This course studies a range of American women writing about lives real and imagined from the mid-nineteenth century through the second half of the twentieth century, a period of significant literary transformation. We will read texts by Harriet Jacobs, Caroline Kirkland, Anzia Yerzierska, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Sandra Cisneros, Hisaye Yamamoto, Marilynne Robinson, and Toni Morrison as well as selected critical readings. We will examine how women represented their lives and negotiated challenges not only of gender, but of class, ethnicity, and race. Critical readings will call our attention to problems of narrative structure and voice, of plot in fiction, and to the intricate identities constructed by gender expectations. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: active class participation and weekly brief written responses, short topical papers, and a longer final paper. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to first-year students, sophomores, and English majors who have yet to take a Gateway. (1700-1900 or Post-1900)

Hour: BOELCSKEVY