Reading Nineteenth-Century Feminisms - ENGL 25232 / GNSE 23144

Disputes about sexual difference set feminist factions against each other during the nineteenth century, as in the present; and, like the feminisms of our own moment, nineteenth-century feminisms diverged sharply on questions about race and racism. This course reads US and British prose from 1850-1915 in order to study the debates that shaped feminist thought during that period. Considering a range of varied feminisms (among them: liberal feminism, difference feminism, eugenic feminism, white feminism, etc.), we'll encounter conflicting arguments about the right to vote, access to education, marriage, mothering, and sex. Authors may include: Anna Julia Cooper, George Eliot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emma Goldman, Frances E.W. Harper, John Stuart Mill, Lucy Parsons, John Ruskin, Mary Arnold Ward, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.