Writing Gender/Genre et écriture

This seminar aims at stimulating new readings of American literature through the lens of theories that have developed in the field of gender and women’s studies over the last decades. The students will be introduced to a wide array of critical perspectives, ranging from early advocates of gynocriticism and theoreticians of écriture féminine to champions of intersectionality, queer studies, masculinity studies, and ecofeminism. Special attention will be paid to the development of Black and Chicana feminist discourse and to their contribution to gender politics. Such key concepts as revision, mestizaje, silence, queering, performance, empowerment, resistance, embodiment, margin and center will be used to foster a revaluation of certain canonical or lesser-known texts and, sometimes, to uncover hidden layers of meaning beneath more conventional readings.

The literary texts included will be drawn from different periods and from a variety of genres (novel, short fiction, poetry). Extracts from works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Carmen Tafolla, Paula Gunn Allen, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many more will be analysed and discussed in class but the students are also invited to offer reading suggestions of their own if they wish to do so.

This seminar will be conducted in French and in English.

The final grade for regular students (régime assidu) will be based upon class participation (20% of the grade), oral presentations and/or written assignments (depending on the number of students in this seminar) throughout the semester (80% of the grade).

Students who benefit from régime spécial and cannot attend the seminar for various reasons must hand in their home assignments (50% of the grade) by the end of the semester before sitting for an oral exam (50% of the grade) in early January.

Feel free to ask me questions by sending an email to stephanie.durrans @ u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr (stephanie.durrans @ u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr)

All the students who have signed up for this seminar must contact me by email in early September to register on my mailing list.

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