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Module Content and Indicative Topics

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This module will introduce you to a range of work by women writers from Mexico and the Hispanic Caribbean region. The course will begin with a consideration of the principal issues at stake in approaching the topic of women’s writing (e.g. Can writing be gendered? Is there such as thing as a women’s language?), in the course of which you will be equipped with the relevant vocabulary and conceptual frameworks necessary for this endeavour. During the rest of the course you will study a range of work in different forms, typically including the novel, essay and short story.

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Issues to be considered throughout the course in relation to the texts studied will include: questions of language, style, and form; thematic and social concerns such as identity, gender, sexuality, family, nationhood, and ‘race’; and the writers’ and works’ relationship to the literary canon and to broader historical contexts of literary production.

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Course texts

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Some of the texts deal with issues that you may find distressing (e.g. patriarchal and sexual violence (including rape), racial slurs, and references to suicide). Reading the texts in advance of the seminars will enable you to process the material in your own time and space to prepare emotionally for the seminar discussion.

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In previous years, core texts have included the following, though these are subject to change:

Rosario Castellanos, Balún Canán (Mexico City, FCE, 1957) 

Rosario Ferré, Papeles de Pandora (Mexico City, Joaquín Mortiz, 1976) / (New York, Vintage / Random House, 2000)

Mayra Santos Febres, Sirena Selena vestida de pena (Barcelona, Mondadori, 2000) / Doral, Stockcero, 2008)

Cristina Rivera Garza, La cresta de Ilión (Mexico City, Tusquets, 2002) / (Random House, 2019)

Teaching Delivery

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Weekly 2-hour seminar block. Sessions will include presentations and group discussion. Students will be expected to read relevant texts between classes and to prepare a presentation for one of the seminars.

By the end of the module, you should be able to:

1. Explain why and how gender may be a useful lens through which to examine literary texts

2. Analyse how texts respond to particular social and historical contexts in Mexico and the Hispanic Caribbean

3. Communicate your ideas orally through presentations and in writing using appropriate terminology and theoretical frameworks

4. Respond creatively to texts through media such as film, music, and visual art, should you choose to do a creative response and critical reflection rather than a more conventional essay for your final assignment