Witchy Woman: Thinking Race, Gender, and Otherness through Medea in European Literature

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

A dark-haired woman with magic power betrays her father and her country for the love of a man—only to be deserted later. As Euripides tells the story, determination for revenge releases a flood of anger, misery, and sorrow; gruesome tragedy follows; and the dark-haired woman flies away to safety. The story of Medea is that of a foreign woman who betrays her family and sacrifices everything for Jason, only to be repulsed later when she is no longer of use to him. In this course, we will read Euripides along with radically different retellings of Medea's story, ancient and modern. As we follow this long tradition of literary revisions of the Medea myth, we will trace the constantly shifting gaze/perceptions towards the gendered, racial Other in European literature. Reading works by Euripides, Seneca, Pierre Corneille, Christa Wolf, among others, students explore evolving responses to the myth and and examine how different historical periods and situations reflect their anxieties and concerns regarding the Other through their own rendering of Medea's narrative.