NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS
Professor Lisa Gordis Office: Barnard Hall 408D Office phone: 854-2114 Mailbox: Barnard Hall 417 |
Office hours:
Wednesdays 1:15-2:45 and by appointment |
This seminar considers a variety of texts by nineteenth-century American women. Many of these texts were tremendously popular in the nineteenth century, but until quite recently have been largely ignored by twentieth-century critics. In the past three decades, however, critics have rediscovered these texts, and have considered them from a wide range of critical perspectives. As we examine the texts of the "dd mob of scribbling women," we'll sample a range of critical approaches as well, testing and evaluating critical paradigms as we proceed. The issues that we'll consider include domesticity and women's sphere, domestic space and women's time, political action and suffrage, the economics of writing and publishing, sentimentality and anger, and the problem of evaluating literary merit.