The New Woman in Modern European and American Literature

Associate Professor Dorota Heneghan Department of Foreign Languages and Literature

Independent, fashionable, and progressive in her intellectual pursuits, the New Woman was a fascinating
feminist ideal that emerged in late nineteenth century literature and dominated the cultural landscape of early
twentieth-century Europe and the United States. Through a comparison of portraits of the New Woman in
American, Spanish, German, Polish, and Russian literature, we will deepen our understanding of the ways in
which this unconventional image of the femme nouvelle epitomized a new spirit and contributed to the
formation of modern societies on both sides of the Atlantic. All readings for this class are in English.