Course description
The MA in Women's Writing: 1500 to the Present Day is a unique, exciting, interdisciplinary opportunity to trace the development of women's writing across five centuries of social, political and literary change. A two year part-time course, it focuses on every genre of women's writing from the poetry of the Renaissance to twenty-first century autobiography.
Using contemporary gender and feminist theory as a methodological framework, students explore where, why and how the female voice has changed and where it has stayed the same. In this way the roots of modern day women's intellectual expression of love, lust, need, shame, anger and dispossession are made powerfully visible.
How will I study?
Teaching methods will be interactive and participative. They will include lectures and seminars; student presentations; collaborative group work and discussion; practical workshops, for example on the use of IT for research, small group and individual tutorials, and independent research.
Most of the teaching staff contributing to the programme have published in the area of women's writing and feminism. Specialist interests include nineteenth-century women's poetry, early modern women writers, nineteenth-century ghost stories, sensation fiction and twentieth-century romance.
Who will be teaching me?
The course team includes experts in women's writing and feminism. Specialist interests include nineteenth-century women's poetry, early modern women writers, queer feminisms, sexuality and subversion, nineteenth-century ghost stories, sensation fiction and twentieth-century romance.
How will I be assessed?
Assessment is varied and designed to test a wide range of academic skills. Assessment methods include critical essays, close reading exercises, review articles and a dissertation. Assessments are usually handed in at the end of each semester.
Related Programmes
October 2007 will see the launch of Edge Hill's Gender and Sexuality Research Group, which will provide staff and postgraduate students with a forum for regular academic papers, group discussion and conference events at which international feminist writers and academics will speak.
Modules
The MA offers six taught modules and culminates in a dissertation.
A Woman's Coming to Writing (1500-1700) - This module focuses on constructions of femininity and female conduct in a patriarchal society in order to assess the proto-feminism or conservatism of women's writing in the early modern period.
The Wrongs of Woman (1700-1830) - This module will consider eighteenth-century and Romantic women's writing and conduct literature in relation to the feminist thought of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Sensation and Politics (1830-1890) - This module focuses on women's popular and political writing in the context of the Woman Question and the rise of organised feminism in the nineteenth century.
New Women (1890-1940) - This module considers the figure of the New Woman of the fin de siècle and the development of first-wave feminism in the twentieth century.
Writing Feminism (1940 to the present) - This module addresses the ideals and concerns of second-wave feminism and examines the debates about gender, sexuality and race reflected in women's writing in this period.
Research Methods - Students will be guided in the use of electronic databases and the Internet for the purposes of researching women's writing and preparing a research proposal.
Dissertation - This is a 15,000 - 20,000 word research project on a topic of your choice to be completed in the fourth semester of the degree and handed in at the end of the summer. Students are encouraged to choose a topic related to authors, genres and/or issues already studied on the taught modules of the course. Previous dissertation topics have focused on topics as diverse as: 'Victorian Sexuality and the Unruly Body' and 'The Bridget Jones Phenomenon: Chick lit and Eighteenth Century Amatory Fiction'.
