EGL 263 - Literature and Sexuality

Course Units: 1

By examining literary and cultural representations, this course both interrogates the politics and social dynamics of various sexual identities and subjectivities and examines complex representations of both gender and sexuality. This course also focuses on the literary study of important straight, gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, and transgender writers within their evolving social, historical, and cultural contexts over the last few centuries. We will discuss some of the major critical debates both in literary studies and in gender and sexuality studies, asking and attempting to answer the following questions: How is sexuality represented in literature? How has the relationship between literature and sexuality evolved over time? Who creates the discourses on sexualized bodies and identities? How can we understand the relationship between lived experience and literary/cultural representations? What might be queer about literature? What makes a narrative queer? Prerequisite(s): EGL 100 or EGL 101 or EGL 102 or a grade of 5 on the AP English Literature or Language test. CC: HUL, HUM