Feminism in 20th century U.S. Literature and Culture (ENG-0089)

Spring 2024 · ENG 0089 · Tufts University · 3 credits · Undergraduate

How the postwar U.S. women’s movement for equality, born of the mid-twentieth century antiwar and civil rights movements, made civic, legal and ethical challenges that are expressed in literature and film, in mass and high cultures, and in women’s experiences across race, class, ethnic, and sexual lines. Explores the effect of second wave feminism on discourses of gender and women’s sexuality using novels, poetry, essays and films with a view to understanding that forms of knowing are gendered; not universal but culturally constructed, contextual, mutable. Questions how feminism is postmodern; speculates how postmodernism is in part a feminist production; how the postmodern fits with recognitions about gender and liberations of sex and sexualities in the postwar U.S. women’s movement. Authors include: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Alix Kates Shulman, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Chuang Hua, Valerie Solanas. No prerequisites.

Course codes: ENG-0089, ENG 0089, ENG0089, ENG-89, ENG 89, ENG89, WGSS-0089, WGSS 0089, WGSS0089, WGSS-89, WGSS 89, WGSS89

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