Course Description
Laura Micciche
Course Description
Spring 1998
English 243: Women's Literature
Women Writers and the Personal Essay
Description:
The personal essay has traditionally been a flexible form that allows for
rumination, digression, anecdote, memoir, philosophy, and scholarship. It
has recently been enjoying new attention after nearly half a century of
literary exile. The renaissance of the essay is marked by the emergence
of The Best American Essays in 1986, the development of the journal
Creative Nonfiction, and the growing body of work in the essay
tradition.
In light of this renewed interest in personal essays, this course focuses
on women's contributions to the return of the essay. Lectures will
provide contextual and historical background on the essay genre;
however, we will primarily focus on the rhetoric of contemporary female
essayists. This course poses questions concerning how women's experiences
and perspectives are represented within the essay form. In this sense, we
will probe the limitations and possibilities of the personal essay for
women writers.
Tentative Readings:
Virginia Woolf, _The Death of the Moth and Other Essays_
Joan Didion, _Slouching Towards Bethlehem_
M.F.K. Fisher, _The Gastronomical Me_
Lillian Helman, _Pentimento_
Alice Walker, _In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose_
Cynthia Ozick, _Metaphor and Memory_
Audre Lorde, _Zami: A New Spelling of My Name_
June Jordan, _On Call: Political Essays_
Requirements and Grade Percentages:
1. Five 1-2 page response papers (5% each, 25% total)
2. Midterm Short-Essay Exam (20%)
3. A final 10 page paper that will focus on the rhetorical strategies of
one or more of the women writers we will have read in the course.
Additionally, the paper should attempt to show how the writer(s) work
within and/or push the limits of the essay genre in terms of
structure, style, and subject matter (45%)
4. Participation and attendance. Absences that exceed the excused number
will affect the final grade as will failure to prepare for class (10%)
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