Study of the images of women in works by women and men writers from Spain, Italy, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Texts will be examined in search for the changing role of women characters and women writers in Mediterranean literature from Romanticism to our days. Special attention will be paid to the relations between literature and cultural, political and sexual manifestations in modern Mediterranean societies. Special attention will be paid to those relations forging the boom of women writing in the literary panorama of Spain, Italy and South Mediterranean countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. Readings will be drawn from fiction (both long and short), drama and criticism. When possible, literary discourse will be confronted to and contrasted with other visual discourses on women.
Method of presentation:
We will discuss and analyze the most salient current issues on feminist studies, feminist literary criticism and women roles in present North and South Mediterranean cultures. The issues will be introduced during the initial sessions and revisited whenever the session topic makes it necessary. Sessions will typically consist of brief introductions of salient issues by the instructor and seminar discussion of the students’ informed critical opinion about the assigned texts. Texts will be facilitated by the instructor before relevant sessions. Likewise, the instructor will provide notes, questions and relevant issues so that these can serve as a common script to guide discussion during seminars. As sessions go by, the instructor will promote the autonomy of students by asking them to guide some of the discussions.
Required work and form of assessment:
Class attendance and participation (20%)
Presentations (20%)
Essay (8-10 pages) (20%)
Mid-term examination (20%)
Final examination (20%)
content:
Session 1. Introduction:
Introduction to course contents, teaching methodology and form of assessment. Women’s studies in Europe. Networks for the Study of Women and literature.
Resources for research on Women literature.
Session 2: What is “Gender Studies”? What is “feminism”? Issues for discussion:
-Women’s studies, feminism and gender studies.
-The body, maternity, identity, sexuality and violence.
-Silences and voices
-Submisions and resistances. negotiation of power. Power relations.
-Exiles. Citizenship.
Reading of extracts from :
Glover, David and Cora Kaplan. Genders. New York : Routledge, 2000. Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 1985.
Sessions 3 & 4: The controversial literary canon:
Issues for discussion:
-The canon and exclusions
-A brief introduction to feminist literary criticism, art and culture: history of the relationship between feminism and literature. Is there a language for women?
-The representation of women in literature and the visual arts; images of women in literature.
-Women writing and writing about women. Silences in literature. The author/narrator complicities. Women as subject and women as object.
-Women readers and reading about women.
Reading of extracts from:
S. Gilbert and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. Virginia Woolf “ A Room of One’s Own”
Session 5: Field Visit
Women’s Research Institute at the UGR
Session 6: Men writers and the image of women in Spanish Romanticism
Issues for discussion:
-The evanescent domestic angel in Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and José Zorrilla.
Reading of extracts from:
Gustavo A. Becquer: Rhymes and Legends
José Zorrilla: Don Juan Tenorio
Session 7: Women writers of Spanish Romanticism. Issues for discussion:
-Women writers in the context of their European contemporaries
-Reading of extracts from the works by Rosalía de Castro, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen and the Brontës.
Session 8: From realism to the fin de siècle. Issues for discussion:
-The triumph of the street devil over the domestic angel
Reading of extracts from: Leopoldo Alas Clarín: La Regenta
Benito Pérez Galdós: Fortunata y Jacinta.
Sessions 9, 10 & 11: Women in the works by Federico García Lorca
Issues for discussion:
-Motherhood, sexuality and repression.
Reading of:
The House of Bernarda Alba and excerpts from Yerma.
Sessions 12 & 13: From the postwar to the 1980s: Women looking at social changes. Issues for discussion:
-The search for a language of their own.
-Women images and new literary techniques
Readings of extracts from the fiction by:
Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Rosa Chacel & Carmen Martin Gaite
Sessions 14 & 15: Latest women’s fiction: Inequality, domesticity and rebellion in contemporary Spanish literature (from Puértolas to Etxebarría)
Issues for discussion:
-Home, Kinship and women’s bonding.
-The Women “Parnasus”: re-inventing the canon.
-Modern “Angels in the house”, Domestic imprisonment and violence on women.
-Looking for the self
Readings of extracts from the fiction by:
Soledad Puértolas, Adelaida García Morales, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes, Clara Sánchez and Lucía
Etxebarría.
