ENG264

Description

The Victorian period was full of writers addressing what we now consider themes of "queer" sexuality and gender. Often, however, these themes have gone unrecognized. Victorian texts, which hold a multivalent emphasis on kinship, desire, matrimony, domesticity, and familial life, stand as a rich resource for analyses of same-sex desire, gendered and sexual subjectivities, and closeting and homophobia. Through texts by authors such as Oscar Wilde, Christina Rossetti, and Charles Dickens we will look at depictions of nonnormative desires and identities and resistance to heteronormativity. We will also explore gender and sexuality through intersectional frameworks that consider how class, race and nationality impacts gender and sexual identities. To provide a theoretical context for this exploration, we will deploy queer theory to understand the way power works to institutionalize and legitimate certain forms and expressions of sexuality and gender while stigmatizing others. Through this "disruptive" knowledge, we will question norms of sexuality and gender and the oppression and violence that such hegemonic norms justify. For English majors, this course may satisfy the Period D-2 or E requirements but cannot double-count. For English minors, this course can count either as a seminar in Theory or as a 200-level English seminar, but it cannot double count for the two requirements.