Syllabus
Unit One
What is gender? A familiarisation of some of the ideas and debates surrounding the concept of gender. A consideration of the work and impact of the "First Wave" of feminist criticism, particularly Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. Other supplementary texts will be used.
TOPICS: What is gender? Introduction to general concepts - Virginia Woolf - A Room of One’s Own and Professions for Women - Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
Unit Two
Gender and representation. Consideration will be given to representations of gender in popular culture (media, advertising etc.) TOPICS: Gender and language - Semiology - signs and meanings, Gender and representation - Gender and Education
Unit Three
Gender and literature. Part of the achievement of feminist literary criticism has been to question the coherence of the traditional canon as well as to develop new approaches to literary interpretation. An overview of trends in feminist literary theory will aid our interpretations of texts
TOPICS: Women writers and the literary canon - Mothers of the Novel - Feminist Literary Criticism
Course Requirements: Full attendance, an oral presentation at one of the seminars, the production of a paper based on your own research at the end of term. The course is seminar based and your full participation in debates will be encouraged.
Annotation
The primary aim of this course is to enable students to study literature ? fiction, poetry and drama - from a gendered perspective and to explore the latest theoretical developments in the field of women?s writing and literary/cultural Gender
Studies. Emphasis is on the use of gender as a category of analysis through which to examine literary characters, styles, and techniques, as well as the circumstances and ideology of authors, readers, and the literary canon. The focus will be on literature of the 19th and early 20th century and the course will comprise: a general historical overview of the topic of gender and literature, including the perspectives of some of the most important theoreticians in this area (Showalter, Moi), a gender perspective on the traditional literary canon (Bronte?s Jane Eyre, Hardy?s Tess etc.) and gender aspects in the literature of authors in the first half of the twentieth century, including Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf.