English 257G: The Lure of the Road: Women and Travel in Contemporary Culture
This interdisciplinary course will examine the growing importance that open
spaces and mobility play in shaping female identity. By crossing borders
between geography, literature, film, sociology, feminist and postcolonial
theories, we will explore travel as a metaphor for female freedom, social
protest, and displacement. In particular, we will investigate the ways in
which conventions of travel writing--departure, the reluctant companion,
extraordinary events, homecoming--are appropriated and redefined in female
travel narratives, and we will discuss strategies of subversion of
"masculine" characteristics of travel, such as heroism, adventure,
transgression, and self-exploration. Apart from the selection of fictional
texts, films, travelogues, and maps, the course will include a package of
readings that will provide the necessary theoretical frameworks for our
discussions. The readings will introduce the issue of sexual difference,
examine the notion of the female body as an inscriptive surface, and
question the traditional division between male (urban) and female (natural)
places. Gender and travel will further be explored through the following
questions: When, how, and why do women travel? What are the consequences and
social implications of women travelling? Is travel a privilege of the
middle-class Western woman, and how do journeys of the Third Women differ?
If space is gendered, how do women view and experience it? Finally, the
course will also pay attention to space travel as a new dimension of female
travel and to recent cultural phenomena such as the Lilith Fair, a nomadic
music event.