Location: Bowdoin / Gay and Lesbian Studies / Courses / Fall 2006

Gay and Lesbian Studies

Courses

Fall 2006 Courses

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010. The Victorian Fantastic: Aviva Briefel T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55; Explores non-realist modes of Victorian narrative, including melodrama, science fiction, children’s literature, and the gothic. We will examine the ways in which literary texts re-imagine contemporary social issues and anxieties through their telling of fantastic stories. We will pay special attention to what kinds of dreams (and nightmares) these narratives generate about gender, sexuality, and race. Authors may include Barrie, Carroll, Dickens, Doyle, Le Fanu, Stevenson, Wells, and Wilde.
104. Queer Matters: Narrative & Film: Celeste Goodridge T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25; This course explores narrative and film adaptation, with an emphasis on gay and lesbian authors and themes. Issues to be addressed include adaptation, identification and political consequences of representation. Authors may include Lillian Hellman, Carson McCullers, Michael Cunningham, Patricia Highsmith, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Truman Capote and Annie Proulx. Film screenings, which are required, will be Monday or Tuesday evening.
273. Queer Race: Mark Foster T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55; Contemporary critics have argued that late nineteenth/early twentieth century understandings of same-sex desiring identities acquired early visibility through self-conscious analogies to racial categorization, i.e. a homosexual is like a mixed-race person: s/he is half one thing and half another. Such beliefs continue to endure to the present day. One of its legacies is the belief that struggles against racial oppression and sexual oppression are mutually exclusive. Through close readings of both popular and lesser known lesbigay/transgendered narratives of the era, this course explores the cultural and theoretical implications of these beliefs, as well as the challenges they have sometimes presented to conceptualizing and implementing radical social change. Possible authors/texts: Radclyffe Hall, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Ann Bannon, Rita Mae Brown, Ann Allen Shockley, Patricia Nell Warren, Leslie Feinberg, James Earl Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Audre Lorde, Take Me Out: A Play , M Butterfly, and Noah’s Arc
287. The Horror Film in Context: Aviva Briefel T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55; Examines the genre of the horror film in a range of cultural, theoretical, and literary contexts. Considers the ways in which these films represent violence, fear, and paranoia; their creation of identity categories; their intersection with contemporary politics; and their participation in such major literary and cinematic genres as the gothic, parody, and family drama. Texts may include works by Craven, Cronenburg, De Palma, Freud, Hitchcock, Kristeva, Kubrick, Poe, Romero, and Shelley.
333. Sex and Desire in American Poetry: Celeste Goodridge W 1:00 - 3:55; Examines the aesthetics of seduction, desire, voyeurism, disclosure, and disguise in a range of poetic projects. Authors may include Whitman, Dickinson, Williams, Stevens, Bishop, Merrill, Gluck, and Doty. This course satisfies the department’s requirement for courses in literature of the Americas.
338. Sex and the Word: Freud, Psychoanalysis, Literature: Peter Coviello T 1:00 - 3:55; An examination of one of the great theorists of intimacy and its vexations, and of the provision his works make – or might make – for the study of literature. Our aim in the course will not be to produce successfully “Freudian” readings of given texts, or to assign one or another of Freud’s categories of pathology to fictional characters. We will look instead to test what sort of purchase Freud’s varied investigations – of language and desire, of loss and transformation, and especially of the intricate relations of gender and sexuality to one another, and to the very experience of selfhood – might afford us in our encounter with the pleasures and problems of modern fiction. Authors will include Freud and many of his critics, as well as Henry James, Nella Larsen, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and others.

226. The City as American History: Matthew Klingle M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55; Seminar. America is an urban nation today, yet Americans have had deeply ambivalent feelings toward the city over time. Explores the historical origins of that ambivalence by tracing several overarching themes in American urban history, from the seventeenth century to the present. Topics include race and class relations, labor, design and planning, gender and sexual identity, immigration, politics and policy, scientific and technological systems, violence and crime, religion and sectarian disputes, and environmental protection. Discussions revolve around these broad themes, as well as regional distinctions between American cities. Students write several short papers and one longer paper based upon primary and secondary sources.