Description:

Consider registering for this Summer 2020 course!

COMP_LIT 205 | Gender and Genius: Women’s Writing in the Global Nineteenth Century

MW 2pm – 4:30pm CST *course will meet virtually

Instructor: Arif Camoglu

Summer Session 6 week first: 6/22 – 8/02

Course topic: Portrait of an isolated creative man as the artist has not only shaped the canon of early nineteenth-century Anglophone literature, but also left its mark on the broader political and aesthetic structure that has determined who is regarded a genius, more specifically, who can access and claim universal authorship. This course investigates what is hidden behind the still prevalent male-centered perception of genius: namely, the erasure of women's labor in artistic production, the troubling association between masculinity and mastery of language as well as literary skills, and the ethno-racial and class dimensions of the gendered process of writing. Through the works of Mary Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Melek Hanum, Philis Wheatley, and other authors from England, the United States, Iran, and Turkey, this course flips the dated yet persistent image of male genius. Foregrounding the historical and ideological connections between seemingly disparate literary traditions, the course unsettles national boundaries, revisiting the notions of genius and universality by decentering their Anglo-American origins.