| DATE |
ASSIGNMENT |
RESOURCES |
| M
9/8 |
INTRODUCTION:
Women’s
rights and women’s writinG REQUIRED READING:
OPTIONAL READING:
- Judith Fetterley, "Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps," in Provisions, 203-209 (reserve)
- Stanton, The Concise History of Woman Suffrage,
pp.xvii-370 (reserve)
|
|
| M
9/15 |
Tears, love, and Christian submission REQUIRED READING:
- Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850)
- Ann Douglas, "The Legacy of American Victorianism: The Meaning of
Little Eva," in The Feminization of American Culture, 3-13 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
|
|
|
W
9/17 |
* DUE: Greeting message
posted to on-line discussion under heading "meet the scribbling women" |
|
|
M 9/22 |
Women's work REQUIRED READING:
- Benita Eisler, ed. The Lowell Offering
(1840-45)
- Alcott, excerpts from
Work: A Story of Experience (1873),
chapters 1-6 and 20 (in
Alternative Alcott, 239-349)
- Alcott, "How I Went out to Service" (1874) (in Alternative Alcott,
351-363)
- Nancy F. Cott, "Domesticity," in The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's
Sphere" in New England, 63-100 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
- Cathy N. Davidson, "Preface:
No More Separate Spheres!" American Literature 70.3 (September
1998): 443-463. (Note: This link may not work from
computers outside of the Columbia network.)
- Note also that the
issue
of American Literature to which Davidson's essay serves as preface may be of
interest to you, either now or later in the semester.
|
|
| M
9/29 |
Writing as work REQUIRED READING:
- Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis Parton),
Ruth Hall (1855)
- Hawthorne on women writers and Fanny Fern (handout)
- Susan Coultrap-McQuin, "Gentlemen and Ladies: Ideals and Economics
in the Literary Marketplace," in Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers
in the Nineteenth Century, 27-48
OPTIONAL READING:
- Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar,
"Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship," in Feminisms,
289-300 (reserve)
|
Fanny
Fern at PAL |
|
F 10/3 |
* DUE: ONE-PARAGRAPH THESIS TOPIC PROPOSAL
HANDED IN TO MY MAILBOX IN BARNARD 417 AND POSTED TO THE ON-LINE DISCUSSION
UNDER THE HEADING “TENTATIVE THESIS TOPICS” |
|
|
M 10/6 |
YOM KIPPUR--NO CLASS
(conferences this week with Professor Gordis) |
| M
10/13 |
Reform as women's work REQUIRED READING:
OPTIONAL READING:
- Jane Tompkins, "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the
Politics of Literary History," in the Norton
Critical Edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 501-522. (For those
who have other editions of the novel, the essay is also reprinted
in Feminisms, ed. Warhol and Herndl, 20-39,
on reserve.)
- Lauren Berlant,
"Poor
Eliza," American Literature 70.3 (September 1998): 635-668.
|
|
|
W 10/15 |
*DUE: POST
INFORMATION ABOUT A PROMISING SOURCE OR RESEARCH TOOL TO THE ON-LINE
DISCUSSION, UNDER THE HEADING "RESEARCH TIPS" |
|
| F
10/17 |
*ANNOTATED PRELIMINARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE |
|
| M
10/21 |
Women and slavery REQUIRED READING:
- Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in
the Life of a Slave Girl (1861); see also letters pp. 253-9,
266-7 of the Harvard University Press enlarged edition.
- Hazel V. Carby, "Slave and Mistress: Ideologies of Womanhood under
Slavery," in Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman
Novelist, 20-39 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
- Hazel V. Carby, "‘Hear My Voice, Ye Careless Daughters’:
Narratives of Slave and Free Women before Emancipation," in Reconstructing
Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist, 40-61 (reserve)
- Julie A. Matthaei, "Women's Work and the Sexual Division of Labor
Under Slavery," in An Economic History of Women in America, 74-97 (reserve)
- Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig; Or, Sketches from
the Life of a Free Black (reserve)
- Bruce Mills,
"Lydia Maria Child and the Endings to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl," American Literature 64.2 (June 1992):
255-72.
