Cults have always thrived in the American landscape, often as attempts to improve upon an environment perceived as spiritually or philosophically lacking. Sometimes cults arrive with new immigrants – American history is immigration – and sometimes they arise from a desire to escape from American or Western culture. American women have endured and escaped from both. We will work our way through the worlds of Somali Muslim, Orthodox Jewish, Evangelical-biblical-literalist and hyper-Calvinist Baptist, Mormon survivalist women. Try to read Louisa May Alcott’s experiences in her transcendentalist father’s commune, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” (available online here https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/engl368/transoats.pdf) before the semester begins.
Students should purchase the following:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (2012)
Tara Westover, Educated (2018)
Meghan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church (2019) |