Session 16: Mid-term examination
Session 17: The role of women in postwar Italian literature by women
Issues for discussion:
-Motherhood: Mother Courages and Mater Dolorosas
-Women in conflict areas. Women and the war
Reading of extracts from: Elsa Morante: The Story Natalia Ginzburg: Night Voices
Session 18: The role of women in recent Italian fiction: Issues for discussion:
-Modern motherhood?
-Canonic recognition: the “nobelists”
Reading of extracts from the fiction by Susana Tamaro and Grazia Deledda.
Session 19: Women’s voices on the other side of the Mediterranean. A brief history of women in Arabic literature.
Issues for discussion:
-Patriarchal impositions and inequalities
-The veil and the oppression of traditions
-Religion and fundamentalism
-Political silences and voices.
-Exiles and migrations
Session 20: Women in Egyptian literature (1) Issues for discussion:
-The male writer’s look: Women in the novels by Naguib Mahfouz
Readings from The Cairo Trilogy
Session 21: Women in Egyptian literature (2) Issues for discussion:
-Women self-portraits
-Women and Islam
Readings of extracts from:
Nawal-El Saadawi: The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World .
Nawal-El Saadawi: Woman at Point Zero
Session 22: Women writers in Algeria
Issues for discussion:
-The role of women in modern Algeria.
-New images for a new millenium.
-Women’s limits and prisons
Reading of extracts from:
Assia Djebar: So Vast the Prison.
Assia Djebar :A Sister to Scherezade.
Session 23: Women writers in Morocco
Issues for discussion:
-Arab women’s “westernization”
Reading of extracts from:
Fatima Mernissi: Sherezade Goes West.
Fatima Mernissi: Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
Required readings:
Alas Clarín, Leopoldo. La Regenta.
Becquer, Gustavo A. Rhymes and Legends.
Djebar, Assia. So Vast the Prison.
-----. A Sister to Scherezade.
García Lorca, Federico. The House of Bernardo Alba.
-----. Yerma.
Gilbert, S. and S. Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New York: Norton, 1987.
Glover, David and Cora Kaplan. Genders. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Ginzburg, Natalia. Night Voices.
Mahfouz, Naguib. The Cairo Trilogy, extracts.
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 1985.
Morante, Elsa. The Story.
Nawal-El Saadawi. The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
Nawal-El Saadawi. Woman at point Zero.
Pérez Galdós, Benito. Fortunata y Jacinta.
Zorrilla, José. Don Juan Tenorio.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own.
Extracts from works by Rosalía de Castro, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Brontë, Soledad Puértolas, Adelaida García Morales, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes, Clara Sánchez, Lucía
Etxebarría, Susana Tamaro, Grazia Deledda, Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Rosa Chacel, Carmen
Martin Gaite.
Recommended readings:
General
Armstrong, Isabel, ed. New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts. London: Routledge, 1992.
Bassnett, Susan. Feminist Experiences: The Women’s Movement in Four Cultures. London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
Brown, Joan L., ed. Women writers of contemporary Spain : exiles in the homeland. Newark : University of Delaware Press, 1991.
Caballero Wangüemert, María. Femenino Plural: la mujer en la literatura. Pamplona: EUNSA, 1998.
Carabí, Ángeles and Marta Segarra. Hombres escritos por mujeres. Madrid: Icaria, 2003.
Carrera Suárez, Isabel & Suárez Lafuente, Socorro. 1994. Como Mujeres. Releyendo a escritoras del XIX y XX. Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones del Principado de Asturias, 1994.
Chicharro, Antonio & Sánchez Trigueros, Antonio., eds. 1999. La verdad de las Máscaras: Teatro y vanguardia en Federico García Lorca. Imprévue. 1999-1. Montpellier: Centre d’Études et de rechercehs sociocritiques, 1994.
Davies, Catherine, ed. Women writers in twentieth-century Spain and Spanish America. Lewiston, N.Y. : E. Mellen Press, 1993.
Estévez, Carmen, Ed. Ni Ariadnas ni Penélopes : quince escritoras españolas para el siglo veintiuno. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 2002.
Felski, Rita. Beyond Feminist Aesthetics. Feminist Literature and Social Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989.
Fetterley, J. The Resisting Reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
Greene, Gayle and Kahn, Coppelia. Making a Difference. Feminist Literary Criticism. London: Routledge, 1985.
Forsas-Scott, Helena. Textual Liberation: European Feminist Writing in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1991.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
Freixas, Laura. Literatura y mujeres.Madrid: Destino, 2000.
