Renaissance Women Online Report

• Go to Siena library website [Siena.edu/library]

• Go to Women Writers Project and then to Renaissance Women Online [see site index]. Note that the college has a license, so you must use a computer on-campus, attached to the college server, or go through the proxy.

• Choose one work you have never heard of--sign up for that work. [Check to be certain contextual material is on-line for that work.]

• Sign up for a day to give your report.

• Read contextual materials and the work itself. (Skim the work if it is very long.)

• Check for your author Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on line in both name and full-text searches.

• Check for other information on your author in The Feminist Companion to Literature in English ( REFERENCE PR111 .B55 1990) and on the web

• Prepare a one-page handout on the writer and her work. Make 28 copies for the class.

• Give a five-minute report to the class, telling about the writer and her work. Include a brief excerpt to be demonstrated on-line. Who was she? What did she write? When? Why did she write it? Did she write anything else? What are the major themes of the work?

• Emphasize questions of spirituality and sexuality. Look for comparisons and contrasts with works we are reading for class. How did they construct their idea of the self? How do spirituality and/or sexuality help to form that sense of selfhood? How do the two areas of spirituality and sexuality intersect, complement each other, or come into conflict?

• Save all RWO handouts in your course folder to serve as a basis for future work and to study for exams.