ENGL 341
Sexuality in US Modernisms Spring 2024
Division I Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ENGL 341 / WGSS 342

This course investigates how sexual identities, desires, and acts are represented and reproduced in U.S. literary and popular culture. Focusing on 1880-1940 (when, in the U.S. the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” came to connote discrete sexual identities), we will explore what it means to read and theorize “queerly.” Among the questions we will ask are: What counts as “sex” or “sexual identity” in a text? Are there definably queer and/or transgender writing styles or cultural practices? What does sexuality have to do with gender? How are sexual subjectivities intertwined with race, ethnicity, class, and other identities and identifications? Why has “queerness” proven to be such a powerful and sometimes powerfully contested concept? We will also explore what impact particular literary developments–the move from realism to modernism– and historical events such as the rise of sexology, first-wave feminism and the Harlem Renaissance–have had on queer cultural production. The class will also introduce students to some of the most influential examples of queer literary and cultural theory. Readings may include works by authors such as James, Cather, Far, Hughes, Nugent, Stein, Fitzgerald, and Larsen, as well as queer literary theory and critique by scholars such as Butler, Coviello, Ferguson, Foucault, Freeman, Freud, Hartman, Lorde, Love, Muñoz, Rich, Rodriguez, Ross, and Sedgwick.