Lahore University of Management Sciences

ENGL 3112 Women of the Global South

Spring 2017

Instructor Rabia Nafees Shah

Room No. 125 HSS Wing- English (Ground Floor)
Office Hours
Email rabia.nafees@lums.edu.pk
Telephone 2218
Secretary/TA
TA Office
Hours
Course URL (if
any)

COURSE BASICS
Credit Hours 4
Lecture(s) 2 lectures per Duration 1hr 50mins
Week

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will take a broad-based approach to womens writing from the Global South (For
purposes of this course, the Global South is defined not just as the southern hemisphere of the earth
but as spaces of marginalization in the international balance of power, economically, politically and
in terms of the traditional definitions of canonical literature).

Questions of race, class, religion, culture, nationalism, postcoloniality, identity, hybridity, sexuality,
the politics of representation and reception will be highlighted. Students will be encouraged to
explore not just the similarities of concerns emerging from these texts but also the particularity of
each writer situated in her own contextualized realities.

An effort has been made to expose students to many genres of womens writing - essays, short
stories, poems, plays and novels have all been included along with theoretical texts pertaining to
feminist theory, race theory and globalization studies. The variety of approaches within feminism
(Marxist, Liberal, Postcolonial, Islamic, Postmodern, Ecofeminism and now Corporate) will be
discussed to avoid homogenizing all schools of thought and artificially ironing out the divergences
among them.

COURSE PRE-REQUISITES
Introduction to Literature in English or the instructors permission.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
- To cultivate an appreciation for womens writing and the shared concerns (thematic, literary,
political) implicit and explicit within it.

- To facilitate analysis of how individual writers are shaped by forces of history, politics, race,
culture, literary ancestry and many other factors besides gender and to understand the concept
of intersectionality.

- To provide students an opportunity to conduct research, engage in debate and develop their
writing and critical analysis skills.

- To foster an understanding of the multiplicity of approaches within feminist theory.

Lahore University of Management Sciences

GRADING
1. Presentation 10%
2. Midterm 25%
3. Class Participation 15%
4. Response Papers 15%
5. Research Essay (10-12 pages) 25%
6. Annotated bibliography 10%

TEXTBOOKS
Reading packages have been put together for the course

LECTURES, TUTORIALS AND ATTENDANCE POLICY

1. There will be two 110-minute seminars per week. (A total of 28 sessions)
2. There will be a 10-15 minutes presentation.
3. Attendance is Mandatory.

COURSE SCHEDULE

WEEKS SESSIONS TOPIC PRIMARY READINGS SECONDARY

READINGS

Introduction to the
course:
1
How do we locate the
Global South?

WEEK What does it mean to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Gregory Castle

1 write like a woman? talk on Situating Feminist Theory (190-
Feminism (selected clips) 197)

2
 What does it mean to
write like a woman?
3 1959)
WEEK
2
4 Post-colonial Feminist
Theory: Problematizing
the Category Women Scholarship and Colonial
African American Voices:
5 Owning the Self
Black is Beautiful?
WEEK
3
African American Voices:
6 Issues of Identity
African American Voices:
Womens Bodies and
7 Questions of Control
WEEK
4 Indigenous Voices:
Native American
8
Internal Colonialism
Helene Cixous The Laugh
of the Medusa (1938-
Chandra Mohanty Under Maxine Baca Zinn and
Western Eyes: Feminist Bonnie Thornton Dill
Theorizing Difference
Discourses (196-220) From Multiracial
Feminism (321-331)
Zora Neale Hurston How Audre Lorde Age, Race,
It Feels to be Colored Me Class and Sex: Women
Redefining Difference
Poems from Gwendolyn (177-184)
Bennett, Helene Johnson
and Gwendolyn Brooks
Lorraine Hansberry A Mafe, Diana Adesola
Raisin in the Sun Black women on
Broadway: the duality
Clips from Blackish of Lorraine Hansberry's
Alice Walker In Search of A Raisin in the Sun and
Our Mothers Gardens Ntozake Shange's for
Colored Girls (1-10)
Ntozake Shange For
Coloured Girls Who Have
Considered Suicide/ When
the Rainbow is Enough
Poems from Anne Spencer, A Casebook on Native
Mary TallMountain, Louise American Poetry
Erdrich, Linda Hogan (1011-1014)
M.A James Guerrero
Patriarchal
Short story: Colonialism and
Louise Erdrich Saint Indigenism:
Marie Implications for Native
Feminist Spirituality
and Native Womanism
(473-482)
 Aboriginal Voices: Oodgeroo Noonuccal We Lorenzo Veracini
Australia, New Zealand, are Going Historylessness:
9 Canada Australia as a Settler
Sally Morgan A Black Colonial Collective
WEEK Grandmother
5 (161-174)
Erasure and Essentialism Patricia Grace Butterflies

