Fall 1998

Phyllis Gorfain

English and Women's Studies 377

Feminist Transformations: Retellings of Myth, Folktale, and Narrative

Class Meeting Time and Place

MWF 3:30-4:20 335 King

Instructor Office Hours

Rice 107

Mon 4:45-6:00 p.m.

Tu-Th 3-4:30

Sign up on door

Required Books

Holy Bible: The New Revised Standard Version,

Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures

Edith Hamilton, Mythology.

Sexton, Anne. Transformations. 1972.

Trible, Phyllis, Texts of Terror: Literary Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. 1984.

Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers.

Zipes, Jack. Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England. 1986.

Zipes, Jack, trans. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, vol. 1-2.

Requirements

1. Class attendance and participation 10%

Regular attendance of class is necessary because much of the course learning will take place through presentations and discussions. No more than 3 absences will be tolerated before the overall grade for the course is lowered. For every absence after three, your final grade will be lowered. Exceptions will be made only for extreme cases in which a doctor's certificate, hospital certificate, or letter from parents about a family emergency will serve. Strong participation will result in a higher grade, and weak participation in a lower one.

2. Class exercises. 15%

Short written assignments will be graded as a group at midterm and final time; these assignments will be brought to class to enhance class discussion and handed in for brief comments. These will be handed in at class time when they are assigned. Keep your returned assignments and turn them in as a packet at the close of the semester.

3. Participation in one panel presentation. 20%

• Four panel presentations will help provide closure and discussion at the end of the units on Woman Warrior, Fairy Tales, Bible, and Greek Myth. The presentations will be well-prepared supplements to and culminations of the unit that precede them. Students can present a panel discussion, enactment, readings, combined forms of tellings and critique, but panels should show scholarship and research, collective activity, and imagination. Panel participants will each hand in a panel report explaining their work on the panel and providing an annotated bibliography of readings used.

4. A Reading Journal 25%

Responses to readings will be recorded in a reading joumal; every assigned reading should warrant some brief response: summarize the main thrust of the piece, note a reaction you have, and pose a pertinent discussion question or comment to stimulate class discussion or help you engage with the piece. This can amount to 1 page. One reading each week should be given an extended discussion of 2-4 pages. Here you should pursue the intellectual, moral, social, artistic, or personal issues this piece evokes for you. Consider deeply some aspect of the piece, discussing for yourself what you believe you and the class can learn from critiquing its assumptions, underlying theories, explicit values, methods, goals, methods, or the like. You may take the piece in a new direction, closely analyze part of it, argue with it, respond to it artisticallyƒ.whatever allows you to make use of the assignment in an important way that helps you grapple with it or learn with it, or that can help others engage with it. The reading journals will be turned in for grades at midterm and final time . 12.5% of final grade first half; 12.5% of final grade second half.

5. Final project 30%

Students will choose a final project with others or alone; options include a research paper, a portfolio of literary retellings or one major literary retelling; a performance alone taking the form of a narrative or other medium; group projects could involve combined forms.

Course Philosophy

The course recognizes the intellectual, social, and political value in studying the many transformations of traditional narratives and symbols that expose patriarchal or unjust practices and assumptions inscribed in these materials. We will aim to use the same materials in innovative ways to promote a vision of equality and work toward the production of cultures equitable for everyone. Feminist methods include active research into the ways that cultures through time and space (historically and cross-culturally) have differentiated between people and how differences may oppress, subordinate, or inhibit the opportunities, development, or equality of groups on the basis of gender, sex, sexuality, age, race, class, caste, history, geography, or the like.

Feminist research and analysis includes attention to how differences have developed, and how and when differences may not result in asymmetries of power, opportunity, or aspiration, but can be respected, understood, or even honored. Western notions of social justice and roles need to take into account local and cultural differences, but at the same time, even the disenfranchised and oppressed in patriarchal societies may well support and further hegemonic systems. Feminist methods include a careful analysis of how intersections of various social categories or concepts work together to create particular patterns of difference: sometimes class, or race, or ethnicity, or historical processes, or sexuality interacts with gender to divide groups in ways that using simple gender distinctions cannot recognize.

