Writing from the Diaspora: Contemporary Women's Literature

Writing from the Diaspora: Contemporary Women's Literature is a Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies class taught by Alicia Ellis.

Course Description
This course is designed to provide a familiarity with some defining texts by contemporary women writers. You will be asked to think and write about meanings which have become naturalized in practice and ideology and how our texts think through/beyond those taxonomies of power, coercion and abridgement in order to neutralize them. Topics to be discussed include: gender and sexuality, race and class, immigration and colonialism, the politics of identity and embodiment and the creative female voice. Frequent short writing assignments and class presentations. Authors will include Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Jamaica Kincaid, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Alexander, Edwige Danticat.

Learning Goals

 * Multi-Cultural
 * Presenting
 * Reading
 * Writing