SP 401 Fall 2010 Class #7 1. Discussion: Ida B. Wells: Passion for Justice: feminism/women’s rights activism, womanism, humanism: conceptualizing the politics of race and gender 2. The Female Mind and Body: Contested Terrain in 19th Century America a. Backlash, Biological Essentialism and the 19th Century Women’s Rights Movement: Medical Discourses of Womanhood in the 19th Century. b. The Anti-Suffragists and “Woman’s Place”: the threat of suffrage and jury service c. The Debate about Women’s Place in Higher Education and the Professions- Edward Clarke d. The Growth of Women’s Colleges and Co-Education e. The Conflict Within: “Hysteria” and Women’s Roles in the 19th Century (Smith-Rosenberg)-Writing Exercise 3. Resistance or Illness? Discourses of Women, Violence and Madness: The Case of Lizzie Borden (1892) 4. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) a. Gilman’s biography b. The Yellow Wallpaper in the context of her nonfiction and fiction writing (e.g..Women and Economics (1898), Human Work ( 1904), The Man-Made World (1911), Herland (1915) c. Interpretive debates around this text and around the question of women and madness; is this a “feminist” text? d. Meaning of this text in the contemporary period; relationship to other accounts of madness (e.g. Susanna Kaysen- Girl, Interrupted, William Styron- Darkness Visible, Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar)MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu SP.401 / WGS.401 Introduction to Women's and Gender StudiesFall 2010 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit:
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