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German 301, Senior Seminar:
East German Women Writers
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. |
