3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course is designed to offer a broad, non-exhaustive overview of queer literature written in the past hundred years. Although not every text on the syllabus was published in the U.S., the relation of these works to U.S. LGBTQ culture and politics will be our main interest. Individual weeks are designed to focus on particular facets of queer experience—how place (urban or rural), class stature (wealthy or working class), and race inform what is possible for queer individuals, relationships, and larger communities. Students will be encouraged to pursue their own larger critical questions around queer literary canon formation, but discussions will return to the question of how queer life and literature changes in the transition from the margins to the mainstream. What possibilities and what constrictions emerge as queerness seems to become more legible to larger numbers of people? Other routes of inquiry will address the varying ways these works address the relation between gender and sexuality, and whether there is such a thing as a cohesive queer narrative style or form. While our reading list primarily is composed of shorter works of fiction (usually <200 pages) by lesbian, gay, queer, and trans writers, the syllabus also includes memoir, drama, and poetry.