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Mary Shelley and Gender Construction 2019 1 English 4014 FAO: Mary Shelley and Gender Construction 2019 Course Location: OA 2014 Class Times: Monday and Wednesday 1:00-2:30 Prerequisites: Four FCEs in English, or permission of the Chair of the Department Notes: May only be taken by Honours students or with permission of the Chair of the Department. English 4014 counts toward fulfillment of the Area 2 requirement. Table of Contents Instructor Information: .............................................................................................. 1 Calendar Description ................................................................................................. 1 Course Description .................................................................................................... 2 Learning Outcomes ................................................................................................... 2 Course Resources ..................................................................................................... 2 Required Course Texts ............................................................................................. 2 Course Website ........................................................................................................ 5 Course Schedule ....................................................................................................... 5 Assignments and Evaluation .................................................................................... 7 Assignment Policies ................................................................................................. 7 Assignment Details......................................…………………………………………….9 Preparation and Participation ............................................................................... 9 Seminar Presentation ........................................................................................... 9 Essay Preparation Materials ................................................................................. 7 Final Research Essay ......................................................................................... 11 Creative Alternative to Research Essay…………………………………………… 11 Marking Standards .................................................................................................. 11 Collaboration/Plagiarism Rules ............................................................................... 12 Course Policies ........................................................................................................ 12 University Policies ................................................................................................... 12 Instructor Information: Instructor: Dr. Alice den Otter Office: OA 3011 Telephone: 705-330-4008 ext. 2622 Email: [email protected] Office Hours: MW 2:30-3:30, TTH 10-12, or by appointment. Calendar Description An in-depth study of a specific school, concept, or individual thinker in literary and/or cultural theory. The topic of this course will vary but will include a significant Women's Studies component. Students may take multiple sections of this course. 2 Course Description This seminar course focuses on the concept of gender construction in relation to Mary Shelley’s fictional representations. Alongside several short stories and five novels by Shelley (Frankenstein, Mathilda, The Last Man, Lodore, and Falkner), we will be reading excerpts from her mother Mary Wollstonecraft’s theoretical treatise Vindication of the Rights of Woman, as well as other historical, theoretical, and critical texts. Topics to be explored include performativity, identity politics, normative and queer gender relations, and utopian domesticity. As Michael Kimmel points out in The Gendered Society, “Gender is not simply a system of classification, by which biological males and biological females are sorted, separated, and socialized into equivalent sex roles…. When we speak about gender we also speak about hierarchy, power, and inequality, not simply difference” (2). In this course, we will ask and ponder questions such as the following: How are genders shaped, nurtured, and controlled in the Romantic era? How are they represented in Mary Shelley’s writings? How does Shelley reinforce, stretch, or transgress gender boundaries and power relations in her creation of certain characters? What are the political implications of doing so? How well do her narrators and characters perform or question masculine, feminine, or non-binary gender expectations? How do our own gendered assumptions create (un)reasonable expectations for each text? Learning Outcomes By the end of this course, you will be able to • generally articulate and apply gender theories • discuss complexities of gender construction in relation to Mary Shelley’s texts • critically analyze Shelley’s texts in terms of style, content, & historical/social significance • create stimulating questions and participate meaningfully in discussion • identify a viable research question, evaluate resources, and develop a strong original argument with respect to one or two Shelley texts • present oral and written ideas persuasively, with specific support for claims and clear effective prose Course Resources Required Texts Shelley, Mary. Falkner. 