"For all serious daring starts from within." -- Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

OBJECTIVES:
The epigraph above by Eudora Welty serves to introduce the topic for our course this term: "Women on the Edge." In various ways, all the writers whose works we will be reading – and usually their main characters as well (even those who seem to be living sheltered lives) – are doing some "serious daring." They are pressing up against certain limitations, their own or their society's, crossing boundaries, breaking taboos, searching, experimenting, trying somehow to remake themselves and their worlds. That will be our working hypothesis, anyway, which we will test it out against the realities of these particular texts.

How (and why) are these writers and/or their characters trying to change their lives and the worlds in which they find themselves? How do these writers change literature itself, make it do new things, go where it has never gone before? What is extra-ordinary about them, these characters, these works? And what, if anything, does all this have to do with gender, the authors or their characters?

How might our readings of these works be shaped by gender expectations (cultural concepts of femininities and masculinities)? Is it too difficult to speak of "women" (or "men") as a category for fear of erasing multiple kinds of difference that interact with gender, differences that also shape people's identities and experiences (for example: age, class, ethnicity, national or regional identity, religion, and sexual orientation)? How, in these texts, do these other kinds of difference come into play, and to what effect? What concerns do women share? And what are the conflicts that divide them? Over the course of the semester, we will consider such questions as well as those you come up with yourselves–which will perhaps be more 'daring'.

TEXTS:
Virginia Woolf, "Professions for Women"; Mrs. Dalloway

Nella Larsen, Passing

Eudora Welty, "Moon Lake"

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain: From Story To Screenplay

Mary Gaitskill, Bad Behavior

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

Louise Erdrich, Painted Drum

EVALUATION:
Approximate breakdown of final grade:
35% paper (20% first draft; 15% revised draft)
30% portfolios (responses)
15% class attendance, participation, quizzes, etc.
20% take-home final
(Portfolios as a whole will be graded, not individual responses.)

Note that no late responses will be accepted, since your responses will generally be used for class discussion on the days they are due. Normally, paper deadlines will be extended and absences will be excused only in the case of a documented personal, family or medical emergency. Grades on late papers for which no extension has been granted will be lowered one notch per day of lateness (for example, from a "B+" to a "B"). Absences limit what you can gain from and give to the class. Unexcused absences will lower your final grade in the course. Work that is not submitted receives a "O".  All written work (aside from the take-home final) must be submitted by the last day of class.

Remember that plagiarism, even when unintentional, is a serious offense and a violation of the honor policy.  As a rule, any student found guilty of plagiarism will fail the course, in addition to whatever penalties may be imposed by the student judicial system.  If you are not sure what plagiarism is, always ask the instructor.