Syllabus & Schedule

Honors Seminar

Supplementary Bibiliography

Course Description:

This course examines the political conscious and involvement of women in history as it is represented in literary works.  Our goal is to look at the positioning of women as either included or excluded from political participation and from functioning as historical figures by asking a series of questions: What does it mean to be a "figure of history"?  What makes a woman become a figure associated with the historical progression of time?  What connects women to political or religious conflicts, economic exchanges, scientific or technological discoveries, and nation-building?  What goals do writers, male and female, have in writing women into historical time in the ways that they do?  What kind of woman is remembered and associated with events of the past, and how do ordinary women become involved with the making of history?  And most importantly, how is the female figure of history portrayed in literary texts?   Authors include Joan of Arc, Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bertolt Brecht, Virginia Woolf, Zhang Ailing, Ding Ling, Alexandra Fuller, Assia Djebar, Frantz Fanon.

Online Texts:

Letters of Joan of Arc

      March 22, 1429                   May 5, 1429

      July 17, 1429

Christine de Pizan "Le Ditie de Jehanne d'Arc"