Dr. Dara Barnat

Women’s Poetry in America – Course Description

Historically, the identities of “women” and “poet” have been considered (by male authors and critics, in particular) as in conflict, even mutually-exclusive. Yet, women poets have long been defying societal expectations and challenging injustices in poetry, subtly and overtly, thematically and formalistically. Poets may include Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, Muriel Rukeyser, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Alicia Ostriker, Marge Piercy, Naomi Shihab Nye, Claudia Rankine, Joy Harjo, Layli Long Solider, and others. We will be investigating how questions of gender intersect with nation, ethnicity, race, and class. We will also be reading scholarship that explores women’s writing in general, and women’s poetry more specifically. As we explore the complications of being a woman and poet, we will interrogate the necessity for the category of “American women’s poetry.”