ENGLISH 65N: Contemporary Women Writers (Stanford Introductory Seminar) Taught by: Elizabeth Tallent Fall Quarter, 2009-2010 TTh 1:15-3:05, Room: Educ229 | According to novelist Nadine Gordimer, one of the writers in our syllabus, fiction “as a form and as a kind of creative vision...must be equipped to attempt the capture of ultimate reality at a time when (whichever way we choose to see it) we are drawing nearer to the mystery of life or losing ourselves in a wilderness of mirrors...” This seminar is interested in groundbreaking work that attempts the “capture of ultimate reality” in our time. In a story dealing with the aftermath of 9/11, one of Deborah Eisenberg’s characters thinks: “One kept waiting for that shattering day to unhappen, so that the real—the intended—future, the one that had been implied by the past, could unfold.” Given the exigencies of this new century, the writers in our syllabus can’t afford to be blind to the refractions and illusions of the “wilderness of mirrors,” just as they can’t afford to idealize “the mystery of life,” though special knowledge of that mystery has often been ascribed to women. How, then, do these writers resist convention while portraying intimacy, sexuality, love, and child-rearing? On the other hand, how do they handle subjects traditionally the province of male writers, like war, torture, violence, exile? Inviting originality and collaboration, this seminar will explore the work of very diverse writers having in common the fact that they are all women who are alive and writing now--and writing in ways that contribute to our contemporary sense of politics domestic and global. This course fulfills the following Major Requirements:
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