Gilber, S & S Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New York: Norton, 1987. Glover, David and Cora Kaplan. Genders. New York : Routledge, 2000.
González Fernández, Helena et al. Rías de Tinta. Literatura de mujeres en francés, gallego e italiano. Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1999.
Lerner, Gerda. "The Challenge of Women's History", in The majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Mattalía y Milagros Aleza. Eds. 1995. Mujeres: escrituras y lenguajes. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 1995.
Mayock, Ellen Cecilia. 1996. Through the Looking Glass : The Evolution of the Female Protagonist in Spanish Narrative (1945-1994). Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin. (Also available through UMI)
Morris, Pam. 1993. Literature and Feminism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.
Pérez, Janet and Maureen Ihrie, eds. The Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Ramos, María Dolores, "La mujer, sujeto creador y objeto de la creación en el discurso literario. Una perspectiva histórica 1880-1918", en VARIOS, Mujeres y hombres en la formación del pensamiento occidental, vol. II, Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1989, pp. 229-245.
Ruiz Guerrero, Cristina. Panorama de escritoras españolas. Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones, 1997.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of their own. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
Spanish writers
Ahumada Peña, Haydee. Poder y Género en la narrativa de Rosa Montero. 1999.
Aldaraca, Bridget. El ángel del hogar. Galdós y la ideología de la domesticidad en España. 1992
De Castro, Rosalía. Daughter of the Sea. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
Kirkpatrick, Susan. Las románticas. Escritoras y subjetividad en España, 1835-1850. 1991
Laforet, Carmen. Nada. New York: Vantage Press, 1975.
López-Cabrales, Mª del Mar. Palabras de mujeres.Escritoras españolas contemporáneas. 2000.
Masoliver, Juan Antonio. The Origins of Desire: Modern Spanish Short Stories. London, New York: Serpents Tail. 1993.
Pérez, Janet. Contemporary Women Writers of Spain. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Riera, Carmen. Perversas y divinas.La representación de la mujer en las literaturas hispánicas: el fin de siglo y/o el fin del milenio actual. 2002.
Segura, Cristina, ed. Feminismo y misoginia en la literatura española. Fuentes literarias para la historia de las mujeres. 2001
Vilarós, Teresa M. Galdós: invención de la mujer y poética de la sexualidad. Lectura parcial de Fortunata y Jacinta. 1995.
Zavala, Iris M. (coord.). Breve historia feminista de la literatura española (en lengua castellana), 5 vols. Barcelona/San Juan, Anthropos/Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998.
Italian writers
Garnett, Richard. A History of Italian Literature. University Press of the Pacific, 2004.
South Mediterranean writers
Abu-Lughod, Lila. Feminismo y modernidad en Oriente Próximo / edición de Lila Abu-Lughod ; traducción de Carmen Martínez Gimeno. Madrid: Cátedra, 2002.
Ahmed, Leila. Gender in Islam. Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Alloula, Malek.The Colonial Harem. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1987.
Amin, Qasim. La nueva mujer. Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 2000.
Bailey, David A. and Gilane Tawadros. Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2003.
Badran, M $ Cooke, M. Eds. Opening the Gates. A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1990.
Baron, B. 1994. The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press. New Haven: Yale University, 1994.
Boraui, Nina. Forbidden Vision. N.Y.: Station Hill, 1995.
Cooke, Miriam. Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001.
El Saadawi, Nawal. The Hidden Face of Eve. Women in the Arab World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981. Ghoussoub, Mai. “Feminism –or the Eternal Masculine- in the Arab World.” New Left Review 161 (1987): 3-18.
Mikhail, Mona. Images of Arab Women. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1979. Sebbar, Leila. 1991. Sherazade, Quartet Books, 1991.
Waines, David. 1995. An Introduction to Islam. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Yegenoglu, Meyda. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism.Cambridge: CUP, 1985.