- Martha J. Cutter, "Dismantling
'The Master's House': Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl," Callaloo 19.1 (Winter 1996): 209-25.
|
|
| M
10/27 |
Emancipation
REQUIRED READING:
- Frances E. W. Harper,
Iola Leroy (1893)
- Frances Smith Foster, Introduction, in Iola Leroy (xxvii-xxxix)
OPTIONAL READING:
|
|
|
M 11/3 |
ACADEMIC HOLIDAY--NO CLASS
(conferences this week with Professor Gordis) |
|
Th 11/6 |
*THESIS PROSPECTUS DUE |
|
|
M 11/10 |
"Little Women" become "Good
Wives"
REQUIRED READING:
OPTIONAL READING:
- Karen Halttunen, "Disguises, Masks, and Parlor Theatricals: The
Decline of Sentimental Culture in the 1850s," in Confidence Men and Painted Women:
A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870, 153-190 (reserve)
- Sheryl A. Englund,
"Reading
the Author in Little Women: A Biography of a Book," American
Transcendental Quarterly: 12.3m (September 1998): 199-219.
- Nina Auerbach, "Waiting Together: Two Families," in Communities
of Women: An Idea in Fiction, 33-73 (reserve)
*POSSIBLE OPTIONAL SCREENING OF "LITTLE WOMEN" (1933)
at 7:30 pm in Barnard 409 |
|
|
M 11/17 |
Art
and marriage
REQUIRED READING:
- Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-1911), The Story of Avis (1877)
- Susan Stanford Friedman, "Creativity and the Childbirth
Metaphor," in Feminisms,
ed. Warhol and Herndl 371-396 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
- Julia Kristeva, "Women's Time," in Feminisms, 443-462.
- Susan Coultrap-McQuin, "The Demise of Feminine Strength: The Career
of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward)," in Doing Literary Business: American Women
Writers in the Nineteenth Century, 167-192 (reserve)
*OPTIONAL SCREENING OF "LITTLE WOMEN" (1994)
7:30 pm in Barnard 409 * WORKING DRAFT DUE |
|
| M
11/24 |
Seduction
and power
REQUIRED READING:
- Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, The Morgesons (1862)
- Karen Lystra, "Secrecy, Sin, and Sexual Enticement: The
Integration of Public and Private Life Worlds," in Searching
the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America,
88-120 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
- Susan K. Harris, "Projection the
'I'/Conoclast: First-Person Narration in The Morgesons," in 19th-Century
American Women's Novels: Interpretive Strategies, 152-170 (reserve)
|
|
| M
12/1 |
"She dealt her pretty
words like Blades--"
REQUIRED READING:
- Emily Dickinson, Poems 126, 187, 249, 271, 277, 280, 288, 313, 315, 324,
326, 327, 338, 351, 436, 441, 443, 444, 448, 486, 501, 512, 524, 569, 578, 613, 621, 632,
636, 642, 652, 657, 670, 728, 745, 747, 754, 1072, 1090, 1129, 1182, 1261, 1317, 1545,
1651, 1657, 1670 (Note: These numbers refer to the Thomas Johnson edition of The
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. If you've got another edition, spend a few minutes
at the reserve room checking first lines.)
- Cristanne Miller,"Names and Verbs: Influences on the Poet's
Language," in Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar 131-159 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
- Selections from Cristanne Miller, "A Grammar," in Emily
Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar, 20-112 (Choose the sections that seem useful to you.)
(reserve)
- Karen Sánchez-Eppler, "At Home in the Body: The Internal Politics
of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry," in Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and
the Politics of the Body, 105-131.
- Domhall Mitchell,
"Revising
the Script: Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts," American Literature 70.4
(December 1998): 705-37.
- Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "A Woman--White: Emily
Dickinson's Yarn of Pearl," in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, 581-650 (reserve)
|
|
| F
12/5 |
*THESIS DUE |
|
| M
12/8 |
Constraint and triumph
REQUIRED READING:
- Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "On the Walpole Road," "The
Revolt of 'Mother,'" "A Poetess," "A Village Singer," "A
Gala Dress," in Selected Stories of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman;
"Old Woman Magoun" (online
or handout)
- Delores Hayden, "The Grand Domestic Revolution," in The
Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes,
Neighborhoods, and Cities, 1-29 (reserve)
OPTIONAL READING:
* PRESENTATION OF THESIS
& CELEBRATION! |
|