ENGLISH 2353/55162: WOMEN'S LITERATURE: Fall 2010
TTH 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. FAC 315
SHARON KLANDER, Ph.D.
Office: FAC 206: (713) 718-6626 (voice mail) or (713) 718-6671 (English Dept.)
Office Hours: By appointment
Tutoring Lab Hours: MW 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: FAC 321B sharon.klander@hccs.edu
Course Description:
An introductory study of literature written by women, with an emphasis on the contexts of women's writing, including: (1) the history, tradition, and forms of women's writing; (2) religious and patriarchal assumptions, including those found in dualistic thought and language; (3) the relationship of male and female characters to the land, to "Mother Earth," if you will; and (3) strategies of coding in women's literature. Furthermore, as with any literature course, this class will familiarize students with the multiple methods of critical analysis of literary texts, including (1) deconstruction, (2) psychology, (3) feminism, (4) new historicism, and (5) Marxism.
Goals for Students:
(1) Explain and illustrate stylistic characteristics of representative works by writers of the female literary tradition in English from the Middle Ages to the present.
(2) Connect representative works of these writers to human and individual values in historical and social contexts.
(3) Demonstrate knowledge of the works of writers from the female literary tradition in
English.
(4) Analyze critical texts relating to the works of writers from the female literary tradition in English.
(5) Critique and interpret representative works of writers from the female literary tradition in English.
Required Text:
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 3rd Edition, Gilbert & Gubar, eds.
Required Work:
Readings, as assigned--VERY IMPORTANT!!! Please come to class prepared to discuss the assigned readings from the text as well as all handouts provided in class. You may be quizzed on these readings. I reserve the right to ask students who have not completed the required readings to leave the classroom to finish the work in the library;

after this, they may return to class and participate fully in discussion of the material. I believe this to be fair to the students who have completed the assignment.
IMPORTANT: The HCCS Student Handbook suggests that you spend no fewer than 2 hours (3 hours preferred) outside of class on homework for every hour spent in class-which means, of course, a range of 6-15 hours outside the classroom. Please include this time in your schedule of other classes, your work inside and outside the home, and/or your family schedules.
Weekly Personal Reaction Essays (500 words each--2 pages double spaced or 1 page single-spaced) for which you will receive credit and which, altogether, will count 10% of your grade.
1 st Issues Essay (minimum 5 pages; 20%): The basis for this essay resides in your interpretation of a selection of non-fiction prose and poetry (no fewer than 2 essays and 2 poems) which focuses on various perspectives of how literature works to make the woman writer manifest on the page—how literature can be seen as Logos or the Creative Word and how these women describe that turn in their lives when they begin to understand that process through metaphor, re-definition of language, both coded and uncoded speech, and their relationships to cultural constructs of sexism, racism, and classism. The readings for this essay include: “The Prologue” (Bradstreet 147), “The Introduction” (Finch 238), excerpts from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft 370), “Ain’t I a Woman?”
(Truth 510), poems Nos. 307, 445, 458, 533, 764, and handouts (Dickinson 1037), “A Room of
One’s Own” and “Professions for Women” (Woolf 237, 244), “Feminist Manifesto” (Loy
255), “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (Huston 357), “On Being Young—a Woman—and
Colored” (Bonner 524), “An Introduction” (Das—handout), “My Sisters, O My Sisters”
(Sarton 638), “Dark Blood” and “Lineage” (Walker 717, 718), “Her Kind” (Sexton 919),
“Poets in the Kitchen” (Marshall 955), “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” “Snapshots of a Daughterin-Law,” “Diving into the Wreck,” and “Cartographies of Silence” (Rich 965, 970, and handout), “Words” and “Edge” (Plath 1064, 1065), “Coal” and “Now That I Am Forever
With Child” (Lorde 1070, 1072), “Poem about Police Violence” (Jordan 1095), “my dream about being white” (Clifton 1121), “Woman Writer: Theory and Practice” (Oates— handout), “Spelling” and “Marsh Languages” (Atwood 1205, 1209), “The Management of
Grief” (Mukherjee 1238), “Tlilli, Tlapalli/The Path of the Red and Black Ink” (Anzaldúa
1254), “Rite of Passage” and “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party” (Olds 1280, 1281), and “In
Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” (Walker 1295).
Biographical Oral Presentation (10 minutes minimum): 10%
Religious Text Rewrite (prose or poetry): 10%
Annotated Bibliography: 10%
2 nd Issues Essay (minimum 5 pgs.; 20%): Topic to be discussed with me.
Take-Home Comprehensive Final Exam : 20%

Grading Standards:
The evaluation of written work in English 2353 will follow the same standards which govern grading of written work in other sophomore-level English courses. A paper, for example, which describes the obvious meaning of a piece of literature will not receive more than a "C" at the sophomore level; written work which merits a "B" or an "A" will exhibit more sophisticated levels of understanding and a higher quality of composition. The following letter grades will be used:
A (90-100) = Exceptionally fine work: superior in mechanics, style, and content
B (80-89) = Above-average work: superior in one or two areas-- mechanics, style, or content
C (70-79) = Average work: good, unexceptional
D (60-69) = Below-average work: noticeably weak in mechanics, style, and content
F (0-59) = Failing work: clearly deficient in mechanics, style, and content
General Course Policy:
1. All course work must be completed in order to earn at least a passing grade.
2. Attendance will be taken. Excessive absences may affect your final grade. Bear in mind that HCC policy allows for students to be dropped after missing 6 hours of class time (4 class sessions).
3. All papers will be typed in MLA (Modern Language Association) form. Please fasten your papers with a single staple in the upper left-hand corner; do not put them in any type of plastic or paper folder. Please keep a hard copy (paper, not disc) of any paper you turn
in.
4. Any first instance of plagiarism will result in automatic failure of the assignment. Any additional instance of plagiarism will result in automatic failure of the course.
SCHOLASTIC DISHONESTY: According to the 1993-94 Student Handbook for the
Houston Community College System, scholastic dishonesty includes cheating on a test, plagiarism, and collusion:
* cheating on a test--copying from someone else's paper or using unauthorized materials during a test;
* plagiarism--using another person's words, information, or ideas in your own written work without appropriate acknowledgement (and quotation marks when exact words are used);
* collusion--"unauthorized collaboration" (35)