Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BBI-ANG22-227E.06
- Title
- Reading Literary Texts: Short Stories by Contemporary Women Writers
- Usual semester
- Both
- Published semester
- 2025/26/2
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- The main aim of the course is to acquaint students with women writers from across the globe who treat women’s experiences in their given socio-cultural environments. During the course, we are going to discuss literary representations of themes such as the diaspora experience, alienation, marriage and children as well as violence against women.
- Course content
- Selected short stories by contemporary women writers as specified by the instructor (Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Indian-American Jhumpa Lahiri, French Annie Ernaux, British-Jamaican Zadie Smith, South African Zoë Wicomb, Canadian Alice Munro and Scottish Ali Smith). During the course we will also emphasize the cultural background of the short stories and the common themes that emerge independent of the cultural embeddedness of each work.
- Assessment method
- Grades offered on the basis of in-class activity, a shorter midterm test during the semester and a longer endterm test at the end of the semester.
- Bibliography
- a) compulsory: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (2009). The Thing Around Your Neck. (selected short stories) Lahiri, Jhumpa (1999). Interpreter of Maladies. (selected short stories) Ernaux, Annie (2000). Happening. Munro, Alice (2001). Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. (selected short stories) Smith, Ali (2009). The First Person and Other Stories. (selected short stories) Smith, Zadie (2019). Grand Union: Stories. (selected short stories) Wicomb, Zoë (1987). You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town. (selected short stories) b) recommended: Brada-Williams, Noelle. “Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” as a Short Story Cycle.” Melus, vol. 29, no. 3-4, 2004, pp. 451-464. Ridout, Alice. Contemporary Women Writers Look Back: From Irony to Nostalgia. Continuum, 2011. Zulfiqar, Sadia. African Women Writers and the Politics of Gender. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.