We will explore the loud and aggressive work of experimental British, American, and European women writers in light of a growing feminist movement in the early 20th century. The opening of professions, increasing access to college education, the right to vote, and the growing consensus that women should be left unmolested and unchallenged in public spaces (if not yet, even now, in the “public sphere”) coincided with the emergence of a literary movement that aimed to overturn conventions of writing, reading, living and loving as a woman. “Arrant” feminism, wild surrealism, manifesto and prose-poetic forms – our readings will get abrasive and weird! Taking back the “roar” of the early twentieth century from its associations with the supposed mindlessness and glitzy excess of the 1920s, we will celebrate the wicked smarts and talents of women writers of the day.

Djuna Barnes, Nightwood 0811216713

Marguerite Duras, The Lover 0375700528

Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark 0393311465

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas 067972463X

Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography 015670160X

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own 0156787334