Writing women

The unit examines women's literature across a range of periods, countries and genres. Issues examined include: the material conditions that have impacted on women as writers and readers; the place of women in the literary canon; currents and tensions in feminist literary criticism and theory; recent debates regarding gender bias in the reception of women's writing; contemporary interventions to decolonise literary history; the impact of changing social norms regarding gender and sexuality. Themes examined include: love, sex, marriage, motherhood, race, class, work, power, suffering, violence, silence, friendship and freedom. Key questions include: Is there a distinctively ‘feminine’ mode of writing? What kinds of freedoms and conditions does a women need in order to write?; and, Whose voices get noticed when writing by women is produced?