This course will investigate the major concerns of modern and contemporary women writers in England, Ireland, and the United States. We will explore issues such as silence and speech, imprisonment and liberation, gender, the female body, desire, and maternity. In our discussions we will examine various ways in which women writers traverse borders imposed upon them, be they political, social, domestic, or sexual. The course will examine as well the issue of writerly voice and the ways in which women writers develop and present their narrative selves. We will read novels, short stories, poems, essays, and memoirs by Virginia Woolf, Jeanette Winterson, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Naylor, Edna O'Brien, Eavan Boland, and others.
Requirements are one in-class oral presentation, one midterm paper, and one final seminar paper.