Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0223 - Woman and Poet

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf observed, "[The woman] born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself." What professional and personal challenges have female poets faced throughout history? How have women reconciled societal expectations of 'proper femininity' with the desire to write and publish? How has the marketplace influenced the development of poetry by women? How does the study of gender difference influence the process of reading and analyzing poems? These are some of the many questions this course will address. We will study the lives and works of poets ranging from Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson, to Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Independent Work Writing and Research In this course, students are expected to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.