Literature, Sexuality, & Gender
Class Information
Instructor: Freeman, Elizabeth
CRN: 54932
Time: MWF 11:00-11:50
Location: 26 Wellman
Description
This course will begin with Modernism, often described as the first flowering of self-consciously LGBTQ literature. But we will start with a seemingly heterosexual Modernist novel, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, both to hone our skills at reading for alternatives to heterosexuality and to see how gender norms and racial formations intersect. We’ll then move on to two Modernist classics, Nella Larsen’s Passing and Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, before turning to postmodern and postcolonial novels, plays, short stories, and poems involving sexual and gender normativity and transgression. Throughout the course, the emphasis will be on the intersections of race with gender/sexuality, and of literary style with politics and social identity. Authors are Anglo-American, African American, French, Chicanx, Native American, Caribbean-Canadian, and Black Scottish, as well as a variety of genders and sexual orientations.
Grading
Midterm Paper 20%
Final Paper 25%
Final Exam 20%
Ongoing Written Class Participation 25%
Quizzes 10%
Oral Particpation: up to 5% Extra Credit
Texts
Tender Buttons, ISBN 978-0872866355, Stein, Gertrude
Cereus Blooms at Night, ISBN 978-0802144621, Mootoo, Shani
Passing, ISBN 978-0142437278, Larsen, Nella
A Visitation of Spirits, ISBN 978-0375703973, Kenan, Randall
Trumpet, ISBN ISBN 978-0375704635, Kay, Jackie
The Sun Also Rises, ISBN 978-0743297332, Hemingway, Ernest