2006-2007 Course Description:
This course introduces students to the body of literature being produced by black women writers in the Caribbean , Canada and the United States after the 1970s. The course argues that while black women writers directly engage the particular concerns of their individual societies, their work out of necessity speaks to and across a larger body of writing. In confronting racism and sexism, they (re)define black female identities and engage a critical cross-cultural dialogue about black women’s lives in the Americas .
Using the writings of Caribbean women as its primary focus, the course attempts to locate Caribbean women’s writing within a larger tradition that reads the texts of black women writers as cross-border mediations. As cross-cultural dialogue, these works connect the lives of black women across the diaspora and name empowering alternatives for their survival. Rather than organizing the works of these women geographically, the course attempts, then, to read their writing as part of a historical and literary continuum within the African diaspora in the Americas . This shared diasporic sensibility, the course argues, allows women to recognize their differences, even while it facilitates their meeting through coalition and partnership.
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Format:
The course comprises one three-hour seminar over 13 weeks in the fall term.
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Required Readings:
Brodber, Erna. Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home .
Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved.
Philip, Marlene Nourbese. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks.
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Suggested Readings
Christian, Barbara. “The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism.” Reading Black, Reading Feminist Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York : Meridian , 1990. 44-51.
Davies, Carole Boyce. Black Women Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London : Routledge, 1994.
Davies, Carole Boyce and Elaine Savory Fido. Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature . Trenton , New Jersey : Africa World Press, 1990.
The books required for the course are available at the York University Bookstore. A required kit of duplicated readings is also available at the York Bookstore. The books to be purchased are marked with an asterisk (*) in the reading list. All other material is available in the course kit.
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Introduction & Overview
Diaspora and Gender: Black Women’s Writing in the Caribbean , Canada and the United States
Week 1, September 7
Introduction to the Course
Week 2, September 14
Black Women and Feminist Discourse I
bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory.” In The Black Feminist Reader Malden , Massachusetts : Blackwell Publishers, 2000. 131-145.
Njoke Nathani Wane, “Black-Canadian Feminist Thought: Drawing on the Experiences of My Sisters.” In Back to the Drawing Board: African-Canadian Feminisms. Eds. Njoki Nathani Wane et al. Toronto : Sumach Press, 2002. 29-53.
Week 3, September 21
Black Women and Feminist Discourse II
Patricia Mohammed. “Towards Indigenous Feminist Theorizing in the Caribbean .” In Feminist Review 59 (1998) 74-85.
Carole Boyce Davies, “Migratory Subjectivities: Black Women’s Writing and the Re-negotiation of Identities.” In Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London : Routledge, 1994. 1-37.
Slavery as Trauma
Week 4, September 28
Black Women and the Trauma of Slavery
Film: Sankofa (1995)
Guest Facilitator: Ms. Julie Crooks
Brenda E. Stevenson. “Gender Convention, Ideals, and Identity Among Antebellum Virginia Slave Women.” In Black Women and Slavery in the Americas : More Than Chattel. Eds. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1996. 169-190.
Week 5, October 5
Motherhood and Womanhood Denied I
* Toni Morrison, Beloved
Week 6, October 12
Motherhood and Womanhood Denied II
* Toni Morrison, Beloved
(Dis)Ease, Fragmentation and Women’s Healing
Week 7, October 19
Education, Colonialism and Middle-Class Anxiety
Olive Senior, “Socialization and Gender-Role Learning.” In Working Miracles: Women’s Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean. London: James Currey, 1991. 25-43.
* Erna Brodber, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home
Week 8, October 26 [Literature Review Due]
Dismembered Selves: Locating Colour, Class and Race
* Erna Brodber, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home
Week 9, November 2
Writing Black Women’s Sexuality
Film: The Life and Times of Sara Baartman (1998)
Barbara Bush, “‘The Eye of the Beholder”: Contemporary European Images of Black Women.” In Slave Women in Caribbean Society Kingston: Heinemann Publishers, 1990. 11-22.
Patricia Hill Collins, “The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood.” In Black Feminist Thought. New York : Routledge, 2000. 123-148.
* Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
Week 10, November 9
Loving Men and Loving Ourselves
Patricia Hill Collins, “Black Women’s Love Relationships.” In Black Feminist Thought. New York : Routledge, 2000. 149-172.
* Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
The Woman As Artist
Week 11, November 16
Writing in a Mother Tongue
* M. Nourbese Philip, “The Absence of Writing or How I Almost Became a Spy.” In She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. 10-25.
M. Nourbese Philip, “Managing the Unmanageable.” In Caribbean Women Writers . Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley , Massachusetts : Calaloux Publications, 1990. 295-300.
* M. Nourbese Philip, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks . 51-99.
Week 12, November 23
Writing as Women's Healing
Film: Daughters of the Dust (1992)
Opal Palmer Adisa, “A Writer/Healer: Literature, A Blueprint for Healing.” In Healing Cultures: Art and Religion as Curative Practices in the Caribbean and Its Diaspora. Eds. Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. New York : Palgrave, 2001. 179-193.
Week 13, November 30 [Research Essay Due]
Course Summary and Review
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Journal/Learning Portfolio: Students will be required to keep a journal over the thirteen weeks of the course to help them record their own approaches to learning. They will make weekly entries into their journals, which will serve as critical responses to the assigned readings as well as records of their own responses to class discussions, lectures, films and any other learning opportunities in the course. They will also include in their journals any external material/experiences related to discussions raised in the course.
Literature Review: The literature review will be tied to the major essay. Students will identify early in the term an area of research interest and choose a major fictional work from the course around which to develop their themes. They will be required in the literature review to summarize the available literature directly related to their interest (books, anthologies, journal articles, interviews) and demonstrate how their major essay will draw on and contribute to this body of research.
The Research Essay is a 14-16 page essay (3500-4000 words) that will require you to define your own research topic around one of the novels or the collection of poems used in the course. This essay will ask you to examine a wide range of material (books, anthologies, journal articles, interviews and reviews) to provide a comprehensive discussion of your research topic, as well as offer your own carefully thought through analysis.
Participation will be based on attendance in tutorials, contribution to tutorial discussions and ability to relate tutorial discussions to the broader concerns of the course.
Assignments received later than the due date will be penalized one-half letter grade per day that they are late. I will consider exceptions to the lateness penalty for valid reasons such as illness and on other compassionate grounds, only when supported by written documentation (e.g., a doctor’s note).
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Enrolment and Drop Deadlines
Last date to enroll without permission of the instructor: September 21, 2006
Last date to enroll with permission of the instructor: October 6, 2006
Last date to drop course without receiving a grade: November 10, 2006
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