Week One: Classical Representations of Women Warriors

Week Two: Medieval and Early Renaissance Representations
M 1/10  Saints as Warriors.  Apocryphal Judith.  Geneva Bible, 1560 edition, chs. 7-16.  Christine De Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies: Part I , 1406 (handouts).  See website on Book of Judith, http://www.ewtn.com/library/scriptur/judith.txt  for fuller story and/or http://www.bible-researcher.com/versions.html (Look under The Geneva Bible here.) See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03723a.htm and/or http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/pisan.html 

W 1/12 Ariosto's Orlando Furioso Book I.  The figures of Bradamante and Marfisa, canto 2, cantos 3-4, canto 7, canto 11, cantos 17-20, and cantos 21- 22. See http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Orlando/ for The Online Medieval and Classical Library, Orlando Furioso, “Orlando Enraged” by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533).

Week 3:  Early Modern Pageantry and Cabbalistic Imagery in Restoration Utopia
M 1/17  Campus closed. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

W 1/19  Gloriana. Portraits and miniatures of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth I referenced. Kathryn Schwartz, Tough Love (Pck. 1) Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World, esp. 119-230. (Pck. 2) Panels selected.

Week 4: Epic Female Heroines and Early Modern Drama
M 1/24  Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene Book III (cantos 9-12) and Book V (cantos 5 and 7).  The figures of Britomart and Radigund. Renascence Editions Text of  The Faerie Queene available at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenser/welcome.htm and http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/spenser.htm For definition of “voyeuristic scopophilia” see Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” 

W 1/26  Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The manipulation of Body as Imperial Text..

Week 5: Crossdressing, Sapphism in Early Modern Drama and “Tiger Fairies” and Disneyfication
M 1/31  Thomas Middleton's The Roaring Girl. (selections TBA) Judith Halberstam’s “F2M:The Making of Female Masculinity.” (Pck. 3) Mary Ann Doane’s “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” (Pck. 4) Paper 1 due.

The selections for The Roaring Girl play coming up this Monday, January 31 are:
1) Act II, scene 1, LL. 159-360
2) Act II, scene 2, all.
3) Act III, scene 1, all.
4) Act IV, scene 1, LL. 39-105 and LL. 130-145.
5) Act V, scene 1, LL. 299-333.

W 2/2   Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior (especially "White Tigers" chapter). Disney's Mulan.  Gloria Anazaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera.” (Pck. 5)

Week 6: “Tiger Fairies” and Disneyfication
 M 2/7  Panel discussions.

W 2/9   Postmodern fiction continued.

Week 7: Transgressive Wit and Contemporary Utopian/Dystopian Representations
M 2/14  Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s “From Carnival to Transgression.” (Pck. 6)

W 2/16 Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Rock That Changed Things,”  Eileen Gunn’s “Stable Strategies for Middle Management,”  Diane Glancey’s “Aunt Parnetta’s Electric Blisters.” (Pck. 7, 8, and 9) Margaret Cho’s Notorious Cho and Cho Revolution.

Week 8: The Gendered Cyborg
M 2/21   Panel discussions.

W 2/23  Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Rin Taro’s Metropolis (2002), Alien series and Ripley, Terminator series and Sarah, Blade Runner and Pris and Zhora, The Ghost in the Shell and Lt. Kusanagi.  Mary Ann Doane’s Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine” (Pck. 10) and Sherrie Inness’s Tough Girl excerpts. (Pck. 11)

Week 9: Cyberpunk, Nokia Cinema, Video Game, and Fantasy Representations
M 2/28  Fantasy, Magical realism, and warrior adepts. The Lord of the Rings, The Bride with White Hair, Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon., and KILL BILL: Volume I and II.  . Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny.” (Pck. 12) and Victoria Cass’s “Warriors and Mystics” (Pck. 13)

W 3/2  Cyberpunk, nokia cinema, and liquid MTV.  Tank Girl, The Matrix, Run, Lola, Run, and Aeon Flux. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Resident Evil.  Elyce Rae Helford’s “Postfeminism and the Female Action-Adventure Hero:  Positioning Tank Girl.” (Pck. 13 ) and Claudia Springer’s “Digital Rage” (Pck 14)

Week 10:  “Tribal Feminism and Native Activism”
M 3/7  Panel Discussions.

W 3/9  “She Who Thinks.” Indigenous women’s activism and “future warriors brought into the world.”  Paper 2 due.

 REQUIRED TEXTS:

1) Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings. (available in Penguin Classics) (See pck. 2 above in syllabus as substitute)

2) Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl and Other Comedies. (available in Oxford University Press edition).

3)  Hopkinson, Nalo.  Midnight Robbers. (available in Aspect edition).

4)  Kingston, Maxine Hong.  The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (available in Vintage Books edition).

5) Shakespeare, William.  Antony and Cleopatra (available in Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington Square Press edition).

6) Packet Readings available at SMART COPY.

Optional Readings: 1) Virgil’s Aeneid, translator Robert Fitzgerald.  (available in Vintage Press edition).

2)  Edmund Spenser’s Poetry:  Authoritative Texts, Criticism. (available in W. W. Norton edition).