Justyna Włodarczyk

Methodologies in American Studies 16.02.2013
Dr. Justyna Włodarczyk
j.wlodarczyk@uw.edu.pl

The Evolution of Feminist Methodologies
for Analyzing 19th-century Constructions of Gender

Reading list

Required reading:

Marianne Noble, “Ecstasy of Apprehension. The Erotics of Domination in The Wide, Wide World, ” The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, 94-113.

Nina Baym, “Form and Ideology,” Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978, 22-50.

Eva Cherniavsky, “The Limits of Liberal Discourse,” “Charlotte Temple’s Remains,” That Pale Mother Rising. Sentimental Discourses and the Imitation of Motherhood in 19th-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, 1-40.

Optional reading (primary texts):
Highly recommended

Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Wide Wide World by Susan Warner

All are freely and legally available online, e.g. at Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org

Optional reading (secondary texts):
Highly recommended

Jane Tompkins. “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History.” Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985, 122-146.

Nira Yuval-Davis, “Women and the Biological Reproduction of the Nation,” “Cultural Reproduction and Gender Relations,” Gender and Nation, London: Sage, 1997, 26-67.

E. Ann Kaplan. “The Historical Sphere. Motherhood as institution and social discourse,” Motherhood and Representation. The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. New York: Routledge, 1992, 17-26.