reworkings of classical texts serve a variety of purposes: to validate women's claims to authorship, to demand access to education, to highlight feminist issues through the heroines of ancient tragedy, to repudiate the warrior ethos of ancient epic. Readings: Hurst, 2008, chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 Week 3 The Brontë Sisters The extraordinary creativity of the Brontë sisters, who between them wrote some of the most enduring fiction in the English language, continues to fascinate and intrigue modern readers. The tragedy of their early deaths adds poignancy to their novels, and in the popular imagination they have become mythic figures. And yet, as this week shows, they were fully engaged with the world around them, and their writing, from the juvenilia to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, reflects the preoccupations of the age in which they lived. Their novels, which so shocked their contemporaries, address the burning issues of the day: class, gender, race, religion, and mental disorders. As well as examining these connections, this week also shows how film and other media have reinterpreted the novels for the twenty-first century. Readings: Ingham, 2008, Introduction; Alexander and Smith, 2006; Glen, 2004, chapters 1, 2, and 5 Week 4 Victorian Women 5
This week considers the ways in which women writers used the powerful positions of author and editor to perform conventions of gender and genre in the Victorian period. It examines Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, and Florence Marryat's magazines (Belgravia, Argosy, and London Society respectively) alongside their sensation fiction to explore the mutually influential strategies of authorship and editorship. Readings: Palmer, 2011, chapters 2, 3, and 4 Midterm essay due Week 5 Between the Wars: Early to Mid-20 th Century Women s Writing The historical period from 1920 to 1945 is coterminous with the great achievements of literary Modernism, dating approximately from the annus mirabilis of 1922, which saw T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses, to the publication of Joyce's Finnegans Wake at the apex of 'high Modernism' in 1939. However, the majority of women whose work is discussed this week do not fit into a recognized version of the modernist canon. Their complex and often troubled relationship to modernity as readers, consumers, and travellers at home and abroad requires new critical frameworks in which to discuss their writing as well as a revision of the territory that has been staked out as the preserve of Modernism by critical theory and practice. Topics range from the feminine middlebrow novel to Virginia Woolf's modernist aesthetics, from women's literary journalism to best-selling crime fiction, from West End drama to the literature of Scotland, Ireland and Wales and poetry in small magazines. Readings: M. Joannou, 2012; Goldman, 2012; Kime Scott, 2012 Final essay due Week 6 The Impact: Summary and Discussion Bringing together all the themes previously explored, this week presents an overview of the context and impact of British women s writing and the development of feminist literary theory. 6
Readings: Eagleton, 2010. Readings Final presentations C.A. Lees & G.R. Overing. 2001. Women and the Origins of English Literature, in The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500 Volume One, Edited by Liz Herbert McAvoy, Diane Watt C. Batt. 2001. The French of the English and Early British Women's Literary Culture, in The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500 Volume One, Edited by Liz Herbert McAvoy, Diane Watt C.M. Meale. 2001. Women and their Manuscripts, in The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500 Volume One, Edited by Liz Herbert McAvoy, Diane Watt Beth Palmer. 2011. Women's Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture: Sensational Strategies Isobel Hurst. 2008. Victorian Women Writers and the Classics: The Feminine of Homer M. Joannou. 2012. Introduction: Modernism, The Middlebrow and Modernity in Context; in The History of British Women's Writing, 1920-1945 Volume Eight. Edited by Maroula Joannou J. Goldman. 2012. Virginia Woolf and the Aesthetics of Modernism; in The History of British Women's Writing, 1920-1945 Volume Eight. Edited by Maroula Joannou B. Kime Scott. 2012. Gender in Modernism; in The History of British Women's Writing, 1920-1945 Volume Eight. Edited by Maroula Joannou Patricia Ingham. 2008. The Brontës (Authors in Context) 7
Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith. 2006. The Oxford Companion to the Brontës Heather Glen. 2004. Charlotte Brontë: The Imagination in HistoryMary Eagleton. 2010. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. 8