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December 23, 2005
like virginia (collaborative writing 30/50)
Adams, Katherine H. A Group of Their Own: College Writing Courses and American Women Writers, 1880-1940. Albany: SUNY UP, 2001.
1 sentence summary: one key reason women writers weren't as prolific or as much of an artistic force during this period as men were is that the ways and means of getting together to learn about, share, and practice the craft—college courses, clubhouses and meeting-rooms, academic groups & other scholarly & literary circles—weren't open to women, so those who wrote did so in isolation; when group venues for teaching, learning, and shared participation opened up, so did the quality & quantity of woman-authored work.
passages:
xvi-ii. rapid shifts in women's publication rates & entrance into editing & journalism were due to "not just the training secured in college but the encounter there with a model for professional endeavor, a working routine and support mechanism that these women carried with them from college into careers. immediately after graduating, they began participating in clubs, workshops, political parties, and government agencies where they could continue working within groups as they had done in college. although they might not be wanted in existing groups where men had dominated, and forming new ones could be an all-consuming endeavor, these women proceeded doggedly, creating a pattern of collaboration as well as possibilities for women writers that had never existed before" that allowed them to "enter[] the previously closed circle of Writer"
xix. "the real choices made by the generations of women who shattered the definitions of writer/non-writer, both in their college classes and then in their careers, can enable us to truly examine écriture féminine and the learning environment needed to nurture it: these writers reveal to us not new theoretical possibilities but specific models of work that nurture creativity and transform lives"
185-6. "the larger picture of these years" shows us not just women in isolation but "women working as individual writers and within a variety of groups, a successful means of breaking through the accepted circles of earlier generations. for what these women really did was define collaboration for women. in elinor's college career (1906) julia schwartz focused on the group's role in providing the motivation for creative work....the four women discuss the reasons that so many women had given up on writing: the needs of families, the control of men, the inadequacy of their professional training. but...their leader, posits that what women have lacked is an ongoing form of group committment": "why do you write poetry...? because you're simply bursting with something that has to be said? pooh! you write it because you want my approval, i write it because i want yours...it's women who demand things of each other; women who accomplish do it because they are driven by" one another (150 in schwartz). "in networks of friends and colleagues, in clubs, in graduate workshops, and in political organizations, they forged a method from which they never retreated. with the support of such groups, they assumed voices of authority without denying the isolation of writing and the dedication it requires."
Posted by ttobryan at December 23, 2005 03:02 PM