ENG 4938 Fall 2020 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 "the traffic in women"--as wives or as slaves) 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. This course is premised on the notion of travel and mobility as feminist issues and focuses on texts by the most well-traveled and esteemed female authors writing in English. Here are some highlights from our reading-list: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea; Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis; Cheryl Strayed, Wild.

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.