Women writers in the European literatures

Students will acquire the knowledge of the literary creativity of European women authors. With the help of theoretical insights of feminist theory and theories of gender studies students will be qualified to give judgments on literary texts, compare them and make judgments about the reception of female authors. They will became aware of the importance of the category of gender as an important element that constitutes the social and symbolic order at various levels. The particular role of gender and his influence in literary texts will be discussed. The main objective is to develop a sensitivity for the detection of concealed mechanisms which are used in the texts and contribute to the repetition of traditional hierarchies referring to the sexual identities. Students will also become aware of the importance and possibilities of digital humanities in general, as well as in presenting marginalized cultural segments.

The undergraduate students of informatics must complete the compulsory-elective course Humanities.

The successful integration in the study course is connected with the knowledge of other literary-historical formations in the field of Slovenian literature. The integration is also related to the ability of connecting the knowledge in this course with that offered by other courses in the field of literary studies.

Students will become familiar with the historical context of women authorship and with the historic structure and evolution of the literary canon, which accepts or rejects the literature written by women authors. Emphasis will be placed on readings and the discussion of selected literary works of European women writers, poets, essayists, journalists and playwrights. The research projects about their achievements will be presented in the form of the digital data bases, which question the monograph - based literary history. Digital data bases allow for lacunas and are open to the future growth – a kind of digital eco-system. The basic issues of the digital humanities – subversion of traditional canon and democratization of knowledge, will be presented on the example of a pan-European digital data base as well as data base Knjiženstvo.

Students will understand the micro- and macropoetics of the literature of female authors in both the European and the world literary context. Students will be able to organize and present their knowledge in accordance with digital humanities.

 Dojčinović, Biljana: “De-centered Pluralism of Methods: Feminist Literary Criticism in Serbia”, u Gender and Identity: Theories from and/or Southeastern Europe, editors Jelisaveta Blagojević, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapšak, ATHENA; Research Center in Gender Studies Skopje and Belgrade Women’s Studies and Gender Research Center, 2006, str. 281-296.
 Dojčinović, Biljana: „Margina, centar, polisistem? Baza podataka Knjiženstvo i ideja drugačijih modernizama" u Srbija između istoka i zapada, knjiga 1, Svetska kulturna baština i pozicije manjih kulturnih prostora u njoj, Filološki fakultet, Beograd, 2014, str. 39-55. (Will be translated in English, if necessary).
 Giorgio, Adalgisa in Waters Le Guin Julia, ur.: Women’s Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.
 Rich, Adrienne: O lažeh, skrivnostih in molku. Ljubljana: ŠKUC, 2003.
 Lukic, Jasmina: Poetics, Politics and Gender. In: Women and Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe. Ashgate, 2006.
 Lanser, Susan Sniader: Fictions of authority : women writers and narrative voice.London : Cornell University Press, 1992.
 Woolf, Virginia: Lastna soba. Ljubljana: Založba/cf*, Lila zbirka, 1998.
 Mores, Ellen: Literary Women. London: The Woman Press, 1978.
 Irigaray, Luce: Jaz, ti, me, mi: za kulturo različnosti. Ljubljana: Znanstveno in publicistično središče, 1995.
 Poniž, Katja Mihurko: Drzno drugačna. Zofka Kveder in podobe ženskosti. Ljubljana: Delta, 2003.
 Zeiger, Melissa F.: Death, Sexuality, and the Changing Shapes of Elegy: Reading Women Writing, 1997.
 Chadwick Whitney: Women, Art and Society. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 1990.
 Borovnik, Silvija: Pišejo ženske drugače? Ljubljana: Mihelač, 1995.
 K. Ursula: Dancing on the Edge of the World. New York: Grove Press, 1989.

Seminar (70%), oral examination (30%).

Dr. Biljana Dojčinović (1963), associate professor at the Department of Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature, Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University in Serbia. She was one of the founders of Women’s Studies Center in Belgrade, as well as Indoc center in Association for Women’s Initiative. Editor-in-chief of Genero, a journal in feminist theory, since 2002 till 2008. Member of the Management Committee of the COST Action IS 0901, Women Writers in History: Toward a New Understanding of European Literary Culture since 2009; member of the core group of the Action 2011-13. Director of the research project on Serbian women writers: Кnjiženstvo – theory and history of women’s writing in Serbian until 1915 www.knjizenstvo.rs since 2011. Editor-in-chief of Knjiženstvo, Journal for Studies in Literature, Gender and Culture http://www.knjizenstvo.rs/magazine.php?lang=en since 2011. Since 2010, one of the editors at The John Updike Review; as of 2015, member of Board of Directors of John Updike Society. As of December 2015, she is the Head of the Department of Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature, Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University.
Bibliography:
• ”Culture as an Excess: Jelica Belović Bernadzikowska”, Transnational Identities of Women Writers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ed. Ramona Mihaila, Addleton Academic Publishers, New York, pp. 32-40, ISBN 978-1-935494-57-7, LCCN 2013948798.
• “History, Identity and Diversity” in Women's History Review, Routledge, Taylor and Francis, Vol. 20, No. 4, September 2011, pp. 629-639.
• “Gendering Post-socialist Transition: Studies of Changing Gender Perspectives”,
• European Journal of Women’s Studies, November 2014 21: 446-450,
• SAGE Publications.