LIT-356 Women and the Enlightenment

This course explores women’s relation to the intellectual and political culture of Enlightenment Britain. We will study how warring ideas about the rights of man shaped conceptions and representations of sexual difference and womanhood over the course of the long eighteenth century. Treating "woman" as a historical category will, in turn, help us to better understand the underlying assumptions and consequences of our own thinking about gender. Primary texts by Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Austen, and Mme de Stael. Feminist scholarship by Nancy K. Miller, Nancy Armstrong, and Toril Moi.

Maximum Enrollment

Standard Course (40)

(Social Structural and Institutional Hierarchies.)

Credits

1

Prerequisite

A 200-level course in Literature

Notes

(History or Theory)