ENG 4934 - Fall 2025 - Caputi

Fall
2025
ENG 4934
Senior Seminar in English: Journeys in Women's Literature
Celia Caputi

“ '. . .As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.' ” --Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas From Chaucer's Wife of Bath onward, women who "get around" have been viewed with fascination and loathing by masculinist power, and female mobility (when not enforced by what Gayle Rubin calls "the traffic in women") has been stigmatized, eroticized, exoticized, and demonized. At the same time, having the means to travel—and the intellectual and spiritual freedom travel proffers—can be celebrated as marks of an individual woman's empowerment within a given culture. We will study works by and about women in motion across a broad historical spectrum and from a variety of cultural standpoints. (This course meets the diversity requirement for the LMC track of the English major.)
NB. This course is READING INTENSIVE and adheres to a strict BOOK-ONLY policy. Students are required to purchase hard copies of all assigned readings. Moreover, the use of portable electronic devices in the classroom is strictly prohibited unless authorized by the Office of Accessibility.