I’m currently in the library, diligently working on my preliminary bibliography. However, the UCF computer network is erratic beyond belief (upgrade your servers, you cheapskates!), so I took a break from MLA International Bibliography to look through my actual books, specifically Rita Felski’s Literature after Feminism. I intended to only skim through the introduction, to determine whether or not it applied to my project, but she sucked me in and I read the whole thing (22 pages). And now I am begging you, pleading with you, no, make that commanding you to read it as well. It’s that good. It’s amazing. It’s kick-ass.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the first paragraph.
I have been reading a lot about myself lately, and most of what I read is not very flattering. Although I’m a lapsed Catholic, I’ve seen myself described as a “remorseless Puritan” or even, in one gloriously overwrought phrase, as a “destroying angel.” When I’m not ushering in the apocalypse, I am being cast as a hatchet-faced harridan and paid-up member of the thought police. I am told that I indoctrinate my students, ruthlessly crush any expression of dissent, and execrate anything written by a dead white male. Neither my motives nor my personality have anything to recommend them; I am bitter, hostile, resentful, and, it appears, utterly irrational. (1)
Luckily for you, my commanded reader, a preview of Literature after Feminism is available via GoogleBooks, which I’m embedding below. You’ve run out of excuses thanks to technology, muahaha.
PS – The introduction goes on to explain Felski’s purpose: “By interweaving theory and literary example I hope to show how feminism has influenced our view of literary works and how those works, in turn, speak back to feminism” (21). The book is organized “around four key aspects of literary study: readers, authors, plots, and the question of aesthetic value” (20).
Felski, Rita. Literature after Feminism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Print.
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