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Semester 2

Queering Fictions in the Twentieth Century (ENLI10326)

Course Website

https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours

Subject

English Literature

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 4 English Literature courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses, and we do not consider civilisation & other interdisciplinary courses, freshman seminars, writing/composition courses or film/cinema/media courses; visiting students who have taken multiple courses in literature in other languages, should have passed at least two courses in English Literature as well. **Please note that this course may incur additional costs to purchase core texts** **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

This course explores the multifaceted representations of sexual identity in twentieth century fiction. It engages with the historical and social construction of homosexuality and investigates the emergence of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer identities in Western culture. We will focus on the theorising of homosexual identity from the perspectives of Freud and the sexologists of the early twentieth century, the gay and lesbian civil rights movements of the 1970s, the impact of HIV and AIDS, and the emergence of queer theory in the 1990s. In our survey of this literature we will focus on how the literary texts engage with political, sociological and philosophical ideas and discourses and so each novel will be read in parallel with key critical texts of the period.

Course Description

SEMINAR SCHEDULE: **Week 1 Introduction: Theorising sexualities; **Week 2 Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928); Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928); **Week 3 Gay and Lesbian Pulp Fiction of the 1950s; **Week 4 James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956); **Week 5 Angela Carter, The Passion of the New Eve (1977); **Week 6 Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982); **Week 7 Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story (1982); **Week 8 Essay Completion Week; **Week 9 Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship (1999); **Week 10 Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body (1992); **Week 11 Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet (1997).

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on an English Literature exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year English Literature course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed, and students will not be permitted to enrol in three 3rd year English Literature courses in the same semester at any time. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course