Feminist theory is alert to ways that Western social thinking, language, and history lead to mistakes in analysis, interpretation, conceptualization, conclusions, and the like, so feminist inquiry must be reflexive in its awareness of how the position of the speaker or audience may inflect knowledge. Feminist theory is also alert to problems of essentialism, notions of what is natural, essential, transcendental, universal, enduring, etc; we are alert to the differences between real people, and what happens when one thinks about a symbolic concept such as Woman, Man, The Father, etc. Concepts, symbols, constructs are necessary in human thought and imagination, but they need to be unpacked as representations and artificial. Feminist theory emphasizes the ways cultural systems present constructions of "reality" as if they were natural, given, or objective.

Ultimately feminist revisions of knowledge have an objective; that is, feminism does have goals and values, and so feminist study also has real goals and values. A feminist course does not pursue knowledge for its own sake, but aims toward knowledge for action and outcomes. Feminism is not about a woman getting ahead, or about women assuming masculine roles, per se. It is about full realization of one's potential without oppressing or depriving others; it is about collective change and emancipation; it is about undoing hierarchies that benefit some at the expense of others. In working to produce communities of equality, feminists emphasize respect for and understanding of differences that do not discriminate. Feminist understanding takes social causes and histories into account and looks for the ways in which systems of behavior, institutions, structures of relationships, histories, and the like may be responsible for feelings, choices, and behavior. The emphasis is not on blame, recrimination, or targets but on accountability, responsibility, agency, and change.

Feminist transformations of traditional and inherited stories are a microcosm for the study and change of culture.

The course is not just a study of narratives, it is a deep questioning of storytelling and knowing through narrative. We will be asking questions about the nature of narrative as way of organizing ideas, shaping expectations and desires. Through their aesthetics and their processes and outcomes, narratives teach pleasures and notions of order, cause, effect, and outcome. We will be interested in the relationship between a given story, its narrative shape and style, and how performances of stories create particular interpretations and realizations of the base story. Thus the study must include attention to the relationships between audiences and performers, communities and creators, reception and production. Turning inward, as well as outward, how do those factors relate to internal relationships between the many elements in stories: character, setting, images, actions, symbols, metaphors, textural features such as rhyme, rhythm, diction, dialect, etc.

Course goals:

1. To empower the students to listen deeply and imaginatively to their own words, practices, and those of others; to ask questions about what happens next, and what is assumed and what are the consequences of choices.

2. To empower the students to tell and re-tell deeply and imaginatively; to becomes informed by research, insight, empathy, information, respect, curiosity, humility, and inspiration.

3. To consider traditions in many cultures, especially those that help comprise the multicultural, pluralistic culture of America.

4. To examine narrative, folkloristic, literary, and feminist theories for ideas and methods for reading and retelling and transforming the scripts and artifacts of the past.

5. To draw on other disciplines, methods, data for knowledge, theory, ways of questioning,

6. To have students &emdash; in group learning situations &emdash; to engage in collaborative projects that help fulfill the goals of the course,

