|
|
The former GDR produced some of the best, most interesting, and
challenging women writers to come out of Germany including Anna Seghers,
Christa Wolf, Irmtraud Morgner, Sarah Kirsch, Maxie Wander, Brigitte
Reimann, Gerlind Reinshagen, Helga Schubert, Helga Koenigsdorf, Monika
Maron, and Elke Erb. In the course we will examine why women started to
write in greater numbers in the early seventies in the former GDR; we
will explore the questions and issues they raised in their text; we will
examine whether one can read these texts as feminist texts and whether
these women defined themselves as feminists; we will analyze how GDR
women responded to questions discussed in the feminist movements in the
West and how they dealt with the unification of the two German states in
1990. Aside from close readings of the texts, we will study the
political, economic, and social conditions that influenced women's
writings and discuss theoretical questions of feminist literary theory.
|
