Studies in Symbolist and Modern Literature

This course will focus on those texts of post-war French Feminism which had the greatest impact on feminist theory in the United States. While trying to account for the particular reception of Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva and Wittig in the States, we will also have recourse to the philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions within which and against which these writers tried to imagine feminine desire, difference and writing.

Required texts:

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Helene Cixous, The Newly Born Woman

Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman

This Sex Which Is Not One

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror

About Chinese Women

Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind

Nicole Brossard, The Aerial Letter

Clement-Kristeva, The Feminine and the Sacred