DATE	Unit	ASSIGNMENT OR ACTIVITY	COMMENTS/WHAT'S DUE
W 9/2	I	Maxine Hong Kingston forum	Read first two chapters of Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior . Write out a question you would like to pose for Ms. Kingston at her forum, 3-4:30 in Wilder.
F 9/4	I	Introduction to course	Read "Pandora" section in Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 87-84 (Pandora's basic story is on p. 88 only, with a few mentions on p. 94. Prepare your own telling of "Pandora's Box" to share in class. You can make your telling oral, written, or even non-verbal (a picture; a box; an construction).
M 9/7		Labor Day: No Class	Optional: Class trip to see movie "Ever After"
W 9/9	I	Woman Warrior discussion	Review first two chapters of Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior. Read Maxine Hong Kingston, "Personal Statement." (Reader). Read Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, "Kingston's Handling of Traditional Chinese Sources." (Reader).
F 9/11	I	Other Mulans	Make sure you've seen: "Mulan" by Disney studios Read Mulan,, children's book on reserve. Read "The Ballad of Mulan,"(Reader). Read "100 Celebrated Chinese Women: Hua Mulan,"(Reader). Visit Mulan Websites "The Mulan FAQ page" at http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/5082/mulanfaq.html "The Ballad of Mulan" at http://www.chinapage.com/mulan.html
M 9/14	II	Cinderella versions	Read "Cinderella" in The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, #20, vol. 1. Read Jack Zipes, "Once There Was a Time: an Introduction to the History and Ideology of Folk and Fairy Tales," (Reader). Read Walter Sanchez, "The Girl Who Took Care of the Turkeys," (Reader). Read Gordon Brotherston, "The Zuni Cinderella," (Reader).
W 9/16	II	Transformation vs. commercial fantasy	Read Cheryl Moch, "Cinderella: the Real True Story, " (Reader). Read Ann Sexton, "Cinderella," in Transformations, p. 53-57. Make sure you've seen: "Ever After."
F 9/18	II	Sexton's Transformations, 1	Read Ann Sexton Transformations., pp. 1-65. Read The corresponding Grimm's stories: Snow White, #53, vol. 1 The White Snake, #17, vol. 1 Little Farmer, #61, vol. 1 Godfather Death, #44, vol. 1 Rapunzel, #12, vol. 1 Iron Hans, #136, vol. 2 One-eye, Two-eyes, and Three eyes, #130, vol. 2
M 9/21		Rosh Hoshana: No Class	Make up class Sat. 10/3
W 9/23	II	Sexton's Transformations, 2	Read Ann Sexton Transformations., pp. 67-112. Read The corresponding Grimm's stories: The Marvelous Minstrel, #8, vol. 1 Little Red Cap, #26, vol. 1 The Maiden without Hands, #31, vol. 1 The Worn-out Dancing Shoes, #133, vol. 2 The Frog Prince, #1, vol. 1 Hansel and Gretel, #15, vol. 1 Brier Rose, #50, vol. 1
F 9/25		Instructor trip: No Class	Make up class Sat. 10/3
M 9/28	II	Coding and Oral Retelling	Read Joan N. Radner and Susan S. Lanser, "Strategies of Coding in Women's Cultures," (Reader). Read Joan N. Radner, "Women Interpreting the Stories They Tell," (Reader). Read Susan Gordon, "The Powers of the Handless Maiden," (Reader).
W 9/30		Yom Kippur: No Class
F 10/2	II	On Oral and Literary Retellings	Read Kay F. Stone, "Burning Brightly: New Light from an Old Tale," (Reader). Read Maria Warner, "The Language of Hair: Donkeyskin III," and "From the Beast to the Blonde: The Language of Hair II," (Reader).
Sat 10/3	II	Don't Bet on the Prince, part one (2-hour Make up Class for 10/21 and 10/25):	Hour One: Everyone Read Jack Zipes, Preface and Introduction to Don't Bet on the Prince.   Hour Two: Class members from the first half of the alphabet (A-M): Read stories 1-4 in Part I of Zipes' anthology stories 1-4 in Part I of Zipes' anthology.   Class members from the second half of the alphabet (M-Z): Read stories 5-9 in Part I of Zipes' anthology.
M 10/5	II	Don't Bet on the Prince, part two	Everyone Read Olga Broumas, "Little Red Riding Hood" and Sara Henderson Hay, "Rapunzel." Class members from the first half of the alphabet (A-M): Read Meghan B. Collins, "The Green Woman" and Tanith Lee, "Wolfland." Class members from the second half of the alphabet (M-Z): Read Michael de Larrabeiti, "Malagan the Lady of Rascas" and Margaret Atwood, "Bluebeard's Egg."
W 10/7	I	Panel Presentation: Woman Warriors
F 10/9	II	Panel Presentation: Fairy Tales
M 10/12	III	Eve and Lilith	Read Genesis, 1-10 Read Selma and Pamela Adelman, "Lilith and the Monsters of the Night" (Reader). Read Jeffrey M. Hoffeld, "Adam's Two Wives,"(Reader). Read Suzanne Benton, "Lilith"(Reader).
