aml3283a - Contemporary American Women's Fiction
Dr. Lisa Logan

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Course Description and Method of Instruction:

This course examines the ways that novels and short stories by several contemporary American women writers define identity from diverse woman-centered and feminist perspectives, including ecofeminism, black feminist or womanist theory, and poststructuralist feminism. If these terms are new to you, that's fine, as course materials and our own learning processes will clarify them. We will consider how the course texts re-imagine the relationships among identity, family, friendship, motherhood, beauty, voice, history, tradition, spirituality, home, and the "American Dream." We will also explore how definitions and/or revisions of identity grow out of specific and often marginalized cultural positions in addition to gender, i.e. race, ethnicity, class, age, and sexuality. Finally, we will ask how these texts challenge cultural boundaries of feminine identity and "fiction."

These ideas are, of course, just a start. Our conversations with these texts and each other, and the perspectives that each of you brings, will take the course in unanticipated yet welcome directions. In class, I expect all of us to voice our ideas, puzzles, and concerns, and I encourage you to discuss your responses with others (including me) both in and out of class. I remind you that the learning process demands that we all take responsibility and risks, and that each of us is an important part of the intellectual community we create. There will, of course, be times when you prefer silence to speech, and I expect us to examine these silences in the context of the issues we face. We will encounter texts and ideas that challenge us with their difficulty and difference, and I suggest that these challenges are opportunities for new conversations that will allow our thinking to change and grow. I ask that you think and respond--not just react--honestly and thoughtfully and with a critical awareness of your own biases. Of course, I expect that all of us will carefully read the assigned texts and be physically and mentally present for each class.

Required Text (in order of study):

Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing

Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven

Linda Hogan, Power: A Novel

Elizabeth Graver, Unravelling

Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

Toni Morrison, Paradise

Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies

Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

+ one text for final book review (Ex.: Donna Gershten, Kissing the Virgin's Mouth)

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