3.0

Average Course Rating

Why do people choose to conceal their identities? This course investigates the multifaceted roles of anonymity and pseudonymity across literature, music, performance art, and activism. To be anonymous—literally “without a name”—can offer protection, enable more honest expression, serve as political resistance, function as deception, or arise from necessity. We will examine anonymity both as a strategy and as a performative act, considering how it challenges conventional notions of identity, authorship, and power. Key questions will include: How does anonymity function as a tool for resistance or control in different cultural and political contexts? How does it intersect with issues of race, gender, and sexuality? And how does it shape creative labor, from ghostwriting to collective production? Case studies span from Virginia Woolf’s modernist “philosophy of anonymity” and Italo Calvino’s postmodern desire for a literature beyond the self, to Elena Ferrante’s pseudonymous authorship. We will also investigate digital anonymity in the work of hacker collectives and artivists. By the end of the course, students will develop a critical understanding of how anonymity can both empower and erase, analyze the aesthetic and political possibilities it offers across media and cultural contexts, and apply these insights to their own research and experience.