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CURRENT SEMESTER COURSES • SPRING 2005

English, FGSS, and Visual Studies 252: Sophomore Seminar: Late 20th Century Women Writers and Visual Cultures
Tuesday-Thursday 1:25-2:40
Shirley Samuels

Goldwin Smith 348 Office: GS 141
Office phone: 5-3994

Women writers and artists in late twentieth-century America explain nationalism by using their bodies. In doing so, they foreground transfigurations that can be extremely graphic. In addition to depicting bodily flows, fiction, poetry and visual culture show food and water as elements of ingestion and forced incorporation. For example, many narrators emphasize scenes of eating and refusing to eat. And both literature and film produced during the 20th century emphasize the relation of blood to concepts of race and nation. In addition to the primary texts listed, we will read accounts concerned with the role of race in having a gender and a nation. Paying particular attention to women who write on reproduction and race, we will read critics such as Hortense Spillers, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and Nawal al Sadawi. We will also ask questions such as, How does the famous foregrounding of nudity and female genitalia by women artists like Mary Kelly and Renee Cox relate to questions of food and consumption, especially in works like "The Dinner Party" or "The Last Supper"? How does Renee Cox change assumptions about the female nude when she photographs herself naked with her naked son in "Yo Mama?" What about Cindy Sherman’s use of medical paraphernalia to impersonate women’s bodies? In addition to looking at food and sexuality in visual representations of and by women, we will read selections on the topic from literary and non-fiction sources. The class will include art history faculty such as Professor Maria Fernandez and two visits to the Johnson Museum. Texts by Meena Alexander, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Edwidge Danticat, Oonya Kempadoo, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Bharati Mukherjee. Artists examined include Renee Cox, Mary Kelly, Shirin Neshat, Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker.

English 252: Late 20th Century Women and Visual Culture
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Course requirements: Two class presentations, three short essays.

Week 2:
Tuesday, February 1 Annie John
Thursday, February 3 ""

Week 3:
Tuesday, February 8 Woman Warrior
Thursday, February 10 Woman Warrior

Week 4:
Meet in Johnson Art Museum gallery space in basement
Tuesday, February 15 Renee Cox, Shirin Neshat (first essay due)
Thursday, February 17 Kara Walker

Week 5:
Tuesday, February 22 Jasmine
Thursday, February 24      "          

Week 6:
Tuesday, March 1 Buchi Emecheta
Thursday, March 3 Emecheta

Week 7:
Tuesday, March 8 Emecheta/ Nawal al Sadawi
Thursday, March 10 Nervous Conditions

Week 8:
Tuesday, March 15 Nervous Conditions
Thursday, March 17     "           "

**Spring break: March 19 – March 27**

Week 9:
Tuesday, March 29 Bluest Eye
Thursday, March 31 Bluest Eye

Week 10:
Tuesday, April 5 Bluest Eye
Thursday, April 7 Buxton Spice

Week 11:
Tuesday, April 12 Buxton Spice
Thursday, April 14    "       "      (third essay due)

Week 12:
Tuesday, April 19 Breath, Eyes, Memory
Thursday, April 21      "      "        "

Week 13:
Tuesday, April 26 Breath, Eyes, Memory
Thursday, April 28    "         "        "

Week 14:
Tuesday, May 3 student reports
Thursday, May 5    "        "

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English 665:   Race, Gender, and Crossing Water:  Narratives of Mobility & Escape in the 19th Century U.S.

This course sets out to explore a series of narratives that imagine movement through and across water in both actual and metaphorical terms. These narratives will include such classics as Beloved, Moby-Dick, and Huckleberry Finn. They will also include lesser read stories such as The Morgesons and Ten Nights in a Bar Room. As a class, we will attempt to ask questions about the different boundaries that water sets on considering geographies of race and gender. We will read theoretical texts as well as primary material from the nineteenth century. Students will be expected to make an oral presentation about such material as well as to write a long research paper for the class.

Week 1: Wednesday, January 26 Introduction, Walden

Week 2: Wednesday, February 2 Blanche of Brandywine excerpts; Sab

Week 3: Wednesday, February 9 Clotel; Whitman, "Out of the Cradle"

Week 4: Wednesday, February 16 Poe, "Fall of the House of Usher"; poetry

Week 5: Wednesday, February 23 Ten Nights in a Bar Room and What I Found There

Week 6: Wednesday, March 2 Harriet Martineau/Dickens (Jim Adams)

Week 7: Wednesday, March 9 The Morgesons (Amanda Claybaugh)

Week 8: Wednesday, March 16 Typee (Katherine Reagan)

**Spring break: March 19 – March 27**

Week 9: Wednesday, March 30 excerpt from Douglass, Narrative; begin Moby-Dick

Week 10: Wednesday, April 6 Moby-Dick

Week 11: Wednesday, April 13 end Moby-Dick; begin Huck Finn

Week 12: Wednesday, April 20 Huckleberry Finn

Week 13: Wednesday, April 27 Beloved

Week 14: Wednesday, May 4 Reports

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