From the feminists of the 1960s to the queer theorists and activists of the 90s, debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of contemporary efforts to rethink concepts of identity, desire, and the body. This course seeks to provide a theoretical and cultural context for such debates by investigating the complex and often contradictory relationship between sexuality and society. After tracing the historical emergence of the modern sexual self, we will survey contemporary theories of sexuality and sexual representations, particularly as they intersect with cultural discourses and systems of race, class, and gender. Topics will include ideologies of sexuality; sexuality and desire under capitalism; feminist theories of sexuality and the feminist "sex wars;" queer theory; literary and cultural representations of HIV/AIDS; racialized sexualities; gender performance; the social construction of the body. Readings and other course materials range from theoretical and historical essays to literary texts, films, and popular culture.

This course takes a chronological approach to women’s writings, beginning with St. Perpetua and the medieval women mystics and ending with Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalia’s Daughters. Students read mostly fiction from the Norton Anthology and read six novels during the course. This course is always taught as a WI (Writing Intensive) course and can also qualify as a CIP course (Computer Proficiency) course. There is a private interactive website for the course, and students do all their writing on the discussion board on the website, including all their papers which are read by the entire class and graded on-line by the instructor and the T.A. The course is taught from a feminist perspective and explores the historical and socio-cultural realities that faced women who wanted to write. We read texts written over the ages that exemplify some of the best works women did write and discuss how these texts reveal the lives and concerns of women in the different ages. Novels include: Frankenstein, The Awakening, Oornoko, The Bell Jar, The Tree and the Vine, Handmaid’s Tale, and Egalia’s Daughters.

(Theory) This course will be concerned with the relationship between feminist theory and women's folklore in all of its forms, from material culture to verbal and religious performance. All theoretical considerations will be tested against a core of ethnographic data which have been collected on women's folklore and performance. The course is intended as a celebration of women's creative expression, the traditional roots of women's lore, and the ways in which women employ folklore for personal and political ends. The course is multi-genre and multicultural in its orientation.

This course will focus primarily on the work of Harlem Renaissance novelist, folklorist, poet, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Selected texts from each genre will be examined and enjoyed for her contribution to reforming African American literary studies. Hurston's literary sisters include her contemporaries like Nella Larsen or Dorothy West, as well as later writers like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison who consider her their foremother. We will not read all their works, but will look at selected excerpts so that they are part of the discussion as signifiers. (Same as Black Studies and Women's & Gender Studies 4480/7480)

This is a interdisciplinary and comparative course which looks at selected major and minor writers from the English speaking Caribbean (Antigua, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Jamaica, Trinidad) as well as one or more from the French islands (Guadeloupe, Martinique) in translation. Discussions focus on emergent themes, traditions and literary connections, as well as the impact of culture and colonization in race, gender and nation. (Same as Women's & Gender Studies and Black Studies 4530)

This course focuses on American Women Writers, mostly novelists, who have been recently "recovered" by feminist critics. Our discussions will focus on issues of domesticity and sentimentality, with particular attention to how race and class affect these writers' conceptions of gender and domesticity.

References women's literary lineage through a historical examination of genres: autobiography, poetry, slave narrative, and the novel. For example, the unit on slave narrative will include: Oroonoko, a novel by Aphra Behn, the 17th-century white European poet and playwright who visited Surinam as a child, and who was the first English woman to earn her living by the pen; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a 19th-century narrative written by freedwoman Harriet A. Jacobs and circulated by abolitionists to publicize the horrors of slavery; and Kindred, a contemporary novel by the first African-American sci-fi writer Octavia Butler. Other highlights will be a visit by Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats, a novel about a Japanese-American filmmaker who is hired to produce a series of television programs promoting American meat to Japanese housewives, and a screening of Ozeki's autobiographical film “Halving the Bones.” In each unit, we will attempt to chart women's formal and thematic links across history, while acknowledging the situatedness of each writer and her rhetorical moment.

This course is an open rubric for reading, typically, two to four writers from feminist perspectives. Writers Parke has taught include Jane Austen, Janet Lewis, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf with an eye particularly to exploring intersections of writing and gender, career and gender, and reputation and gender in historical and socio-cultural contexts. Writers Looser has taught include Jane Austen and her contemporaries, including Frances Burney and Mary Wollstonecraft.

In this course, we'll read a wide range of mostly 20th-century women's literature in English, including essays, memoirs, short stories, and novels. Our goal will be to explore and critique the English literary tradition by discussing women's role in the tradition, women as writers, women as characters, and thematic issues relevant to contemporary feminism. Texts: Sandra Eagleton, Women in Literature: Life Stages Through Stories, Poems, and Plays. Willa Cather, My Antonia. Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own.