Written by Aerial Whiting
The Harding English department plans to offer a women’s literature and feminist literary theory course beginning fall 2010. The course, which Professor Stephanie Eddleman intends to teach, will vary in content.
The first semester the course is offered, Eddleman wants to teach it from a historical perspective. She will cover women’s literature from the early 18th century onward, and she will introduce both modern literary criticism and literary criticism written at the time of those works.
“I try to start back in the early 18th century when women … first started being able to be published and kind of choose representative novels that show evolution of woman as writer, and then read the different essays of literary criticism kind of in conjunction with it as it evolved,” Eddleman said. “And so you get the people of that current time, their voices of what they’re trying to do and then also like current, modern literary criticism about those early authors.”
The course will explore works not typically included in English survey courses. For example, instead of reading Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” students will read “Villette.” Likewise, instead of reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” students will read “Persuasion,” according to Eddleman.
The content of the course will change from one semester to the next, which will allow students to take it more than once. The second semester the course is offered, the literature Eddleman hopes to cover focuses on a single genre – female Gothic. The course’s emphasis will continue to shift in later semesters.
The women’s literature course is not a recent idea. The English Department has planned to offer the course for a couple of years, according to Department Chair John Williams.
“I think the entire department agreed that there were two courses that we needed to establish that we didn’t yet … the second was a study in women’s literature course,” Williams said. “With Dr. Eddleman’s interest in Jane Austen and the doctoral work she’s done, she’s the right choice to do that.”
Women’s literature will be an elective that helps students fulfill their English hours. One of its purposes is to prepare students for graduate-level work.
“If an English major goes into grad school, they’re going to have to deal with this criticism and this literature,” Eddleman said.
Williams said he feels that adding the women’s literature course will strengthen Harding’s English program.
“We feel it’s going to strengthen our program because so much of what goes on in graduate school these days does have to do with gender,” Williams said. “I mean, gender issues are huge, and they will be for the foreseeable future.”
Because Harding focuses on its Christian worldview, students who take graduate courses at state schools do not know how people without that worldview perceive literature, Eddleman said. The women’s literature course will address this issue by exposing students to various feminist voices, which will allow them to answer those voices from a Christian perspective.
“It fits perfectly in both with our plan to help prepare our students to teach others, to go to grad school and as part of our Christian mission to study all aspects of literature – and human interaction,” Williams said.
Eddleman said that the general response to Harding adding the course has been positive.
“Most everyone’s been like, ‘It’s about time we’re doing that at Harding,'” Eddleman said.
Even though the course will explore women’s literature, it will be open to both male and female students. Students not majoring in English will also be able to enroll and take it.