W 10/14	III	Eve and Lilith	Read Alicia Suskin Ostriker, "The Lilith Poems"(Reader). Read Dory Previn, "Lilith and the Poisoned Apple"(Reader). Read Kim Chernin, "Excerpts from Reinventing: Modern Woman in Search of Herself" (Reader).
F 10/16		Day before break: No Class	Midterm paper due by Sat. 4:30 p.m.
		FALL BREAK
M 10/26	III	Sarah and Hagar	Read Bible, Genesis 11-25. Read Phyllis Trible, "Introduction" and Chapter 1, "Hagar: The Desolation of Rejection," Texts of Terror, pp. 1-35. Renita Weems, "A Mistress, a Maid, and No Mercy," (Reader). Delores S. Williams, "Hagar's Story: A Route to Black Woman's Issues," (Reader).
W 10/28	III	Jephtha's Daughter	Read Bible, Judges 11-12 Read Phyllis Trible, "The Daughter of Jepthah: an Inhuman Sacrifice," Texts of Terror, pp. 65-109. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Those were the good old days? The downfall of daughters," (Reader). Renita Weems, "A Crying Shame (Jepthha's Daughter and the Crying Women)," (Reader).
F 10/30	III	Tamar	Read Bible, 2 Samuel, 1-2; 13 Read Phyllis Trible, "Tamar: The Royal Rape of Wisdom," Texts of Terror Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Trauma and Tragedy: The Betrayals of Tamar" (Reader)." Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, "Every Two Minutes: Battered Women and Feminist Interpretation," (Reader).
M 11/2	III	Ruth and Esther	Read Bible, The Book of Ruth and The Book of Esther Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Camino Real (Ruth)" (Reader)." Ilana Paredes, "The Book of Ruth: Idyllic Revisionism," (Reader)
W 11/4	III	Ritual transformations: New Moon Celebration (Rosh Hodesh)	Penina V. Adelman, Selections from Miriam's Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year, (Reader). Mieke Bal, "Reading as Empowerment: The Bible from a Feminist Perspective," (Reader).
F 11/6	III	Ritual transformations: Passover (Seder):	E. M. Broner, Excerpts from The Telling: the story of a group of Jewish women who journey to spirituality through community and ceremony (Reader). Lily Rivlin tape in class
Sat 11/7	III	(Make up Class for Oct. 16) Panel Presentation	Bible and Ritual transformation
M 11/9	IV	Cupid and Psyche	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 121-134. Carol Gilligan, "Oedipus and Psyche: two stories about love," (Reader).
W 11/11	IV	Medusa	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 197-208 (esp. 200-204); Joan Coldwell, "The Beauty of the Medusa: Twentieth Century," (Reader) Helene Cisoux, "The Laugh of the Medusa," (to be included in next installment)
F 11/13	IV	Cassandra	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. Cassandra, 291-93; 351-55. Donna Dorian, "Knowledge Puffeth Up," (Reader)
M 11/16	IV	Medea	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 168-179, 211. Euripides, Medea (to be included in next installment). Sue-Ellen Case, "Classic Drag: The Greek Creation of Female Parts," (Reader).
W 11/18	IV	Circe	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 305-306, 417-418. (rec'd to read the entire Adventures of Odysseus, pp. 291-318). Margaret Atwood, "Circe/Mud Poems," Selected Poems, 1976, pp. 201-23 (to be included in next installment) Estella Lauter, "Margaret Atwood: Remythologizing Circe," (Reader).
F 11/20	IV	Demeter and Persephone	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 44, 53-64. Christine Downing, "Persephone in Hades," (Reader). Kay Stone essay (to be included in next installment)
M 11/23	IV	Helen, part 1	Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. 218-219; 256-66; 287-88; 294-99. H.D., Helen in Egypt (to be included in next installment).
W 11/25	IV	Helen, part 2	Anita George, "Reading Women Reading Helen: Revisionary Myth-Making in Sappho and H.D." (Reader). Jeanne Larsen, "Myth and Glyph in 'Helen in Egypt,'" (Reader)Edith Hamilton, Mythology, pp. Sophocles
F 11/27		Thanksgiving: No Class
M 11/30	IV	Panel Presentation	Greek myth, legend
W 12/2	V	Final Projects and Papers	5 people
F 12/4	V	Final Projects and Papers	5 people
M 12/7	V	Final Projects and Papers	5 people
W 12/9	V	Final Projects and Papers	5 people
F 12/11	V	Final Projects and Papers	5 people
M 12/14	V	Wrap Up and Retrospect	Final papers, project write ups due by midnight