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Women's writing (literary category)
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The academic discipline of women's writing is a discrete area of literary studies which is based on the notion that the experience of women, historically, has been shaped by their sex, and so women writers by definition are a group worthy of separate study: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions usually very different from those which produced most writing by men."[1] It is not a question of the subject matter or political stance of a particular author, but of her sex, i.e. her position as a woman within the literary world.
Women's writing, as a discrete area of literary studies and practice, is recognized explicitly by the number of dedicated journals, organizations, awards, and conferences that focus mainly or exclusively on texts produced by women. Women's writing as a recognized area of study has been developing since the 1970s. The majority of English and American literature programs offer courses on specific aspects of literature by women, and women's writing is generally considered an area of specialization in its own right.
- ^ Blain, Virginia, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. viii–ix.
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