This course treats literary texts and criticism by and about women published in the U.S. since the 1980s. Focusing on the themes of history, memory, and identity, our comparative analyses of texts will pay particular attention to their use of style, form, structure, point of view, and voice to render a "girl's eye" presentation of these themes in contexts of (im)migration, displacement, sexual violence, revolution, and war. To one degree or another, each of our literary texts represents the formation of girlhood at the collision points of class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. We will conduct close readings of novels, short stories, and graphic narratives in order to explicate how they revision and remember the intersectional formation of gendered identities, taking care to historically contextualize the girlhoods that we treat.

Texts may include Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.

Course Requirements:

Active participation in class discussion, quizzes, short papers, online reading responses, group presentation, final paper.

Class Format:

Lecture and discussion