Tag Archives: british literature

Spring 2020 Courses: The Woman Writer and Her World

Check out this series on upcoming spring 2020 courses! Remember to check in with your adviser for TAP numbers before your registration date

This spring, Dr. Baldys is teaching a course on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:35-3:50pm about British women writers as they navigated the world of the “New Woman.”

Course Attributes:

  • 200-level
  • G1 – Arts & Humanities Area
  • W – Writing Component
  • WSTU – Women’s & Gender Studies Minor
  • Counts for British Literature Requirement
  • Prerequisites: ENGL 110 or 110H

The “New Women”: British Girls Who Ran the World

In Britain, the decades spanning the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries were a pivotal time for women. Technological advances and the relaxation of conventions meant that women saw increased social opportunities: they could ride bicycles, work in department stores, wear bloomers, and even smoke in public! Yet many disapproved of the “New Woman,” and her modern ways gave rise to both caricature and controversy as the nation lurched toward the enactment of women’s suffrage in 1918. This course will explore the broad influence of the “New Woman” controversy as it played out in literature of the era. We’ll read works of poetry, prose, fiction, and drama written by and about “the girl of the period”—works that encouraged readers to re-examine conceptions of marriage, gender, sexuality, and social mobility, even as early feminists struggled to balance their claims against those of other marginalized groups, like the colonized, the lower-class, and the disabled.

Texts studied will include:

  • Henry James’s story “Daisy Miller,”
  • Virginia Woolf’s feminist manifesto A Room of One’s Own,
  • novelists Sarah Grand and Mona Caird,
  • suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, and
  • explorer Mary Kingsley, whose best-selling nonfiction work Travels in West Africa led many of her contemporaries to re-evaluate British imperialism,
  • along with the works of lesser-known poets, novelists, and suffragettes.

Please send any questions to Dr. Baldys at emily.baldys@millersville.edu.

Professor Profile: Andie Petrillo

Read more about the professors in Millersville’s English department in this Professor Profiles series!

Professor Andie Petrillo

Professor Andie Petrillo is one of the new professors to join the English department this semester. She is currently teaching ENGL 110, Section 28.

Professor Petrillo’s education journey began at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, MD where she received her Bachelor of Arts. “While I was there, I was a member of the French Club and starred in two plays: The Eumenides (as a Fury) and Clybourne Park (Bev/Kathy)”

After her undergrad program, Professor Petrillo attended Millersville University as a graduate student in the Master of Arts in English Program. While at MU, Professor Petrillo worked in the English office as a graduate assistant, participated in University Theatre’s Fall Musical 2018 Production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and published two of her graduate essays in MUsings: The Graduate Student Journal, and much more. Her graduate essays focus on the “New Woman” in Victorian England and the success of multi-platforms like Pemberley Digital’s “Emma Approved,” respectively.

Elsa the guinea pig visits the English department office.

Professor Petrillo is especially passionate about British Literature (“Jane Austen & James Joyce are amongst my favorite authors”) and American Literature (“F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway are some other faves”). In the future, she hopes to earn her Ph.D. in British Literature and teach British Lit as a tenured professor.

When asked about her favorite aspects of the English major, Professor Petrillo said she loves how the English major creates opportunities for reading different genres of literature and writing creatively. If she could meet any writer, past or present, Professor Petrillo thinks “it would be a tie between Jane Austen (I wrote my grad thesis on Pride and Prejudice), James Joyce (just to pick his brain), or Ernest Hemingway (because he had such a colorful life/interesting personality).” Besides English, Professor Petrillo is interested in history and foreign languages. “Growing up I had an obsession with learning about the Civil War and the Holocaust, so I was pretty interested in history too. I’m also fluent in French so foreign languages interest me too.”

Some of Professor Petrillo’s favorite past-times include reading, watching Netflix, and snuggling with her two guinea pigs named Peanut and Elsa.