This study abroad course will focus on feminist issues in British women’s writing from the Victorian period to the present. We will examine the ever-changing and ever-static status of women along with the specific cultural concerns of British women. 

By situating the poems, short stories, and novels we read in their historical and cultural context, we’ll interrogate notions of gender roles, beliefs about race, attitudes towards war, and concepts of Britishness. The variety of texts and authors will demonstrate how complicated the term “British woman” actually is—from early twentieth-century, upper-class women writing about the effects of war in London to contemporary British-Bangladeshi/Caribbean women writing about the immigrant experience in the labyrinthine London metropolis. 

To experience London the way WWII writer Elizabeth Bowen might have, we’ll go on a walking tour that explains what London’s inhabitants experienced during the Blitz (Germany bombing campaign of London during WWII). To get a sense of Virginia Woolf’s character Mrs. Dalloway, we’ll discuss that novel in Virginia Woolf’s drawing room surrounded by her sister, Vanessa’s, paintings.