Adelina Sánchez Espinosa is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Granada. She holds B.A.s in English and in Translation Studies from the University of Granada, a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Almería, M.Phil. in English Literature from the University of Birmingham, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Granada. A specialist in women in late Victorian and Modernist fiction, she directs the research group Recepción, modos y géneros de la literatura en lengua inglesa and has been in charge of the University of Granada FEMINAE Publishing Series for Women and Feminist Studies from 2004 to 2009. She has served as Vice-President of AOIFE (the Association of Institutions for Feminist Research in Europe) ; Executive Secretary of the UGR Instituto de Estudios de la Mujer; Director of International Relations at the UGR; Rector’s Representative at the European University Association; Rector’s Representative at the Coimbra group of Universities; Chair of the MED taskforce for Coimbra Group Mediterranean Affairs; Chair of the Student Mobility Group at the Meeting of Mediterranean Ministers of Education (Catania 2003); and University of Granada representative at the EU Socrates Network “ATHENA” (Feminist Women’s Studies in Europe). She has recently been appointed as a member of the Board of Experts for the ESF (European Science Foundation).
Study of the images of women in works by women and men writers from Spain, Italy, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Texts will be examined in search for the changing role of women characters and women writers in Mediterranean literature from Romanticism to our days. Special attention will be paid to the relations between literature and cultural, political and sexual manifestations in modern Mediterranean societies. Special attention will be paid to those relations forging the boom of women writing in the literary panorama of Spain, Italy and South Mediterranean countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. Readings will be drawn from fiction (both long and short), drama and criticism. When possible, literary discourse will be confronted to and contrasted with other visual discourses on women.
We will discuss and analyze the most salient current issues on feminist studies, feminist literary criticism and women roles in present North and South Mediterranean cultures. The issues will be introduced during the initial sessions and revisited whenever the session topic makes it necessary. Sessions will typically consist of brief introductions of salient issues by the instructor and seminar discussion of the students’ informed critical opinion about the assigned texts. Texts will be facilitated by the instructor before relevant sessions. Likewise, the instructor will provide notes, questions and relevant issues so that these can serve as a common script to guide discussion during seminars. As sessions go by, the instructor will promote the autonomy of students by asking them to guide some of the discussions.
Session 1. Introduction:
Introduction to course contents, teaching methodology and form of assessment. Women’s studies in Europe. Networks for the Study of Women and literature.
Resources for research on Women literature.
Session 2: What is “Gender Studies”? What is “feminism”? Issues for discussion:
-Women’s studies, feminism and gender studies.
-The body, maternity, identity, sexuality and violence.
-Silences and voices
-Submisions and resistances. negotiation of power. Power relations.
-Exiles. Citizenship.
Reading of extracts from :
Glover, David and Cora Kaplan. Genders. New York : Routledge, 2000. Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 1985.
Sessions 3 & 4: The controversial literary canon:
Issues for discussion:
-The canon and exclusions
-A brief introduction to feminist literary criticism, art and culture: history of the relationship between feminism and literature. Is there a language for women?
-The representation of women in literature and the visual arts; images of women in literature.
-Women writing and writing about women. Silences in literature. The author/narrator complicities. Women as subject and women as object.
-Women readers and reading about women.
Reading of extracts from:
S. Gilbert and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. Virginia Woolf “ A Room of One’s Own”
Session 5: Field Visit
Women’s Research Institute at the UGR
Session 6: Men writers and the image of women in Spanish Romanticism
Issues for discussion:
-The evanescent domestic angel in Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and José Zorrilla.
Reading of extracts from:
Gustavo A. Becquer: Rhymes and Legends
José Zorrilla: Don Juan Tenorio
Session 7: Women writers of Spanish Romanticism. Issues for discussion:
-Women writers in the context of their European contemporaries
-Reading of extracts from the works by Rosalía de Castro, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen and the Brontës.
Session 8: From realism to the fin de siècle. Issues for discussion:
-The triumph of the street devil over the domestic angel
Reading of extracts from: Leopoldo Alas Clarín: La Regenta
Benito Pérez Galdós: Fortunata y Jacinta.
Sessions 9, 10 & 11: Women in the works by Federico García Lorca
Issues for discussion:
-Motherhood, sexuality and repression.
Reading of:
The House of Bernarda Alba and excerpts from Yerma.
Sessions 12 & 13: From the postwar to the 1980s: Women looking at social changes. Issues for discussion:
-The search for a language of their own.
-Women images and new literary techniques
Readings of extracts from the fiction by:
Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Rosa Chacel & Carmen Martin Gaite
Sessions 14 & 15: Latest women’s fiction: Inequality, domesticity and rebellion in contemporary Spanish literature (from Puértolas to Etxebarría)
Issues for discussion:
-Home, Kinship and women’s bonding.
