Critical Conditions: Gender, Literature, and Illness (Pre-1800) In this course we will explore the literary representation of illness and pain in a range of texts from the classical period to the present day, focusing in particular on the intersection of illness with questions of gender, race, and sexuality. Beginning with Sophocles’s tragedy Women of Trachis, we will explore the classical representation of acute pain in the context of early Greek medicine, before examining medieval and early modern literary works inspired by the Black Death, including selections from Boccaccio’s Decameron. The second half of the class will focus on modernist and contemporary accounts of illness, including Virginia Woolf’s treatment of both the 1918 influenza epidemic and so-called “shell-shock” in her novel Mrs Dalloway. We will intersperse our literary readings with theoretical explorations of cure, disability, and ableism by writers such as Eli Clare, as well as work from the emerging field of narrative medicine.

Reading Women's Writing: Living a Feminist Life from Mary Wollstonecraft to Sara Ahmed In this course we will investigate the tradition of women's writing in English from the sixteenth century to the present day, focusing on the complex relationships among writing, sexuality, race, and gender.  We will consider the ways in which writers identifying as female respond to--and often subvert--traditional literary themes and conventions. An organizing focus of our reading will be the articulation or suppression of female anger and other related emotions in a variety of repressive contexts. Though our focus will be primarily on the interpretation of literary works, we will also develop an awareness of relevant debates in feminist theory, from Mary Wollstonecraft’s revolutionary contribution to notions of female education to Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist “killjoy.”  Other texts may include: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park; Margaret Cavendish, The Convent of Pleasure; Grace Cho, Tastes Like War; Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage; Harriet Jacobs, The Life of a Slave Girl; Toni Morrison, Sula; Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties; Meredith Talusan, Fairest; and Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, and Mrs Dalloway.

Reading Women's Writing: Living a Feminist Life from Mary Wollstonecraft to Sara Ahmed In this course we will investigate the tradition of women's writing in English from the sixteenth century to the present day, focusing on the complex relationships among writing, sexuality, race, and gender.  We will consider the ways in which writers identifying as female respond to--and often subvert--traditional literary themes and conventions, looking critically as we do so at our own interpretive assumptions as readers. An organizing focus of our reading will be the articulation and/or suppression of female anger and other related emotions in a variety of repressive contexts. Though our focus will be primarily on the interpretation of literary works, we will also develop an awareness of relevant debates in feminist theory, from Mary Wollstonecraft’s revolutionary contribution to notions of female education to Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist “killjoy.”  Other texts may include: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park; Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway; Toni Morrison, Sula; Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions; Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage; Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties; Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This, Rebecca Traister, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.

Reading Literature: How to Do Things with Words How does language make and unmake the world around us? Is literature capable of intervening in the social and historical conditions of its own making? How does literary criticism participate in cultural transformation? To get a grasp on these questions, we will read widely in literature that explores the relationships between language, power, and social life, as well as criticism and theory that examines the interactions between aesthetics and politics. Our inquiry will survey the practical and theoretical foundations of literary study, as well as current debates about methodology in the field. Readings might include: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and poetry by Phillis Wheatley Peters, John Keats, Dionne Brand, Solmaz Sharif, and M. NourbeSe Philip

Gender, Power, and Politics on the Early Modern Stage (I) (Pre-1800) In this class we will explore the representation of gendered embodiment on the early modern stage, considering as we do so how theatrical embodiment intersects with other treatments of the body in early modern culture.  We will read both early modern and contemporary theoretical accounts of gender as performance, investigating among other issues the use of boy actors, the representation of specifically “female” disorders (e.g., “suffocation” or hysteria), the performance of maternity, and the treatment of same-sex eroticism. Of particular importance will be the representation of the articulate or angry woman as the “shrew” or “scold,” and we will begin the class with an investigation of so-called “shrew-taming” narratives. Primary readings will include: Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter’s Tale, Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, and Cavendish’s Convent of Pleasure. We will end the semester with a look at how this material plays out in our current political moment, focusing in particular on the representation of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Christine Blasey Ford.

Virginia Woolf in Context In this seminar we will focus on the novels, essays, and short stories of Virginia Woolf, considering them in the light of her social, political, and artistic contexts and commitments.  We will explore in particular the tension in her work between Victorian values and aesthetics and the progressive goals of the modernist movement. Our readings will take us from the early novels (Voyage Out, Night and Day) to the later experimental works (To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves). Some of the topics central to the seminar will be Woolf’s engagement with modernism and its key figures (such as James Joyce); her treatment of gender and sexuality in her essays and elsewhere; and her struggles with mental illness.  We will intersperse our reading of Woolf’s prose with consideration of some film versions of her work, and we will conclude the seminar with a reading of Michael Cunningham’s 1998 creative homage to Mrs. Dalloway: The Hours.

Marion Wells

Reviews and ratings for Marion Wells at Middlebury College.Marion Wells teaches Critical Conditions, Reading Women's Writing, Reading Literature and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Marion Wells good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

I highly enjoyed this course with Marion! She is a very caring and intelligent professor. She knows her stuff very well and will push your thinking when it comes to discussions and papers, but overall, she supports each and every learner. 

If you are not in the major, there are easier reading lit classes to take. Otherwise, this is a standard english class: a slew of mediocre literature, weekly discussion posts, a typical book talk discussion, and 4 papers. I did like the class, but did have to put in the work for the grade.

I enjoyed this class. I am an English major, and for being a pre-1800 class, it was great. I found most of the readings interesting, though a few were a slog to get through. We had to do discussion posts and presentations, so the class was a good amount of work, but not over-the-top. Marion Wells is a great professor, kind person, knows a lot, and cares about helping students understand the content. Overall solid English class!