Gender Project

WS 2010/2011, Wed 10-12

Proseminar

This seminar will do two things at once: It will provide you with an introduction to feminist theory and at the same time show you how feminist theory has been applied to literature and how it can enable you to read literary texts through different theoretical lenses. Consequently, we will read theoretical texts alongside literary works. Our survey will start with excerpts from Kate Millet’s pioneering work of feminist literary criticism, Sexual Politics (1970) read alongside excerpts of Norman Mailer’s novel An American Dream (1965) and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s classic The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) read alongside Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). We will then cover theory which, at first sight, does not seem to have much to do with literature, such as Andrea Dworkin’s criticism of pornography, or Judith Butler’s theory of the performativity of gender, sex, and sexuality and read it against literary texts; and move on towards texts in which literature and theory merge, such as Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body. The seminar will also familiarize you with different schools of feminist (literary) theory and introduce you to central concepts of feminist literary criticism, such as the female Bildungsroman or the engaging narrator.
Texts: Please read Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847) by the beginning of the semester. Other literary texts will be assigned; theoretical texts will be made available in a reader.

WS 2010/2011, Mon 4-6

Proseminar

The relationship between language and gender has long been a matter of interest within sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and other related disciplines. From the 1960s onwards, research into language and gender has fallen into two main strands: the study of sexism or sexist bias in language, and the study of ‘gendered’ language or the influence of gender as a social variable in speech and writing. Linguistics has been predominantly preoccupied with the second strand of research, making use of quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover differences between women’s and men’s speaking styles and the specific features of their language use in a variety of contexts.

The aim of this course is to introduce the main topics in gender and language research from a sociolinguistic and a quantitative perspective. We will investigate classic sociolinguistic problems like how and why women and men speak differently from a phonological, lexical and grammatical point of view, whether or not women use more ‘prestige’ language features and are more polite than men, as well as the interaction between ‘gender’ as a social variable and other social variables like social class, ethnicity and social networks. Furthermore, we will review the major theoretical debates on the way language reproduces and constructs gender, but also challenges existing gender ideologies and practices.

In order to analyse the relationship between language and gender empirically, we will carry out small gender-related projects, making use of various types of data – interviews, written material, speech transcriptions, as well as electronic corpora. By the end of this seminar, students are expected to 1) have a solid theoretical foundation in sociolinguistic and quantitative approaches to language and gender research; 2) conduct a small research project on the basis of spoken or written material of their choice, using one of the research methodologies presented in this seminar.

Prerequisites: Successful completion of the Linguistics Grundkurs and willingness to analyse language empirically with e.g. corpus and transcription software in a computer lab.

Reading:
Jennifer Coates (ed.), Language and Gender: a Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)
Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003).
Additional resources will be made available on closed reserve in the library. A detailed bibliography will be handed out during the first session.

Registration: this class is limited to 40 students. Please register with FlexNow.

Credit: Ungraded: regular attendance, active participation, and a written assignment.
Graded: in addition to the above, a project presentation and a project paper or final exam.
Exam Period: Final exam to be written on: 14.02.2011; project paper to be handed in no later than 15.03.2011.

WS 2010/2011, Wed 2-4
Hauptseminar

What attracts readers again and again to the plot of a woman who is attracted to a dangerous man, who in the course of the story is reformed by LOVE into being a veritable prince? Why do such novels, which often feature a woman in a low-cut dress being forcefully embraced by a bare-chested man, attract so much ridicule that their readers feel it is necessary to hide their covers? What stories do these novels tell us about the culture we life in and its competing ideologies? Do they reinforce the idea that a woman’s quest in life is simply to wait passively for the real adventure of her life to begin in the form of a romance with an attractive, but somewhat villainous man? Or, do they enable women to negotiate the realities of patriarchy? Why is the figure of the Byronic hero and his plucky yet vulnerable counterpart familiar to us even if we have never read romance fiction? Why has romance traditionally been considered less valuable than, for instance, realism?

Romance lovers and romance haters are invited to answer some of these questions with me, as we look at similarities between romances such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2005). Our readings will include theoretical texts and anti-romances.

WS 2010/2011,

Oral and Written Communication II: Lektürekurs

To begin their second module, students will be given the opportunity in this course to put to good use what they learned throughout their Introductory Language Module and have studied independently since then. Presuming them to have a strong grasp of all the grammar, vocabulary, and transferable skills covered in that module, this course seeks to give students an insight into “Travelling Women’: Construction of Gender in Indian Women’s Writing.” By focusing on language patterns in two novels and a short story by three contemporary women writers of Indian origin, this course aims to address the representation of ‘travelling women’ in literature. The course demonstrates how Empire and globalisation as the biggest historical and social phenomena are conducive to encouraging people especially women from India, from the Caribbean, from Britain, to name but a few, to leave their homeland in search of love, adventure, a better life, or merely self-knowledge. How women characters undertake this search as they make a journey to unknown lands will be our main concern in relation to the construction of gender within the domain of literature. Furthermore, how these travelling women represent new cultural reconfigurations across fixed ‘national’ and geographical borders while contending with local and foreign cultures, sexuality and moral ethos, individuality and family norms. We will thus discuss these texts as an interesting medium of depicting the female protagonists as caught between different countries and continents on the one hand; and of offering profound reflections on present-day cultural translations on the other. Through this cultural focus, the course aims to hone students’ skills in comprehension and logical thinking, to fine-tune their spoken language through presentation as well as discussion, and systematically to eliminate linguistic errors commonly made by German students of English.

Prerequisites:

(Modularised students) Modul: Introductory Language (and Communication) Course

There are no prerequisites for non-modularised students.

Reading:

The following novels and films will be used in this course:

1. “The Namesake” (2003) by Jhumpa Lahiri (novel/film)

2. “Heat and Dust” (1975) by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (novel/film)

3. “Jasmine” (1998) by Bharathi Mukherjee (short story)

Credit:

Ungraded: regular attendance, active participation as well as completion of homework every week, and preparation and presentation of the lesson in one week of the semester

Graded: in addition to the above, a written final exam

Exam Period:

second-last week of semester

WS 2010/2011, Tue 4-6

“But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.” (E.M. Forster)

Some of the mysteries that surround and inhabit our physique and their attending discourses will be the center of attention in this seminar. How do we perceive, experience, perform our bodies? Why are Westerners so obsessed with their looks, enhance some attributes – cleavage, muscles, hair – and hide others such as excrements, blood, or fat? And what have eventually literature and culture got to do with it?

Assorted texts include Hélène Cixous’ understanding of écriture féminine, poetry by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich and Audré Lorde, “A Cyborg Manifesto” from Donna Harraway and other diverse textual (look forward to some theory…) and visual evidence of body representation up to the 21^st century.

Students are asked to read and think!

Prerequisites:

Interest in and basic knowledge of textual analysis and interpretation; a body.

Reading:

Yes (see above and more).

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