Changing States: Women’s writing, Geographies, Mindscapes

The course this year will be covering over two centuries of women’s writing to focus on the way fictional constructions have been used to chart essential changes in the definitions of womanhood, women’s estate and femininities.

The course will be organised in three sections, reflecting the fields of specialisation of the three professors involved (precise syllabus to be confirmed):

Dr Heather Meek (Université de Montréal): Mental states in 18th century women’s writing – poetry, auto-fiction, fiction.  The syllabus will be available in downloadable versions, apart from the Wollstonecraft novella.

Seminars 1 – 3 in Montreal, 4 – 6 in Paris

Seminar 1
Medical text selections on melancholy, madness, hysteria &c.
Selected life-writing by Hester Thrale Piozzi and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Seminar 2
Jane Barker’s Love Intrigues (novella)

Seminar 3
Eliza Haywood’s  Love in a Madhouse (novella)

Seminar 4
Frances Burney’s mastectomy letter
Medical text selections on breast cancer

Seminar 5
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman (novella)

Seminar 6
Selected Poetry by Charlotte Smith

Pr Claire Davison (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): States and statelessness: homelands in modernist writing –

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas. (1938), OUP Classics (or other paperback classic)
Katherine Mansfield, ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, ‘The Wind Blows’, ‘Je ne parle pas français’ in Selected Stories, OUP Classics.
Hope Mirrlees, Paris – A Poem (1919), downloadable.


Pr Catherine Lanone (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): States of Mind: Re-Writing Gothic Spaces – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

Angela Carter, to be confirmed.

Alice Munro, Selected Short Stories

Students are reminded that they are expected to have read all the works on the syllabus and to be ready and willing to engage in lively, focused class discussions. All classes are designed as doctoral symposia, and therefore rely on thoughtful, engaged participation from everyone.

All those interested in being part of the team can apply to attend, although only 6 places are available. Potential participants do not have to be studying literature, or specialising in the 18 – 21st centuries, but they have to be willing to read and explore literary texts.