-The Women “Parnasus”: re-inventing the canon.
-Modern “Angels in the house”, Domestic imprisonment and violence on women.
-Looking for the self
Readings of extracts from the fiction by:
Soledad Puértolas, Adelaida García Morales, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes, Clara Sánchez and Lucía
Etxebarría.
Session 16: Mid-term examination
Session 17: The role of women in postwar Italian literature by women
Issues for discussion:
-Motherhood: Mother Courages and Mater Dolorosas
-Women in conflict areas. Women and the war
Reading of extracts from: Elsa Morante: The Story Natalia Ginzburg: Night Voices
Session 18: The role of women in recent Italian fiction: Issues for discussion:
-Modern motherhood?
-Canonic recognition: the “nobelists”
Reading of extracts from the fiction by Susana Tamaro and Grazia Deledda.
Session 19: Women’s voices on the other side of the Mediterranean. A brief history of women in Arabic literature.
Issues for discussion:
-Patriarchal impositions and inequalities
-The veil and the oppression of traditions
-Religion and fundamentalism
-Political silences and voices.
-Exiles and migrations
Session 20: Women in Egyptian literature (1) Issues for discussion:
-The male writer’s look: Women in the novels by Naguib Mahfouz
Readings from The Cairo Trilogy
Session 21: Women in Egyptian literature (2) Issues for discussion:
-Women self-portraits
-Women and Islam
Readings of extracts from:
Nawal-El Saadawi: The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World .
Nawal-El Saadawi: Woman at Point Zero
Session 22: Women writers in Algeria
Issues for discussion:
-The role of women in modern Algeria.
-New images for a new millenium.
-Women’s limits and prisons
Reading of extracts from:
Assia Djebar: So Vast the Prison.
Assia Djebar :A Sister to Scherezade.
Session 23: Women writers in Morocco
Issues for discussion:
-Arab women’s “westernization”
Reading of extracts from:
Fatima Mernissi: Sherezade Goes West.
Fatima Mernissi: Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
Alas Clarín, Leopoldo. La Regenta.
Becquer, Gustavo A. Rhymes and Legends.
Djebar, Assia. So Vast the Prison.
-----. A Sister to Scherezade.
García Lorca, Federico. The House of Bernardo Alba.
-----. Yerma.
Gilbert, S. and S. Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New York: Norton, 1987.
Glover, David and Cora Kaplan. Genders. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Ginzburg, Natalia. Night Voices.
Mahfouz, Naguib. The Cairo Trilogy, extracts.
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 1985.
Morante, Elsa. The Story.
Nawal-El Saadawi. The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
Nawal-El Saadawi. Woman at point Zero.
Pérez Galdós, Benito. Fortunata y Jacinta.
Zorrilla, José. Don Juan Tenorio.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own.
Extracts from works by Rosalía de Castro, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Brontë, Soledad Puértolas, Adelaida García Morales, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes, Clara Sánchez, Lucía
Etxebarría, Susana Tamaro, Grazia Deledda, Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Rosa Chacel, Carmen
Martin Gaite.
General
Spanish writers
Italian writers
South Mediterranean writers
Internet Resources
www.mernissi.net
Adelina Sánchez Espinosa is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Granada. She holds B.A.s in English and in Translation Studies from the University of Granada, a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Almería, M.Phil. in English Literature from the University of Birmingham, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Granada. A specialist in women in late Victorian and Modernist fiction, she directs the research group Recepción, modos y géneros de la literatura en lengua inglesa and has been in charge of the University of Granada FEMINAE Publishing Series for Women and Feminist Studies from 2004 to 2009. She has served as Vice-President of AOIFE (the Association of Institutions for Feminist Research in Europe) ; Executive Secretary of the UGR Instituto de Estudios de la Mujer; Director of International Relations at the UGR; Rector’s Representative at the European University Association; Rector’s Representative at the Coimbra group of Universities; Chair of the MED taskforce for Coimbra Group Mediterranean Affairs; Chair of the Student Mobility Group at the Meeting of Mediterranean Ministers of Education (Catania 2003); and University of Granada representative at the EU Socrates Network “ATHENA” (Feminist Women’s Studies in Europe). She has recently been appointed as a member of the Board of Experts for the ESF (European Science Foundation).