ENGL 486: Queer Theory & Literature

Course Description

This course reads theories of sexuality to analyze how writers since 1600 have imagined printed text to reflect and shape desire, particularly same-sex desire. The course questions how same-sex desire appears in literature written before the theorization of "the Homosexual" in the late nineteenth century as well as how writers imagine sexuality before a hetero/homosexual binary appears. Writers may include contemporary theorists (Sedgwick, Foucault, Butler) as well as novelists (Gaskell and Stoker), playwrights (Kushner and Wycherley), and poets.