Activist Women's Fiction

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course explores the ways in which women's literary and cinematic production in French engages with contemporary social issues, like racism, sexism, environmental violence, and other forms of oppression. This course aims to highlight the role of women's fiction as a vehicle for advocating social justice, challenging norms, and inspiring meaningful change. Moreover, in this course, we will investigate what artistic activism means and looks like in contemporary contexts, away from reactionary assumptions and unsupported delegitimization. The focus will therefore not be on whether women writers and directors we study define themselves as activists, but rather on how the fictional worlds they create help formulate the tools essential for cultivating activist thinking. How, then, can the formal and stylistic elements of fiction shape activist thought and fuel political and social imaginaries? What forms of solidarity and transformative change emerge from women's voices in fiction? Restrictions: Include Level: undergraduates