Women and Magazines

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will explore women as producers (journalists, editors, illustrators) and consumers of modern periodicals including little magazines like The Little Review, slick magazines like Vanity Fair, fashion magazines like Vogue, women's domestic magazines like Good Housekeeping, feminist papers like Votes for Women or The Freewoman, and more. We'll pay special attention to modern women writers who made their living writing for magazines - Djuna Barnes, Rebecca West, or Jesse Fauset, for example - and explore the ways in which modern periodicals (both "big" and "little") considered the rise of modernism in relation to changing gender roles and feminist concerns. Since the periodical press has been called the medium that best "articulates the unevenness and reciprocities of evolving gender ideologies," we'll consider changing articulations of "modern" femininity in a wide range of periodical genres. We'll learn how to read modern periodicals from various angles, taking into consideration reception, circulation, seriality, temporality, illustration, and advertisement, and we'll meet the modern woman journalist and her close relations: "sob sisters," "agony aunts," "stunt girls." We'll be exploring new digital archives for the most part to access these early twentieth century publications. We will also read one novel in installments throughout the semester to more closely participate in the serial reading practices that would have organized an early twentieth-century reader's relationship with her favorite publication. Assignments will include one group presentation and linked essay, one essay of 8-10 pages, and a few shorter exercises.