Week 1: Introducing the Course
We’ll spend this week getting to know each other, the course requirements, and the platforms we’ll be using. We’ll discuss our familiarity with course readings, and I’ll offer a casual lecture-style introduction to traditional and revisionist definitions of Romanticism.
Each of the following units will contain two “no reading” days: one will function as an opportunity for students to share their 3-5 page introductions of a new Romantic-era woman’s text; the other will serve as a day for informal discussion, review, and preparation for the final project. We will negotiate what days work best the first week of classes.
Unit 1: The Gothic
This unit, we’ll look at the ways in which the Gothic, as a genre and as a trope, influenced and was influence by women writing during the Romantic period. What roles do nature and morality take on here? What special challenges do women face when confronted with the Gothic? What does the setting of these works tell us specifically about the relationship of English women with the Gothic?
Novels: The Mysteries of Udolpho; Frankenstein
Poetry/nonfiction: Hemans, Smith, Williams
Unit 2: Sense, Sensibility, and the Romantic Woman
This unit asks us to question the ways women interact with their emotions and the emotional responses of others. Among other concerns, we’ll be paying attention to the contexts in which women express or restrain emotion; display (ir)rational behavior; and react to emotional content. How should we adjust our understanding of the Romantic spirit based on constraints or freedoms women experienced during the period?
Novels: Self-Control; Sense and Sensibility
Poetry/nonfiction: Moore, LEL, Hemans, Baillie, Shelley
Unit 3: The Romantic Woman and Family
Each unit in the course is meant to build on each other, and so finally, we conclude the course by looking into the sphere in which many Romantic women were confined: that of the home. What happens when a woman loses the privilege of a home? Can a woman choose her own home effectively? Who really comes first in the home, and how does the formation of “home” as a concept ground us — and the Romantics — in our understanding of the period?
Novels: Father and Daughter; The Woman of Colour
Poetry/nonfiction: Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Hemans, Baillie
Unit 4: The Final Project
This “unit” will be significantly shorter than the others and will focus on the development, presentation, and review of final projects. We will emphasize collaborative work, experimentation, and curiosity.