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This course covers a range of well known as well as unjustifiably neglected American women writers from the colonial era to the present. Focusing on the challenges faced by American women--among them slavery, immigration, starvation, capture by hostile native Americans, censorship from husbands and critics, the idea that writing is unfeminine, the belief that women could not competently cover certain topics ("Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom is too graphic ever to have been written by a woman" insisted one newspaperman) we will examine the creative triumphs of American women poets, humorists, short story writers, memoirists, songwriters, and critics. Among those whom we will read are Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672), Phillis Wheathley (ca. 1753-1784), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Kate Chopin (1850-1904), Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-), and Jhumpa Lahiri (1967-).
Students should purchase The Vintage Book of American Women Writers, ed. Elaine Showalter.
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