ENGL 2375 - Gender and Literature

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This course begins by investigating the ways that authors represent gender and the issues traditionally associated with gender: women’s lives, sex roles, marriage, domesticity, power relationships, and inequality. Such issues reveal our assumption that a course on gender and literature must be about women’s literature or literature about women’s issues; we will ask why “gender” is female. The course will then turn to more specifically literary issues and ask how literature is gendered, particularly along lines of genre and canonized texts. Finally, we will consider how some recent literature resists gender expectations and even challenges the category of gender itself. Although informed by feminist thought and approaches, our class will not espouse an overt political agenda or political purpose; rather, we will see assigned tests as an opportunity to become more perceptive and purposeful readers.