This class focuses on the figure of woman as she appears in 20th and 21st century prose, all by female writers, and mostly but not exclusively fiction. Female “creatives”—writers and visual artists--are a leitmotif in both the fiction and the nonfiction. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own serves as a point of connection throughout the term’s readings, and that’s where we start.
Our longest novel is easily Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World (2014). While not a roman a clé, its author draws on the lives and works of female artists including Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin, Alice Neel, and Lee Krasner. You may wish to acquaint yourself with any or all of them—Hustvedt herself has written about Neel. But if it's not a roman a clé, fiction is not veiled biography: pay attention to the form of Hustvedt’s novel; and of the artworks described in it—aka ekphrasis. (If words like ekphrasis make you nervous, don’t worry. If looking up words makes you nervous – and/or irritable -- you will need to find another class.)
The class employs in-person discussion and periodic brief lecture. Grades are based a series of short response papers, each predicated on the student having completed the reading in its entirety; informed class discussion; and quizzes. Screens are not allowed in the classroom.
Syllabus will appear in Files as the term begins.