ENGL 256 - Southern Women Writers

FDR: HL
Credits: 4
Planned Offering: Spring

Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. An in-depth study of selected southern women writers, mostly from the 20th century, in order to understand the motifs and themes woven into their texts and their individual and collective contributions to southern literature. From Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God to Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, the course explores how women writers negotiate with and often subvert prominent southern types, including the belle, the mammy, and the steel magnolia. We consider the individual writer’s experience of cultural and historical context, her innovations in style/genre, and her possible thematic treatment of family, domesticity, marriage, region, race, class, sexual identity, religion, and coming-of-age in the South. While analyzing works by Alice Walker, Flannery O’Connor, and Dorothy Allison, students also consider their own complex relationships to and identities within the South. Requirements: two analytical papers, entries in a reading log, a personal narrative or profile of a local southern woman, and a group presentation involving research and follow-up discussion leadership. Staff.