Second Year Module
Module Leader: Melanie Selfe
Description
In this module students read and discuss fiction written by women from a range of literary traditions. The module will be informed by close readings of texts drawn from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. As well as reading work by women in the English-speaking world, such as Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf, students will examine writing by women from different traditions and thus critically examine the whole concept of ‘women’s writing’. The combination of texts studied will vary but might include writing by figures such as Helene Cixous, Alifa Rifaat, Nawal el Saadawi, Mariamma Bâ, Buchi Emecheta, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Anita Desai.
The module will examine issues of interest to feminist criticism as well as challenges to the assumptions of ‘Western’ feminism. The fiction will be studied in the context of debates about gender, sexuality and the body; authorship, readership and identity; storytelling and silence; motherhood, creativity and the significance of space. To complement this thematic approach, the module will develop skills of close textual analysis with a particular focus on the formal qualities of the texts and a critical examination of claims for a feminine aesthetic.