English 171

Upper Division Coursework: Literature and Sexual Identity

Other Readings and Media

Bannon: Beebo Brinker; Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text; Colapinto: As Nature Made Him; Foucault: The History of Sexuality, volume 1; Notley: The Descent of Alette

Description

This course will take up the complicated relationship between literature and sexuality by way of sexual science, the aesthetics of sexuality, and sociologies and histories of sexuality. Throughout the course we will ask what role literature has to play in these discourses � and, indeed, we will ask in what sense those discourses are themselves �literary.� Though the bulk of the course focuses on the period since 1960 in the United States, we will begin with a look at the late 19th century as a formative period for modern understandings of sexuality � and of literature � and pause briefly in the modernist period, too, so as to frame our discussion of the more contemporary materials that will make up the bulk of the course.