The books read in this course vary somewhat from term to term.
Readings by Class Session
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Introduction Film “A Veiled Revolution” |
Required Readings Rifaat, Alifa. Distant View of the Minaret. New York: Quartet Books, 1983. Supplementary Readings Allende, Isabel. “Pinochet Without Hatred.” The New York Times (January 17, 1999): 25-27. Garibay, Ricardo. “Pablo Neruda’s Funeral.” New York: Entelechy Press Corp., 1973. (transcript of recording of funeral) |
| 2 | Distant View of the Minaret |
Required Readings Distant View of the Minaret. (cont.) Supplementary Readings Crossette, Barbara. “Testing the Limits of Tolerance as Cultures Mix: Does Freedom Mean Accepting Rituals that Repel the West?” The New York Times (March 6, 1999): A15, and A17. Inda, Jules. “Behind the Veil Debate.” Utne Reader (March/April 1992): 23-24. Lerner, George. “To Us, Women’s Liberation is the Unveiling of the Mind.” The Progressive (April 1992): 32-35. Thompson, Ginger. “No U.S. Asylum for a Woman Threatened with Genital Cutting.” The New York Times (April 25, 1999): 27-28. |
| 3 | Distant View of the Minaret (cont.) |
Required Readings El Saadawi, Nawal. Woman at Point Zero. New Jersey: Zed Books, 1983. |
| 4 |
Woman at Point Zero Teaching Group |
Required Readings Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Oxford: Heinemann, 1989. Supplementary Readings Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Dallal, Jenine Abboushi. “The Perils of Occidentalism: How Arab Novelists are Driven to Write for Western Readers.” The Islamic World (April 24, 1998): 8-9. Gocek, Fatma Muge, and Shiva Balaghi, eds. Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. |
| 5 | Woman at Point Zero (cont.) |
Required Readings So Long a Letter. (cont.) |
| 6 | So Long a Letter |
Supplementary Readings Esonwanne, Uzo. “Enlightenment Epistemology and ‘Aesthetic Cognition’: Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter.” The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature. pp. 82-100. Nnaemeka, Obioma. “Urban Spaces, Women’s Places: Polygamy as Sign in Mariama Bâ’s Novels.” The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature. pp. 162-191. |
| 7 | So Long a Letter (cont.) |
Required Readings Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. London: Women’s Press, 2001. |
| 8 | Nervous Conditions |
Required Readings Nervous Conditions. (cont.) Supplementary Readings Basu, Biman. “Trapped and Troping: Allegries of the Transnational Intellectual in Tsitsi Dangaremba’s Nervous Conditions." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 28, no. 3 (July 1997): 7-24. Gorle, Gilian. “Fighting the Good Fight: What Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions Says About Language and Power.” Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions: Language and Power. pp. 179, and 192. Moyana, Rosemary. “Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions: an Attempt in the Feminist Tradition.” Zambezia. 1994, XXI (1), pp. 23-42. Nair, Supriya. “Melancholic Women: The Intellectual Hysteric(s) in Nervous Conditions.” Research in African Literatures. pp. 130-139. Uwakweh, Pauline A. “Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality of Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.” Research in African Literatures. pp. 75-84. |
| 9 | Nervous Conditions (cont.) |
Required Readings Nervous Conditions. (cont.) |
| 11 | Nervous Conditions (cont.) |
Required Readings Altman, David. “For Chinese Women’s Ears Only.” The Christian Science Monitor. 11 Oct. 1995. Barlow, Tani E., ed. Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Book Reviews: “The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices.” The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, and Kirkus Review. Chinese History: Time line: 1921- present. Dai, Jinhua, and Mayfair Yang. “A Conversation with Huang Shuqing.” Positions. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995, pp. 790-805. Liu, Kang, and Tang Xiobing, eds. Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Liu, Lydia. “The Female Body and Nationalist Discourse: The Field of Life and Death Revistied.” In Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Edited by Inderpal Grewal, and Caren Kaplan. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, pp. 37-62. Confucius. The Analects. (Selections) Teng, Jinhua Emma. “The Construction of the ‘Traditional Chinese Woman’ in the Western Academy: A Critical Review.” Signs (Autumn, 1996): 115-151. Wolf, Margery, and Roxanne Witke, eds. Women in Chinese Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. “Women in China: Free Market Outcasts.” Revolutionary Worker Online. Yang, Gladys. “A New Woman Writer Chen Rong and Her Story ‘At Middle Age.’” In Chinese Literature. Vol. 10. Beijing, China, 1980. |
| 12 |
Chinese Short Stories Teaching Group |
Required Readings Yang, Gladys. “A New Woman Writer Chen Rong and Her Story ‘At Middle Age’.” In Chinese Literature 10, 1980. Beijing, China. |
| 13 | Chinese Film |
Required Readings Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003. Film To Live. Directed by Zhang Yimou. Woman, Demon, Human. Directed by Huang Shuqing. |
| 14 |
Oryx and Crake Teaching Group |
Required Readings Oryx and Crake._(cont.) |
| 15 | Oryx and Crake (cont.) |
Required Readings Oryx and Crake. (cont.) |
| 17 | Margaret Atwood in Class |
Required Readings Xinran. The Good Women of China. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. |
| 18 |
The Good Women of China Teaching Group |
Required Readings The Good Women of China.(cont.) |
| 19 | The Good Women of China (cont.) |
Required Readings Allende, Isabel. House of the Spirits. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. |
| 20 |
House of the Spirits Teaching Group |
Required Readings House of the Spirits. (cont.) |
| 21 | House of the Spirits (cont.) |
Required Readings House of the Spirits. (cont.) |
| 22 | House of the Spirits (cont.) |
Required Readings House of the Spirits. (cont.) |
| 23 | House of the Spirits (cont.) |
Required Readings House of the Spirits. (cont.) |
| 25 | Japanese Films |
Required Readings Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen. New York: Grove Press, 1993. Supplementary Readings Carter, Albert H. “Review of Kitchen.” Studies in Short Fiction (1993): 614-615. Gelb, Joyce, and Marian Lief Palley, eds. Women of Japan and Korea: Continuity and Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Fujimura-Fanselow, Kumiko, and Atsuko Kameda, eds. Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future. New York: City University of New York Feminist Press, 1995. Garrison, Deborah. “Day-O!” New Yorker 68 (January 25, 1993): 109. Iwao, Sumiko. The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. Kristof, Nicholas D. “In Japan, Brutal Comics for Women.” The New York Times (November 5, 1995): 1, and 6. Kusaka, Kimindo. “Do Japanese women Want Total Equality?” Economic Eye (June, 1984): 19-21. Strauss, Neil. “A Japanese TV Show That Pairs Beauty and Pain.” The New York Times (July 14, 1998): 2. Section E. Tolbert, Kathryn. “Career or Motherhood: Harsh Choice in Japan.” International Herald Tribune (Aug. 15, 2000.) |
| 26 |
Kitchen Teaching Group |
Required Readings Yoshimoto, Banana. “Moonlight Shadows.” In Kitchen. New York: Grove Press, 1993. |
| 27 | Moonlight Shadows |
Required Readings “Moonlight Shadows” (cont.) |
| 28 |
Last Day of Class Final Discussion |
none |
