HUM 332 - Shakespeare’s Sister

Shakespeare’s female contemporaries found the means to write poetry, plays, short stories, and other forms of literature. Given that they did so at a time when patriarchal prescriptions against public forms of female expression were at their most absolute, literary scholars have had to ask new questions. Rather than exploring the conditions that limited women from writing, they now ask how it was that so many women were able to gain access to the tools and strategies necessary to become authors. What strategies did they use to circumvent commands that they stick to the needle rather than taking up the pen? What constitutes authorship and what a literary text? And why was it that, in a surprising number of cases, women actually helped construct the cultural milieus which were previously said to oppress them? Letter grade with Pass/No Pass option. (Offered spring semester, alternate years.) 3 credits