Home: A Cultural Romance

Class Tonight Online

2006-04-13T17:46:58Z

Dear Fellow Madwomen.

Class tonight will be online - everyone is saved a commute, and the excellent discussion can continue. I find this forum particularly valuable with a group of this size.

We will meet in person next week; in the interim, I would like to ask all of you to prepare a page or so on your thoughts for final projects and email them to me for discussion over email.

The parameters for these are wide open; we can begin by discussing in more detail what it is that is taking shape in your mind as a focus of interest, a possible avenue for exploration through writing, a node of inquiry.

I will be online at as close to six p.m. as I can (I am occasionally waylaid on my way out of the building).

Best regards, and my sincere admiration for the level of discussion that is transpiring.

HKJ

Dear Everyone

2006-04-06T17:38:21Z

Class tonight will be online again; there looks to be scary weather, and I think it'd be great if we could all sign on and have interactive posting rather than have people getting blown off the road and into ditches. Much more productive to stay safe.

I will see you all online tonight at around 6, if that works (and if you have a conflict, that's ok too). My last class gets out at 5 but I should be home by then (weather permitting).

In the meantime, I hope everyone has an excellent afternoon.

Best regards,

HKJ

P.S. Mobility continues to improve, slowly.

English 487 - Recommended Reading

2006-01-10T19:08:49Z

One of the greatest challenges in teaching is not what to include on a syllabus, but what to leave off.

This is a list of works that pertain to issues at play in the course, and all of them are, for various reasons, strongly recommended as further reading. Some of them are on the syllabus; most aren't.

One note: In one of his undergraduate lectures, Joseph Campbell provided students with a list of recommended reading. Upon seeing the length of the list, a rather brave young woman raised her hand. "Professor Campbell, you can't really be asking us to read all of these this semester." "My dear," said the esteemed if somewhat old-fashioned Campbell, "this isn't a reading list for the semester. It's a reading list for life." Without going quite that far, I offer the following list in a similar (if less overdetermined) spirit.

Gender, Space, and Home: Postmodern Women’s Writings of the Americas

Relatively recent fiction and creative non-fiction:

Allende, Isabel The House of the Spirits
Allison, Dorothy Bastard out of Carolina, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (non-fiction)
Appignanesi, Lisa A Good Woman (British author)
Atwood, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, Dancing Girls and Other Stories
Bloom, Amy Love Invents Us
Bradley, Marion Zimmer The Mists of Avalon
Campion, Jane The Piano (screenplay, film)
Chao, Patricia The Monkey King
Chute, Carolyn The Beans of Egypt, Maine
Cisneros, Sandra The House on Mango Street
Coomer, Joe Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God (male author, but it fits the paradigm)
Dening, Alison Hawthorne Temporary Homelands
Dillard, Annie Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood
Ehrlich, Gretel The Solace of Open Spaces, Islands, the Universe, Home (non-fiction); Heart Mountain (fiction)
Erdrich, Louise The Beet Queen, Tracks, Love Medicine (fiction), The Blue Jay’s Dance (non-fiction)
Esquivel, Laura Like Water for Chocolate, The Law of Love (including CD)
Fitch, Janet White Oleander
Flagg, Fannie Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Gibbons, Kaye A Virtuous Woman
Goldberg, Natalie Long, Quiet Highway
Kaysen, Susanna Girl Interrupted
Kincaid, Jamaica Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara High Tide in Tucson (non-fiction), The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, Animal Dreams
Kumin, Maxine Women, Animals & Vegetables, Selected Poetry
Lamott, Anne Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions (non-fiction), Rosie (fiction)
LeGuin, Ursula Sea Road, Always Coming Home
Lorde, Audre The Black Unicorn
Minot, Susan Monkeys
Morrison, Toni Beloved (fiction), Playing the Dark (non-fiction)
Munro, Alice Lives of Girls and Women
Norris, Kathleen The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (non-fiction)
Oates, Joyce Carol Selected Short Stories, We Were the Mulvaneys
Otto, Whitney How to Make an American Quilt
Proulx, E. Annie The Shipping News
Reynolds, Sheri The Rapture of Canaan
Robinson, Marilynne Housekeeping
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony, Almanac of the Dead
Simpson, Mona Anywhere but Here, The Lost Father
Smiley, Jane Ordinary Love and Good Will, A Thousand Acres
Steedman, Carolyn Kay Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (non-fiction)
Tan, Amy The Joy Luck Club
Wells, Rebecca The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel, Little Altars Everywhere
Williams, Terry Tempest An Unspoken Hunger, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (non-fiction)

Selected less recent fiction and creative non-fiction (~1940-1970)

Angelou, Maya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Cather, Willa My Antonia (1910s)
Jackson, Shirley The Haunting of Hill House (1959), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Life Among the Savages (non-fiction)
McCullers, Carson The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1939), The Member of the Wedding (1946)
Mitchell, Margaret Gone with the Wind
O’Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything that Rises Must Converge
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte The Yellow Wall-Paper (1890s), Herland (early 1900s)
Lessing, Doris The Summer Before the Dark
Stein, Gertrude Three Lives, Melanctha, (fiction); Paris, France (1940), Wars I Have Seen (1945) (non-fiction)
Toklas, Alice B. The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
Welty, Eudora Delta Wedding

Selected relevant fiction and creative non-fiction by male authors

Abbey, Edward (anything)
Dorrit, Michael Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Kidder, Tracy House (non-fiction)
Guterson, David Snow Falling on Cedars
Least Heat Moon Blue Highways (non-fiction)
Pollan, Michael A Place of My Own (non-fiction)

