Background
Walker, Nancy Ann was born on September 5, 1942 in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States. Daughter of Kirkby Alexander and Phyllis (Pettegrew) Walker.
( The author contends that the novels of the period 1969-...)
The author contends that the novels of the period 1969--1988 served as a dialogue among women authors and their readers as they attempted to deal with dramatic alterations in attitudes toward career, sexuality, and continued tension between personal autonomy and cultural sexism. In readings of novels by American, British, and Canadian authors, including Gail Godwin, Toni Morrison, Margaret Drabble, Doris Lessing, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Margaret Atwood, the author proposes that the narrative devices of irony and fantasy that are used commonly in these novels reflect women's increased detachment from cultural attempts to define women's nature and role, and their needs to imagine alternative ways of ordering their own lives and the structure of society itself. Rather than a chronological or author-by-author study, this insightful book integrates references to and readings of the novels in several areas of emphasis: the novel as a means of communication among women of this period, the relationship between irony and fantasy as narrative elements and the authors' concern with language itself, the novelists' tendency to use multiple narrative voices that continuously revise the concept of a fixed "self" and the stories that have traditionally defined the female self, the use of dreams, fantasies, and even madness as means of transcendence, and the frequent creation of utopian or dystopian visions of past or future. The author concludes that a pervasive theme in women's novels of the past twenty years, from Lessing's The Four--Gated City to Atwood's Cat's Eye, is the radical questioning of received tradition. She concludes as well that the alternative society collectively envisioned by these would value women's intellectual as well emotional powers, recognize their sexuality, reformulate the concept of power, and recognize women's full participation in the creation of language and meaning.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1604735767/?tag=2022091-20
( For centuries, women who aspired to write had to enter ...)
For centuries, women who aspired to write had to enter a largely male literary tradition that offered few, if any, literary forms in which to express their perspectives on lived experience. Since the nineteenth century, however, women writers and readers have been producing "disobedient" counter-narratives that, while clearly making reference to the original texts, overturn their basic assumptions. This book looks at both canonical and non-canonical works, over a variety of fiction and nonfiction genres, that offer counter-readings of familiar Western narratives. Nancy Walker begins by probing women's revisions of two narrative traditions pervasive in Western culture: the biblical story of Adam and Eve, and the traditional fairy tales that have served as paradigms of women's behavior and expectations. She goes on to examine the works of a wide range of writers, from contemporaries Marilynne Robinson, Ursula Le Guin, Anne Sexton, Fay Weldon, Angela Carter, and Margaret Atwood to precursors Caroline Kirkland, Fanny Fern, Mary De Morgan, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Edith Nesbit, and Evelyn Sharp.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0292790961/?tag=2022091-20
language educator studies educator
Walker, Nancy Ann was born on September 5, 1942 in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States. Daughter of Kirkby Alexander and Phyllis (Pettegrew) Walker.
Bachelor, Louisiana State University, 1964; Master of Arts, Tulane University, 1966; Doctor of Philosophy, Kent State University, 1971.
Instructor, Kent State University, East Liverpool, Ohio., 1966-1968; teaching fellow, Kent (Ohio) State University, 1968-1971; faculty member, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, 1971-1989; executive assistant to president, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, 1984-1985; director women's studies, associate Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 1989-1996; Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, since 1992. Board directors James M. Wood Institute for Study of Women's Education, Columbia, 1981-1987.
( The author contends that the novels of the period 1969-...)
( For centuries, women who aspired to write had to enter ...)
Member Modern Language Association (executive council 1992-1995), South Atlantic Modern Language Association, American Studies Association, American Humor Studies Association.
Married John Thomas Hand, November 23, 1965 (divorced August 1974). Married Burton Michael Augst, January 24, 1976.