Syllabus-From Abolition to Emancipation (Grad Seminar 2024)

2009

This dissertation relates the violence perpetuated by phallogocentric traditions of reading and writing to the violence of appropriating traditional categories of gender and asks whether or not and how texts that resist these traditions might help us change the way we think about identities, our own and others', opening up a space for new and as yet un-thought ways of exchanging texts and the identities they make possible. Focusing on the ways in which Jacques Derrida's Éperons, Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, and Elena Garro's "La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas" and "El árbol" interminably reverse the roles of readers and writers, further disorienting them with the complex blend of genres in their texts and the networks of other texts that they juxtapose with their own, leads to the conclusion that the ultimate revolutionary function of these texts is to be found in the ways that they suspend the processes of appropriation and identification indefinitely, giving time, namely the time of waiting, but also time that is filled with the constant weaving of narratives, maintaining the possibility that a way out of historical cycles of violence, especially the violence of being forced to fit within current categories, might be found. iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Cristina Dahl received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from California State University, Chico in 1997, a Master of Arts Degree in English from California State University, Chico in 2001, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University in 2009. She currently teaches full time in the English Department at Butte Glenn Community College in Oroville, California. Her primary interests lie in comparing historical representations of gender in a variety of different genres and media in European and Mexican culture, including fiction, philosophy, painting, photography, sculpture, and film. She is also interested in the relationship between ethics, hermeneutics, and pedagogy. iv I would like to dedicate this dissertation to Michael and Groverlee Dahl. Without their constant support over the past two years, I could never have completed this project. I would also like to thank Aaron, who continues to inspire me and who patiently and unwaveringly supported me through many years of just reading, writing, and thinking, a gift and a debt that I can never fully return. I would like to thank Lisa Patti, Ana Rojas, and Angela Naimou for showing me what an ideal network of reading and writing can look like, another gift that defies response, and I will be forever grateful. Finally, I would like to thank Jonathan Culler, Ellis Hanson, and Debra Castillo for their thoughtful and thought-provoking feedback on my first draft, which I will continue to take into consideration as I proceed to other projects. I also want to thank them for exposing me to so many rich texts and asking so many provocative questions in the seminars they taught. Again, I hope I may continue to respond to these questions for many years to come. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the graduate school at Cornell University, for the Sage Fellowship that allowed me to focus exclusively on my research during my last year at Cornell and for the Provost's Diversity Fellowship, which also allowed me to take a semester off from teaching to complete that research.

Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism.

A type of literary criticism that became a dominant force in Western Literary studies in the late 1970 ‟ s, feminist theory more broadly conceived was applied to linguistic and literary matters. Since the early 1980 ‟ s, feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in a number of ways and is now characterized by a global perspectives. It is nonetheless important to understand differences among the interests and assumptions of French, British and North America,(United States and Canada), feminist critics writing during the 1970 „ s, and early 1980 „ s, given the context to which their works shaped the evolution of contemporary feminist critical discourse.

1989

Preface - Acknowledgements - Introduction: The Story So Far C.Belsey & J.Moore - Women and Literary History D.Spender - The True Story of How I Became My Own Person R.Coward - Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks T.Morrison - Queer Desire in The Well of Loneliness L.Pouchard - The Difference of View M.Jacobus - Representing Women: Re-presenting the Past G.Beer - Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays H.Cixous - Feminist, Female, Feminine T.Moi - Women and Madness: the Critical Phallacy S.Felman - Promises: the Fictional Philosophy in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman J.Moore - Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism C.Spivak - Cross-dressing, Gender and Representation: Elvis Presley M.Garber - Feminism and the Postmodern: Theory's Romance D.Elam - Women's Time J.Kristeva - The Looking Glass, from the Other Side L.Irigaray - Summaries and Notes - Glossary - Suggestions for Further Reading - Notes on Contributors - Index

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, 2012

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Feminist Review, 1987

David Publishing Company, 2020

Feminist literary theory underpins literature from matriarchal perspective revolting against prototype patriarchal ritual i.e. established dogmatism, superstition, close-eyed religious propaganda, language engineering and so forth. It questions the textual politics of dissipating womankind in literature. It shatters long-cherishing outlook of gender inequality, gender politics, power relation, sexual objectification, oppression, patriarchy, stereotyping and so on. In this connection, this theory sees women along with their experiences, thinking, language, position and role playing, cultural conditioning, diction, and above all, matriarchal assertion in literature. Feminist literary criticism has been generated from feminism and the basic aim of the theory is to investigate and trace out how female characters have been positioned in literature compared with male characters in terms of social and biological factors of different ages of the past started from antiquity. Feminist literary theory has also deconstructed texts from two different perspectives i.e. text written by men and text written by women. This paper attempts to evalualte feminist literary criticism as a subtle machinery or paradigm of matriarchy not only in avant-garde but also in old texts of literature.