GRAD > ENGL > 659

Women in Literature

Description:
A lecture course on the principles of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Topics include: fundamentals of thermodynamics, first and second laws, thermodynamic potentials, phase transitions, classic kinetic theory, classical statistical mechanics, and quantum statistical mechanics. Applications of the principles will be made to physical, chemical, and biological systems of special or current interest. Through reading fiction by American authors from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, we will attempt to identify the characteristics of female characters and to understand the historical, ideological and aesthetic reasons for both the persistence and modification of the underlying images. The influence of gender, ethnicity, geographical setting, and major literary movements such as romanticism and realism will be examined. Short stories by such authors as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Cary, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Alice Walker will be studied first to establish the range and variety of images. Following these, we study novels by such authors as Rowson, Hawthorne, Stowe, James, Wharton, Cather, Roth, Hurston, and Morrison. Some basic acquaintance with American literature is assumed.

Offered in:

TBA