1837;rpt. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004. Available at Amazon.ca or online. ---. Frankenstein. 1818 ed. Ed. D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. 3rd. ed. Broadview, 2012. ---. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Broadview, 1997. ---. Mathilda. Ed. Michelle Faubert. Broadview, 2017. ---. The Last Man. Ed. Anne McWhir. Broadview, 1996. 3 Required Online Texts Banerjee, Suparna. “Beyond Biography: Re-Reading Gender in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man.” English Studies, vol.91, no.5, 2010, pp.519-530. journals- scholarsportal- info.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/details/0013838x/v91i0005/519_bbrgimstlm.xml, Accessed 2 September. 2019. Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Blackwell, 2004, pp. 900-911. https://www.academia.edu/12270965/Literary_Theory_- _An_Anthology_Blackwell_Anthologies_by_Julie_Rivkin_and_Michael_Ryan. Accessed 25 July, 2019. Chatterjee, Ranita. “Filial Ties: Godwin’s Doloraine and Mary Shelley’s Writings.” European Romantic Review, vol.18, no.1, 2007, pp.29-41. journals- scholarsportal- info.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/pdf/10509585/v18i0001/29_ftgdamsw.xml. Accessed 2 September, 2019. Cope, Jonas. “Passive and Dynamic Sincerity in Mary Shelley’s Falkner.” Keats- Shelley Journal, vol. 63, 2014, pp. 123-137. https://muse-jhu- edu.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/article/582458/pdf. Accessed 3 September, 2019. Davis, William. “Mathilda and the Ruin of Masculinity.” European Romantic Review, vol.13, no.2, 2002, pp. 175-181. https://journals-scholarsportal- info.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/pdf/10509585/v13i0002/175_matrom.xml. Accessed 2 September, 2019. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship.” The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, Yale UP, 1979, pp. 45-59 [38- 45]. http://www.ricorso.net/tx/Courses/LEM2014/Critics/Gilbert_Gubar/Madwoman_ful l.pdf. Accessed 2 September, 2019. Gilligan, Carol. “Woman’s Place in a Man’s Life Cycle.” In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard UP, 1982, pp.5-23. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275714106_In_A_Different_Voice_Psy chological_Theory_and_Women's_Development/link/540874330cf2bba34c28ff4b /download. Accessed 11 August, 2019. Kristeva, Julia. “Approaching Abjection.” The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia UP, 1982, pp.1-17. thepoeticsseminar.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/approaching_abjection.pdf. Accessed 22 July, 2019. 4 Little, William and Ron McGivern, eds. “Gender, Sex, and Sexuality.” Introduction to Sociology. 1st Canadian ed., Open Stax College, 2012. opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter12-gender-sex-and- sexuality/. Accessed 2 Sept. 2019. Lynch, Eve M. “Trading Places: Mary Shelley’s Argument with Domestic Space.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, vol.3, no.1, 2013, article 2, pp.1-17. scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&h ttpsredir=1&article=1015&context=abo. Accessed Sept 2, 2019. McGavran, James Holt. “’Insurmountable Barriers to Our Union’: Homosocial Male Bonding, Homosexual Panic, and Death on the Ice in Frankenstein.” European Romantic Review, vol.11, no.1, 2000, pp.46-67. journals-scholarsportal- info.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/pdf/10509585/v11i0001/46_btouhmdotiif.xml. Accessed 12 July, 2019. Mellor, Anne K. “Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein.” Romanticism and Feminism, edited by Anne K. Mellor. Indiana UP, 1988, pp.1-15. www.lachsa.net/ourpages/auto/2017/3/1/56583024/Mellor-Possessing- Nature.pdf. Accessed 29 August, 2019. Moore, Melina. “Mary Shelley’s Mathilda and the Struggle for Female Narrative Subjectivity.” Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 65, no.2, 2011, pp. 208-15. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.lakeheadu.ca/article/456488/pdf. Accessed 2 September, 2019. Schӧnfelder, Christa. “A Tragedy of Incest: Trauma, Identity, and Performativity in Mary Shelley’s Mathilda.” Wounds and Words: Childhood and Family Trauma in Romantic and Postmodern Fiction, Transcript Verlag, 2013, pp. 163-202. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxrhq.8. Accessed Sept. 3, 2019. Shelley, Mary. “The False Rhyme.” 1830. Romantic Circles. romantic- circles.org/editions/mws/lastman/falsrhym.htm.
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