Our primary goal is to learn how to read--and carefully re-read--a number of works written by women, and as a group of readers develop and negotiate rich interpretations of these works, using the computer as a communication and textual study tool.

How do we "open" any text and learn how to ask productive questions of it? How do we move from our first readings-- where we figure out the plot, get to know characters, and naturalize into our own experience--to creative re-readings, where we notice patterns and nuances of voice and style, interesting conflicts, hidden messages, and gaps which invite the reader in? How do we take into account the author's life and cultural context, and especially the social determinants of her gender, race, and class? How do we move from our very personal responses to more analytical and textually-enriched shareable responses without losing the emotional connections which return us to a work again and again?

Obviously, these are not questions with easy answers, and we will spend the semester exploring them. We will do this in a fully collaborative interpretive environment, aided by the computer. That means that each person in the class will write and re-write, as we read and re-read the works, presenting our reading responses on-line for every text and commenting on each other's developing interpretations. In this environment, every person in the class will be talking and every one can listen and respond as we share and develop our insights and reactions to the works. We will not end up with the coherent single interpretation you are usually presented by a teacher in an "ordinary" class, although in some of your writing this semester you will develop such unified interpretations, but only after sifting through the interpretations of other readers, including our class conversations.>

If you are looking for a teacher to tell you "what a work means," then you are in the wrong class, and there are other literature courses which would make you happier. If you are looking for a forum to vent your anger and frustration with the situation of women, then you might prefer a sociology class. But if you are serious about wanting to explore literary works written by women, to develop your own abilities as a reader, and to strengthen your own "voice," your own ability to express an interpretation of a work, and are comfortable sharing your ideas and eager to encounter the ideas that others generate about a work, then this is the course for you.

You will write on-line for every class and on every work, because this is where you reveal what you find significant in a work and share it with other readers. By writing as you read, you will be reading actively, thinking more clearly about what you read because you are trying to put the experience in words. These reading responses are informal and relatively short at first, though you will be developing longer arguments on some works. You must also be committed to the collaborative aspect of the course, reading carefully what your classmates (and teacher) write and commenting thoughtfully. For this to work, you must keep up with the class faithfully, posting your reading responses promptly--so that the class may read and respond, and reading and commenting on the responses of others BEFORE we move on to the next work and set of readings/writings.

It is, therefore, logical that this would be a writing intensive class. In addition, you will be writing a variety of relatively short papers and then offering them for constructive feedback from other students (who are also struggling with the same assignment!) You will have an opportunity to revise before these papers are collected for grading.

This kind of sharing and collaborative works very naturally with these writers, for women--who were often forced to write "outside" the male literary tradition and perspectives, found much support from each other as they explored their own perspectives, their unique voices, and their special problems in defining themselves as artists. They made connections with each other, sometimes personal and often literary, as they generated their own tradition, one which is far more collaborative than individualistic. As readers, we should do no less.

Another good reason for this collaborative class structure is that these writings do often elicit very personal responses from readers, who often find that the conflicts and silences there mirror their own experiences. In most English classes, such personal responses are usually ignored or silenced in favor of more objective, analytic responses, often because of severe time constraints and because they detract from study of the text. In this class, we will acknowledge the intensity and relevance of personal connections but try to make them avenues of interpretation which reveal rather than obscure details of a text. We want to move from the individual to the communal response, using our personal reactions to reveal possibilities of meaning in the text for each other.

This is a Women's Studies class as well as literature. Thus, we have special goals which may not operate in many English classes:

To pay attention to the fact that these are women writing as women, under certain social/cultural conditions and limiting gender stereotypes, yet they are also artists.
To deal with their silences and pregnant gaps in their writing; find the undercurrents, the hidden ideas, the subversiveness.
To privilege the often suppressed half of what it means to be human!

From this perspective, here are some working assumptions of the course as a women's studies course.