EN611
Caribbean Women's Fiction
0.5 Credit

Since the 1980s, Caribbean literature and its traditionally male-dominated canon has been altered and enriched with the increasing publication and visibility of Caribbean women novelists. This course traces the evolution of Caribbean women's fiction in light of some of its pioneering and emerging figures such as Jamaica Kincaid, Shani Mootoo and Rosario Ferre. Reading a selection of novels from the region's English, French, Spanish and various ethnic, national and diasporic communities, students identify the stylistic and formal innovations found in Caribbean women's fiction, such as the figurative centrality of the body in response to the feminimized tropical island as a site of masculine imperial conquest; the creation of "new womanist genres" such as fictional autobiography; the relationship between plantation women's labour and local feminist movements, or the matrilineal chain and oral storytelling traditions. Most texts are written in English, though teh course might include one or two texts in translation.

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EN691L