26044 - FEMINIST METHODOLOGY: INTERDISCIPLINARY METHODS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES - METODOLOGIE FEMMINISTE: INTERDISCIPLINARITA' NEGLI STUDI DI GENERE E DELLE DONNE

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

Lo/la studente sviluppa un'elevata consapevolezza della varietà dei metodi praticati nell'ambito degli studi di genere e delle donne, in una prospettiva interdisciplinare.

Contenuti

“How unpleasant it is to be locked out […] and how it is worse to be locked in”: debates on the literary canon and the rise of feminist literary criticism between second and third wave feminism(s).

Moving from the debates between second and third wave feminism(s), the course will investigate some feminist research methods in literary criticism focusing on how feminist and gender studies challenge the main methodologies employed for the interpretation of literary texts written by both men and women. The course will also discuss the main important manifestos of second wave feminism and the main differences between second and third wave feminism(s). Its aim is to familiarize students with the origins of feminist literary criticism and the methodological debates within women’s and gender studies in a trans-disciplinary perspective. It will explain the notion of re-vision, resisting reading, situated knowledge(s) and multipositionality/intersectionality to enable students to interrogate the canon formation and the processes of inclusion and exclusion of women writers and their access to knowledge and education

The course will be divided into two parts. The first part will introduce students to the main important methodologies in women’s and gender studies with specific reference to the rise of feminist literary criticism and to some manifestos of second and third wave feminism(s) and their temporal rhetoric of ‘awakening’ and ‘space’. It will explore the debates on canon formation and female genealogy and explain the notion of re-vision, resisting reading and situated knowledge. It will also examine the categories of gender, class, ethnicity, race and sexuality and their interconnection.

The second part of the course will be devoted to the close reading of some extracts from emblematic literary texts written by women in different historical moments.

These texts which significantly belong to different literary genre, will be explored to interrogate how women negotiated their agency in the public sphere, in the print market and in the political, economic and social order. They will be also examined to discuss the way in which they resist or perpetuate patriarchy, gender inequality and a heterosexual politic of desire and sexuality. But they will also be interrogated to see how they contributed, together with their interpretation and appropriation across time and space, to place the female self within a specific social order, to define the otherness of race and gender, and to establish relations of power between men and women, but also subjects who become who become geographically, ethnically and culturally distinct.

Testi/Bibliografia

Primary Sources

Margaret Cavendish, The Convent of Pleasure, 1668

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko or the Royal Slave, 1688

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1849

Wide Sargasso Sea, 1969, Jean Rhys

Joan Anim-Addo, Imoinda or She who will lose her name, 2003

Crisafulli, L. M. and Golinelli, G. (eds Women’s Voices and
Genealogies in Literary Studies in English, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2019. (Introduction).

Ferguson, Margaret W., “Juggling the categories of race, class, and gender: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko”, pp. 209-224, in Hendricks Margo and Patricia Parker (eds.) Women, Race and Writing in the Early Modern Period, London, New York, Routledge, 1994.

Figlerowicz, Marta , “Frightful Spectacles of a Mangled King”: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and the Narration Through Theatre”, New Literary History, 2008, vol. 39, pp.321-334.

Friedman, Susan Stanford, “Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies, and Geopolitical Literacy”, available at: http://www.women.it/cyberarchive/files/stanford.htm

Gilbert S. and Gubar S., The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979 (selected chapters).

T. Jankowsky, Pure Resistance: Queer(y)ing Virginity in William Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" and Margaret Cavendish's "The Convent of Pleasure", Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 26, 1998, pp. 218-255.

Haraway, Donna “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599.

Kolodney, A .:

-“Some Notes on Defining a Feminist Literary Criticism”, Critical Inquiry n. 2, 1975, pp. 75-92.

-“Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism”, in E. Showalter (ed.), The New Feminist Criticism. Essays on Women, Literature and Theory, Virago, London, 1989.

Rich, A .:

“When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”, College English, Vol. 34, No. 1, Women, Writing and Teaching, Oct., 1972, pp. 18-30.

-----------“Notes towards a politics of location” (1984), in Blood, Bread and Poetry. Selected prose 1979-1985, London, New York, Norton Company, 1986, pp. 210-231.

-----------“Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman”, in On lies, secret and silence, Selected Prose 1966-1978, Norton and Company, New York and London, 1979, pp. 89-106.

Showalter, E., A Literature of their own: from Charlotte Bronte to Doris Lessing, Virago, London, 1978. “Introduction”.

"Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness", Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 2, Writing and Sexual Difference, (Winter, 1981), pp. 179- 205.

------------- The female malady: women, madness, and English culture: 1830-1980, London Virago, 1987, (selected chapters).

-------------“Women and the Literary Curriculum”, College English, Vol. 32, 1971, pp. 855-662.

Smith, Barbara, “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism”, The Radical Teacher, No. 7 (March, 1978), pp. 20-27

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty , “Three women’s texts and a Critique of Imperialism”, The Feminist Reader, eds by Catherine Belsey and J. Moore, Palgrave McMillan 1989, pp. 148-163.

Walker, Alice “In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South” (1974).

Woolf, Virginia, A Room of one’s Own, 1929.

NB: Bibliography and other information will be provided during the course (and then published on the online reading list and program). Students are requested to check the online program during the course for further notice and information.

Students are requested to analyse 3 primary texts (to be chosen amongst the 5 texts in the Reading list of the primary sources), articles/essays/chapters from the Reading list of the Secondary sources + A Room of one’s Own, 1929 by V. Woolf.

Metodi didattici

The course includes both lessons and seminars with the active participation of the students. Students who cannot attend lessons must contact the lecturer during her office hours, or via e-mail before the end of the course. Students are requested to check the online program also during the course for further notice and information.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Students are requested to analyse 3 primary texts (to be chosen amongst the 5 texts in the Reading list of the primary sources), articles/essays/chapters from the Reading list of the Secondary sources + A Room of one’s Own, 1929 by V. Woolf.

Active participation + presentation: 40 %.

Final oral exams: 60%

The final oral exam will test the student's knowledge of the methodologies employed and her/his ability to combine theories with the analysis of the primary texts chosen. Students are requested to be able to articulate their thought in English and to have an accurate knowledge of the bibliography chosen for the exam. NB: Students are requested to know the primary texts chosen for the exam in great details.

Those students who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during classes, are able to use gender theoretical and methodological tools critically and who master the field-specific language of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence. Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a satisfactory mark. A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a ‘pass' mark. Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the subject matter, inappropriate language use, lack of familiarity with the literature in the program bibliography will not be given a pass mark.

Attendance and class participation will also be assessed as a component of the final overall mark.

Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is suggested that they get in touch as soon as possible with the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en) and with the lecturer in order to seek together the most effective strategies for following the lessons and/or preparing for the examination.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

The Powerpoint files that will be used during the course will be available for students on the Insegnamenti Online website: https://iol.unibo.it/ .

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Gilberta Golinelli