Jeannette C Armstrong
This is a Story

Emily Carr From Klee Wyck

Chicana/ Latina Voices: Cherrie Moraga The Hungry Carla Trujilo Chicana
Woman Lesbians: Fear and
10 Loathing in the Chicano
El Movimiento and its Community (345-349)
Women: Gender and
Nationalism Bernice Zamora Notes Alma M. Garcia The
from a Latina Coed Development of Chicana
Feminist Discourse
(499-506)
Chicana/ Latina Voices: Short stories: Gloria Anzaldua The
New Mestiza and
11 Sandra Cisneros Woman Towards a New
Multiple Marginalities Hollering Creek & Barbie- Consciousness (2095-
WEEK Q
6 2109)
Clarice Lispector The
Smallest Women in the
World

Chicana/ Latina Voices: Sandra Cisneros The House

12 on Mango Street

Machismo and the Female

Bildungsroman
Caribbean Voices: Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Carine Melkom
13 Sea Mardorossian Double-
Patriarchy and Decolonization and the
Colonialism
Feminist Criticism of
WEEK Wide Sargasso Sea (79-
7 95)

Caribbean Voices Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso

14 Sea

15 Midterm Exam

Caribbean Voices Life and Debt

Jacqueline Sanchez
16 Poems from Louise Taylor Female Sex
WEEK Jamaica: Real and Bennett Tourism: A
8 Imagined Contradiction in
Terms? (42-59)
African Voices: Half of a Yellow Sun
Alanna Vagianos How
17 Chimamanda Ngozi Feminism Became
Adichie and the We Should All Be Trendy and Why Should
WEEK Appropriation of Feminists We Care (1-6)
9 Feminism

African Voices: Paulina Chiziane The First Irene Marques

Wife: A Story of Polygamy Confused Slaves of
18 Solidarity and Sisterhood Many Traditions: The
Search for the Freedom
Dance in Chiziane
(133-159)

Paulina Chiziane The First

African Voices Wife: A Story of Polygamy
19

Arab Voices: Short stories: Mona Eltahawy Why

WEEK Do They Hate Us (1-7)
10 Assia Djebar My Father
20 The Construction of the Writes to My Mother Lila Abu-Lughod Do
Muslim Woman Muslim Women Really
Need Saving?
Anthropological
Ahdaf Soueif Sandpiper Reflections on Cultural
Relativism and its
Others (783-790)
Short stories: Jenine Abboushi Dallal.
Arab Voices: Nawal el Saadawi In The Perils of
Camera Occidentalism: How
21 The Politics of
Arab Novelists Are
Representation
Alifa Riffat Me and My Driven to Write for
WEEK Sister Western Readers
11
Adania Shibli Dust

Arab Voices: Nawal el Saadawi Women Miriam Cooke Islamic

and Islam (73-92) Feminism (55-64)
22 Women , Religion and
Orientalism
Meyda Yegenoglu The
Battle of the Veil:
Woman Between
Orientalism and
Nationalism (95-120)

Asian Voices: Maxine Hong Kingston No Yen Le Espiritu

Name Woman Ideological Racism
23 The Politics of
 Representation II Karen Tai Yamashita and Cultural
Through the Arc of the Resistance (175-183)
WEEK Rainforest
12
Asian Voices: Karen Tai Yamashita Arjun Appadurai
Through the Arc of the Disjuncture and
24 Transnationalism and the Rainforest Difference in the Global
Exploitation of Mother Cultural Economy
Earth (324-338)

South Asia: Short stories: Lisa Lau Re-

Orientalism: The
25 Culture and Tradition Mahasweta Devi The Perpetration and
Hunt & Breast-Giver Development of
WEEK Orientalism by
13 Yasmine Goonaratne Orientals (110-124)
Bharat Changes His
Image

South Asia: Poems from Kamala Das,

26 Eunice De Souza, Kishwar
Naheed and Fehmida Riaz
Culture and Tradition Short Story: Humera Afridi
The Price of Hubris

Kankar (TV serial)

Clips from Burka Avenger

South Asia Saroop Dhruv Its All in My Amrita Basu Feminism

WEEK 27 Hands Inverted: The Gendered
14 Beyond Simplistic Labels: Images and Real
Fun with Fawzia Afzal Khan What Women of Hindu
Fundamentalism Lies Beneath Nationalism (158-180)

Martha Nussbaum
Body of the Nation
Coming Full Circle Chandra Mohanty Under
28 Western Eyes Revisited:
The Way Forward: Feminist Solidarity through
Globalization,
Anti-capitalist Struggles
International Capital and
Women (499-535)

The True Cost