ENGL 653: Sites of Memory:

International Women's Voices of Protest & Prophecy

653 Home Page | 653 Assignments | 653 Syllabus | 653 Links to Resources

Course Description

To exorcise not in order to chase away the ghosts, but this time to grant them the right to [...] a hospitable memory [...] out of a concern for justice.

Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx

It is no simple matter to offer the ghosts of the past gracious hospitality when they possess the present, haunting and disrupting our home. And yet this course sets out to do just that because the writers we will study have done the same. We will study how Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, the arpilleristas of Chile, Alicia Partnoy and survivors of torture in Latin America, Chilean exiles Marjorie Agosin and Isabel Allende, Colombian born world-citizen Marta Traba, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison have conjured into memory the ghosts of the past in the name of justice. This course examines how these writers, representing vastly different historical and cultural experiences, articulate the importance of bearing witness to the past and of coming to terms with traumatic history through memory and narrative. We will consider how women writers re-member, rename, and reclaim a past that is often erased, forgotten, denied, or mythologized in an attempt to subjugate those defined as "Other." We will be especially attentive to the specific historical and cultural circumstances that shaped the work of each writer, and we will pose questions about the relation of artistic production to historical and social forces. We will think about the meaning of trauma and the special nature of literary testimony that addresses the collective amnesia, silence, denial and terror that are produced by, and sustain, oppressive regimes of all kinds: political, military, racial, economic or sexual.

Required Texts

Agosin, Marjorie. Ashes of Revolt. Fredonia, NY: White Pine, 1996.

---. Dear Anne Frank: Poems. Hanover, NH: Brandeis UP, 1998.

---. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea, 1990.

Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. New York: Bantam, 1982.

Matus, Jill. Toni Morrison. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.

Menchu, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta. New York: Verso, 1994.

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Plume, 1992

---. Sula.. New York: Plume, 1997. OR Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. (If you opt to read Beloved, order in online through Amazon.com or Powells.com.)

---. Tar Baby. New York: Plume, l981. OR Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume, 1993. (If you opt to read The Bluest Eye, order it online through Amazon.com or Powells.com.)

Partnoy, Alicia. The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival. San Francisco: Cleis, 1998.

Traba, Marta. Mothers and Shadows. London: Readers International, 1989.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1953.

---. Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966.

---. The Waves. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959.

Recommended Texts

Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf from A to Z. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson, MS: U P of Mississippi, 1994.

Course Policies

Attendance and Participation:

Regular attendance and thoughtful participation in class discussion are essential not only to your individual performance, but also to the success of this seminar. Our work together relies on collaboration in every phase of the course so that we might form an intellectual community, whose insights and power surpass those of any one of us working on our own. We are all subjects who share the responsibilities of teaching and learning in this class. Each of us has a responsibility to the group and to the learning that goes on in class.

Careful Critical Reading of Texts Prior to Class Discussion: This is also essential if we are to succeed as a community of scholars. I want to focus each class on your questions and insights. Please read actively and keep track of your questions and insights about each text. You will almost certainly have to take notes as you read. To facilitate our conversations about the literature, scholarship, social history we will be reading, I ask you to prepare what I call "Probes and Insights" each week. To do so, write two substantive questions and one insight each week. Bring your "Probes and Insights" to each class. This, in itself, is something you can do to contribute to our work and to create a seminar atmosphere. See Assignments for a fuller explanation of this activity.

Seminar Presentations: Much of the success of this course rests upon the quality of the group or individual seminar presentations, for they provide a vehicle for our collaboration in learning about the culture, social history, and ideological conflicts that shaped the texts of the writers we will study. No one of us could possibly master all this material in one semester. Together we can help each other develop the knowledge-base requisite to the study of several women writers whose cultures, experiences, and material conditions are radically divergent. I'm counting on each of you to do your best work for the benefit of the group. See Assignments for a fuller explanation of this activity.

Academic Honesty:

All faculty are requested to distribute the following statement of the University Honor Code:

"By accepting admission to Radford University, each student makes a commitment to understand, support, and abide by the University Honor Code without compromise or exception. violations of academic integrity will not be tolerated. This class will be conducted in strict observance of the Honor Code. Please refer to your Student Handbook for details."

Plagiarism--including the use of work submitted to another course without the consent of both instructors, the use of work by another person, or the use of someone else's words, ideas or arrangement of ideas without giving proper reference to the author--is a serious violation of the Honor Code. This applies to any materials on the WorldWide Web and electronic sources in the library. Be especially careful, as you complete your scholarly essay, that you do not use the ideas of others without attributing those ideas to their sources, even if you do not use direct quotations. Please see the section on plagiarism in your Student Handbook.