11 - Navigating the Future of Early Modern Women’a Writing: Pedagogy, feminism, and literary theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
Summary
Abstract
This essay explores the challenges of teaching premodern women's text through the lens of literary theory and scholarship as it relates to pedagogical practice. It argues that while post-structuralist feminist theory is necessary to the study of premodern texts by women, it is often difficult to implement in the classroom, given the current academic and political climate. Using Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam as a case study, Dowd proposes that we can engage our students in more meaningful discussions about how and why the fact of female authorship matters by inviting them to consider the complex intersection between gender and form. The essay concludes by inviting a form of strategic advocacy for premodern women writers in the contemporary classroom.
Keywords: pedagogy; literary theory; early modern women's writing; Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam; literary form
As the essays in this volume have demonstrated, early modern conceptions and experience of time were intricately tied to gendered constructs, ideologies, and lived practices. Memory, reception, and commemoration are thus always in some sense gendered practices, as they are inextricable from the cultural modalities that inform the lives, beliefs, and imaginations of men and women both in the early modern period and in our own. The gendered nature of temporality takes on a distinct set of meanings in the classroom, especially for those of us who research and teach the works of early modern women. Indeed, the classroom is a space where the pressures of different temporalities are felt particularly acutely. For many of us invested in the multivocality and complexities of the past, we strive to historicize literary and artistic artifacts, to engage our students in the fascinating and often strange past-ness of cultural production. But we also aim to make the past immediate, to interact with early modern women's writing so that it becomes a vital, present-tense concern. And, through our efforts, we also frequently look to the future, hoping to guide students as they develop into the critical thinkers, creative artists, and knowledgeable citizens who will shape the world in the years ahead. Balancing these different temporal impulses is far from easy, but it is made especially difficult when the subject of our pedagogy—early modern women's writing—is still often considered marginal within the academy.
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- Gendered Temporalities in the Early Modern World , pp. 261 - 282Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018