This class focuses on women writers of the nineteenth century and several major discourses such as the transition from the social order of the Early Republic into Jacksonian Democracy, women's equality the Civil War, slavery and emancipation/racial uplift and, not least, women and literature. This class is interested not only in how women writers discursively represent nation, womanhood, equality, and racial uplift, but also in the artistic and literary ways in which these women’s writings contributed to shaping nineteenth century American literature and culture. Throughout April, we will collaborate with a class from Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts. Because of the time difference, we won't meet online as a class. Rather, while jointly studying Catharine Maria Sedgwick's travelogue from Europe, you will work together in small groups according to your own time preferences across the Atlantic. Therefore, please make sure you have access to a decent internet connection for these meetings. The plan is to thus undertake a scholarly research project together that focuses on Catharine Maria Sedgwick's travels to Europe - and Germany in particular (e.g. a collaborative scholarly edition with annotations of her travels to Germany that we might eventually publish digitally).

Alongside various nonfictional texts and short stories that will be made available on Stud.IP, students are asked to purchase and read the following novels:
Catherine Maria Sedgwick, A New England Tale (1822);
Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches (1863);
Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig (1859).
No specific editions are required.