Winter 2018
ENG 612 (Women Writers): Feminist Utopias/Dystopias
T 6-9 p.m. Devos
This semester our focus will be on feminist utopias and dystopias. Some of these works respond quite directly, if unintentionally, to Freud’s infamous question: ‘What does woman want?’ Other texts change the question itself, asserting what woman ‘does not want.’ As we shall see, however, notions of what constitutes a feminist utopia or dystopia vary across time and are often dependent upon an author’s personal (as opposed to universal) ideals and values. In fact, what one woman may call ‘liberation,’ another may deem ‘oppression.’
Tentative reading list:
Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Butler, Parable of the Sower
Cadwallader, The Anchoress
Gilman, Herland
Karmel, An Estate of Memory
Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
Watkins, Gold Flame Citrus