Subject Introduction to Women’s Writing

Course Title: Introduction to Women’s Writing

Course Code: ENG-403

Credit Hours: 3 (3-0)

Course Outline

I. The Three Waves of Feminism

• Understanding Feminist Movements
• First Wave Feminism (Suffrage & Women’s Rights)
• Second Wave Feminism (Equality & Liberation)
• Third Wave Feminism (Intersectionality & Diversity)

II. Poetry

• Themes in Women’s Poetry: Empowerment, Identity, Resistance, Love, and Death
• Close Reading and Analysis of Selected Poems:
  1. No Coward Soul is Mine – Emily Brontë
  2. When I am Dead, My Dearest – Christina Rossetti
  3. This is a Photograph of Me – Margaret Atwood
  4. Phenomenal Woman – Maya Angelou
  5. Be Nobody’s Darling – Alice Walker
  6. Fearful Women – Carolyn Kizer

III. Novels

• Women’s Voices in Fiction: Personal Identity, Social Expectations, Gender Roles
• In-depth Study of Selected Novels:
  1. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) – Zora Neale Hurston
  2. Little Women (1868) – Louisa May Alcott
  3. The Blue Room (2009) – Nafisa Rizvi
  4. How It Happened – Shazaf Fatima Haider

IV. Short Stories

• Exploring Women’s Experiences Through Short Fiction
• Critical Study of Selected Short Stories:
  1. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  2. I Stand Here Ironing – Tillie Olsen
  3. The Gatekeeper’s Wife – Rukhsana Ahmed
  4. A Pair of Jeans – Qaisra Shahraz
  5. The Optimist – Bina Shah
  6. Rubies for a Dog: A Fable – Shahrukh Hussain
  7. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

🔹 Note: Two of the last four stories may be used for class assignments/presentations, and the rest may all be taught.

Recommended Books

1. Eavan Boland, Object Lessons. NY: W.W. Norton, 1996
2. Eavan Boland, Outside History, Selected Poems 1980-1990. NY, London: W.W. Norton, 1991
3. Cathy N. Davidson & Linda Wagner Martin, The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Oxford UP, 1995
4. Rory Dicker & Alison Piepmeier, Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century. Northeastern University Press, 2003
5. Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Pluto Press, 2000
6. Mary Eagleton, Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. Wiley Blackwell, 2011
7. Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale, 2000
8. Cora Kaplan, Language and Gender in Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986
9. Amy Ling, I’m Here: An Asian American Woman’s Response. New Literary History, Vol. 19, No. 1, Feminist Directions (Autumn, 1987), pp. 151-160. The Johns Hopkins University Press
10. Ruth Robbins, Literary Feminisms. St. Martin’s Press, 2000
11. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. Penguin, 1979