Historical Texts with Direct Bearing

Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Woolf, Virginia A Room of One’s Own
De Beauvoir, Simone The Second Sex
Friedan, Betty The Feminine Mystique

Relevant/Related Texts

Berlant, Lauren The Queen of America Goes to Washington City
Hiss, Tony The Experience of Place
Pindell, Terry A Good Place to Live - America’s Last Migration
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman’s Life
Hanson, Pratt, eds. Gender, Work, and Space
Gillis, John R. A World of Their Own Making (historical)
Keith, Pile, eds. Place and the Politics of Identity
Gottdiener, M. The Social Production of Urban Space
Cage, John Silence
Benade, Arthur, H. Fundamentals of Music Acoustics
Foucault, Michel Introduction to the History of Sexuality
Bhabha, Homi The Location of Culture (selections)
Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities
Feld & Basso Senses of Place
Soja, Edward Postmodern Geographies (selections)
Turner, Frederick Spirit of Place: The Making of an American Literary Landscape
Warren Ecological Feminist Philosophies

and, of course, Cynthia Huff's new book.

On Soundscape Music Composition (Note: this is my own particular quirky interest which I'd love to discuss!)

Cage, John Silence (text), 4' 33", (musical composition)
Benade, Arthur, H. Fundamentals of Music Acoustics
Lucier, Alvin I Am Sitting In A Room (1970) (musical composition)
A good introductory web site on the subject
McCartney, Andra. "’Creating Worlds For My Music to Exist’: How Women Composers of Electroacoustic Music Make Place For Their Voices." Master’s thesis, York University Graduate Programme in Music, 1994. (by the woman who wrote the above web site)

English 487 - Course Schedule

2006-01-09T18:37:29Z

SECONDARY READING LIST NOT YET FINAL.
This text will be replaced when content is finalized.

English 487: Home: A Cultural Romance
Contemporary Women's Writing in the Americas

Professor Hilary Justice
STV 421E - hjustic at ilstu dot edu
Office Hours: TBA

Please use email to contact me as I am not in my office every day. I check email at least twice a day, M-F, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Course Description

Home: A Cultural Romance – Contemporary Women’s Writing in the Americas

This course will examine how contemporary women writers in the Americas refract questions of “Americanness” through lenses of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and immigration. By triangulating primary literary texts, space/place theory, and secondary readings (on related issues of domesticity, biography, ecology, geography and community), we will consider the postulate that contemporary writers and publishers have created a new genre of romance, in which the idea of home has replaced the “muscular hottie” of 1970s romance and horror novels as the locus of desire – with its attendant fantasies and nightmares – for contemporary American women readers.

Required Texts

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place
Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina
Julia Alvarez, ¡Yo!
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys
Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan
Rebecca Wells, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (A Novel)

(Additional readings include excerpts from: Thoreau, Walden; Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; Anderson, Imagined Communities; Gilbert & Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic; Bhaba, The Location of Culture; Radway, Reading the Romance; Hiss, The Experience of Place; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Pindell, A Good Place to Live – America’s Last Migration; Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life; Gillis, A World of their Own Making; Keith & Pile (Eds.), Place and the Politics of Identity; Feld & Basso, Senses of Place; Soja, Postmodern Geographies; Turner, Spirit of Place: The Making of an American Literary Landscape; Warren, Ecological Feminist Philosophies; Friedan, The Feminine Mystique; and non-fiction works by several contemporary women writers, including Terry Tempest Williams, Carolyn Steedman, Gretel Ehrlich, Alison Hawthorne Dening, Anne Lamott, Maxine Kumin and Kathleen Norris.)

Link to Recommended Reading

Format

This course will be conducted as a seminar. Course assignments will include a short excursus, a short topic paper, and a final project (20-25 pp.). Auditors are welcome.

Grades

Class Participation (includes contribution to in-class discussion and discussions during office hours or via email) - 15%
Three Excurses (2-3 pp. papers summarizing critical reading and synthesizing with readings; to be shared with the class; may be used to build toward final projects) - 15% each
Topic Paper (5-7 pp. paper focusing narrowly on one issue at play in the course; may be used to build toward final project) - 15%
Final Project (specifics to be individually negotiated with professor; benchmark figure = M.A. students 15-20 pp.; Ph.D. students 25-30 pp.) - 25%

To succeed in this class you must a) engage thoughtfully and actively with all aspects of the course and synthesize provided materials with your own research and reflection; b) by the end of the course have developed original ideas demonstrating a level of sophistication and subtlety appropriate to your progress in your individual degree program; c) display a professional level of writing, including rhetorical positioning, argumentation, structure, organization, mechanics, citation format, clarity, subtlety; and d) complete all assignments in a timely manner.

Reading Schedule

Week 1

Course Introduction

Week 2

Reading for this week's discussion:

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Yi-Fu Tuan, ***TBA***

Week 3

Reading for this week's discussion:

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Gilbert & Gubar, Introduction, The Madwoman in the Attic

Week 4

Reading for this week's discussion:

Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe

Week 5

Reading for this week's discussion:

Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

Week 6

Reading for this week's discussion:

Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (A Novel)

Week 7

Reading for this week's discussion:

Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

Week 8

Reading for this week's discussion:

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Week 9

Reading for this week's discussion:

Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

Week 10

Reading for this week's discussion:

Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban

Week 11

Reading for this week's discussion:

Julia Alvarez, ¡Yo!

Week 12

Reading for this week's discussion:

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Week 13

Reading for this week's discussion:

Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

Week 14

Reading for this week's discussion:

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Week 15

Reading for this week's discussion:

Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan