Instructor: Jackielee Derks Description: Contemporary women writers from around the world are reshaping literature as we know it by challenging conventions and transgressing boundaries. From rewriting history to imagining possible futures, women writers are asserting their voices through innovative and transformative narratives. In this course we will study a variety of genres including novels, short stories, essays, graphic novels, and multimodal texts by late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century women from diverse locations and cultural backgrounds. By reading texts by and about women, we will explore how modern authors are confronting systems of inequality and oppression while carving out space for their own unique identities. Readings:Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi, Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and short stories by Nalo Hopkinson, Ch’oe Yun, and Alifa Rifaat.
Submissions from 2020
Reclaiming Power: Feminism in Purple Hibiscus, Ana Maria Angelez-Cruz and Crystal Munoz
Real Issues in Nigeria Shown by Purple Hibiscus, Richard Hansen and Sarah Knott
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (StoryMap), Rashon Mack, Guadalupe Leon Perez, and Afnan Al Mezeini
True Crime Podcast, Alyna Manjee and Sanya Sawlani
Borrachero: Exploring the Fruit from The Drunken Tree, Braulio Preciado, Charlie Hickey, Jack Dukelow, and Gunnar Thompson
Hate Groups Based on Religious Word (podcast), Payton Roque, Bridgett Nunez, and Tanvi Patel
Choose Your Own Adventure (web project), Matthew Rubio, Cloe Wesenberg, and Liam Bandura
Nigerian Recipes, Ally Van Eperen and Dilpreet Kaur