News

New biweekly discussion group centered on women in and writing fiction to begin meeting next Monday in WRC

In print | November 20, 2008

Starting on Nov. 24, the Women’s Resource Center will begin hosting a biweekly discussion group designed to explore the contributions of female writers to the genre of fictional literature through a feminist lens. The discussion group, one of many events scheduled during the WRC’s Open Hours, will convene every other Monday from 10 p.m. to midnight.

Candice Nguyen ’11, the discussion facilitator, said that she was inspired to organize the series after noting the absence of a community forum that would explore fictional literature from a feminist perspective. After an unsuccessful attempt to register for a Virginia Woolf class at Bryn Mawr last year, Nguyen decided to read Woolf’s work on her own while interning at the Feminist Majority Foundation over the summer.

When she encountered Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” Nguyen found that the work complemented her activities at FMF and realized that the WRC would provide the perfect venue for further exploration of the subject.

“The timing of working for this pro-women coalition and reading Woolf [inspired me] to use the WRC as a medium and a launching point to discuss other cornerstones about women writers or as a way to [discuss] how women have been portrayed in different texts,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen said that she will incorporate feedback from participants in the first discussion when thinking about how to structure discussions for the remainder of the semester. The group will focus on more than just a literary critique of women’s writing. “It does not necessarily have to be academic. I see [the discussion group] as becoming a very malleable forum to discuss feminism and women’s empowerment,” Nguyen said.

During her first gathering, she plans to stage a reenactment of Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” an extended essay that Woolf originally presented as a series of lectures. “One interesting thing is to do a reenactment because it was meant to be vocal,” Nguyen said. While acknowledging that the discussion’s late-night time is not optimal, Nguyen said she is confident that the series will draw enough participants to sustain a lively discussion.

In addition, Nguyen hopes the discussion will provide a space to discuss the history of women writers and their evolution — stories that are often underemphasized in academic settings. Although Nguyen commended the English Literature Department for offering a wide range of courses, she said that there remains room for improvement in the diversity of the selection.

Erika Slaymaker ’11, who plans to participate in the discussion group, offered a similar assessment of the department’s course offerings. “I think that the English Department does a good job representing a lot of specialties,” Slaymaker said, “[But] we can always do more to improve.”

English Literature Professor Peter Schmidt said that the English Literature Department is making a concerted effort to design classes that incorporate a range of authors and views. According to Schmidt, over 50 percent of the students enrolled in English classes are female, and the department incorporates feminist theory in a number of classes. Further, professors take the gender balance of the authors into account when constructing syllabi. “We definitely think a lot about the authors … Female writers are very central to our classes,” Schmidt said.