Images of Women

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• critical responses to the authors studied
• images of women in literary and psychological texts of the period in the context of changing roles and women’s perceptions of self
• the literary, historical and cultural contexts of the works of the chosen writers

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• employ an understanding of the theoretical debates on feminist theory and, in particular, on sexuality, identity and hysteria
• evaluate critically a range of textual material
• contextualise the work of the writers studied and consider critical responses to it
• analyse key concepts and ideas

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• use your research to draw on a wide variety of secondary and supplementary sources
• write critically, accurately and in some depth on a range of views

In this module you will study a number of fictional works as well as psychoanalytical texts paying specific attention to changing images of women in differing historical and cultural contexts in the US and Europe between 1880 and 1940. Themes such as female subjectivity, racial identity and female sexuality will be consolidated and developed through detailed textual and theoretical analysis. In addition, you will be analysing developments in medical discourse on gender and mental pathology, e.g. hysteria, underpinned by Freudian, contemporary feminist and psychoanalytic theory. The primary literature studied may include: Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, Kate Chopin, The Awakening, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Mrs Dalloway, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God, Sigmund Freud, Dora.

Teaching methods include

• background lectures
• seminars
• independent study

Learning activities include

• close reading and careful analysis of selected texts and themes
• engagement in seminar discussions as participator and listener
• preparation for and completion of two coursework essays

This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible weekly contact hour, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.