Instr: Gwynne Kennedy
Office: CRT 494; 229-6402
e-mail: gkennedy@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: T 4:30pm-7:10pm; CRT 284
The course offers an overview of contemporary US discourse on emotions, particularly anger, drawing from philosophy, psychology, anthropology, feminist theory, literary studies, and history. We will consider the representations, performance, and functions of anger and revenge in texts by US women writing from the 1950s to the present. Dorothy Allison, Ana Castillo, Ruth Ozeki, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Jane Smiley, and Louise Erdrich are some of the writers whose work we will read.
Throughout the semester, we will consider what might loosely be called the politics of anger: who can become angry and how is that anger valued? How can and should anger be displayed? How do gender, race, sexuality, class and other markers of identity influence the performance and legitimacy of a person's anger? Is revenge a necessary part of anger? What distinguishes anger from rage, and who decides? With regard to literary texts, we will consider the trajectories for women's anger that particular genres make available, some strategies to identify anger that is not explicitly marked as such, as well as other topics that the class wants to pursue.
The goal is to provide a sense of the questions, theories, and issues surrounding gender, anger, and revenge that students can bring to their own areas of interest. For this reason, students are encouraged for the final project (research component, conference paper and abstract, oral presentation) to work on gender and anger (and/or revenge) in texts and media of their choice. In addition to the final project, there will another paper, brief class presentation, and short writing assignments.
