Women in Western History: Women's Self-Representation
Barbara B. Davis
Associate Professor of History
Antioch College
bdavis@antioch-college.edu.
History 248 Fall 2001 Classroom: ADM 322
Class Hours: MW 4-5:40
Office: ADM: 318
Syllabus
"Women is Western History" is now a vast area of academic study, too broad to fit comfortably into a semester course with the hope of mastering even the most basic texts. For this reason I have selected a single theme to explore: Women Writers from the late medieval period to 1800 with one exception from the modern period.
In what seems now as a kind of pre-history, the first wave of feminist researchers and writers set about to prove that women existed in the public sphere, and they unearthed many figures in many fields. Our task beginning in the 1990s has been much refined through their work. The problem is no longer to prove the existence of women, or indeed, female agency, both of which are now taken for granted, but to try to gauge their influence and impact. The women selected for study in this course are not obscure writers unearthed to prove an academic point, but women who influenced those who read them, who were part of a larger print culture, and who wrote in recognizable genres. Our examples are culled from three different, but interlocking societies: Venice, Paris, and London. Our mode of attack, however, will not be city by city, but by theme and chronology. The advantage of this method is that we can compare women writing in different genres rather broadly. The disadvantage is that we lose some of the distinctive contexts in which they wrote.
Thus the aim of the course is to give the student a sense of the importance and vitality of women's writing in this period; the many different reasons and contexts in which they wrote; the genres, and also the interrelatedness of much of their writing. A secondary aim is to explore the question, "Do women have a literature of their own?, in other words, what was their sense of themselves and is the question itself valid?
Although we will be exploring primarily women writers I will provide you with a brief handout by a male writer from time to time when he was the author of the genre or to illustrate its further development.
REQUIRED READING/OPTIONAL/FILMS
CALENDAR AND REQUIREMENTS
We miss one class during the term, Community Day, on Wednesday October 24 (should the class so decide), and the entire twelfth week of class November 19-23 which coincides with the Thanksgiving holiday.
Our reading and written work will be primarily with original
sources. We will do two short papers based on the reading during
the term. There will also be a term paper on a subject of your
choice, and this will be the subject of an oral presentation.
Depending on the size of the class, there is the possibility of
extra individual reports on related reading.