Course

This lecture- and discussion-based course will examine a (sadly small) sampling of women’s writing in the form of essays, political manifestos, short stories, poems, and a novel. We will focus primarily on writers in the nineteenth century up through the turn of the twentieth, though we'll lay a little groundwork at the beginning from the 17th and 18th centuries. (Note: A subsequent OLLI course will continue these readings and themes through the twentieth century and into the 21st. )

We'll focus on a handful of thematic threads that run through many texts written by women, including female creativity and the matrilineal literary tradition, patriarchal culture, marriage, maternity, identity, gender, feminist politics, love, sex, and desire. We’ll examine how women have viewed the way their gender roles have been prescribed in literature and evolved over time.

This course is not limited to any one continent, though we will focus on texts originally written in English.

Stephanie Wells has a B.A. from UC Berkeley, an M.A. from the University of Virginia, and received her Ph.D. from UC Davis with a focus on modernism and postmodernism in American and British novels and poetry. She has been a literature professor for over 20 years and currently teaches at College of Marin.

This is a Livestream-Only Course

• Classes will stream live on the scheduled day and time, and will not be recorded.
• Course materials will remain available to enjoy in the Member Dashboard through March 31.
• Fee assistance is available if cost is a barrier. Learn more.

Schedule Highlights

• Course starts on Monday, January 23, and ends on Monday, March 6.
• No class on Monday, February 20.
• Classes run for six weeks, 2 hours per session. 

Faculty Interview

• Read an interview with Stephanie Wells from our archive.