The seminar will explore the complicated relationship between early twentieth-century women writers and the emergence of literary modernism. We will consider such topics as the role of women in furthering a modernist agenda, the question of "feminine prose", male writers’ responses to women’s writing, and other issues of interest to the members of the seminar. We will read fiction by three of the greatest innovators of the period: Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf. We will also use Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own for its now classic investigation of the relationship between gender and literary productivity, and a number of critical essays in Bonnie Kime Scott’s anthology: The Gender of Modernism for further theoretical frameworks for our discussions. Oral reports on particular issues in modernism,, as expressed by some of the other modernists collected in the anthology, should allow seminar members the opportunity to explore topics of individual interest.

Although this course is appropriate for first year graduate students, it should not be taken as an introductory course in the modernist period. Some familiarity with the general intellectual background of modernism and its major texts will be assumed.