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Gender, Sexuality, and Literature (361-0-24)

Topic

Sex & Books in Shakespeare's England

Instructors

Rebecca Lynn Fall

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-339: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

Topic: Sex and Books in Shakespeare's England.

Books and sex go hand in hand. We use books and other writing technologies to express desire, enjoy our sexuality, and explore and define our gender identities. Likewise, cultural anxieties about sex and gender often center on books, as recent calls to ban texts with queer themes from schools and libraries around the U.S. demonstrate. To make sense of the fascinating, often fraught relationship between sex, gender, and written media, this course focuses on a key period in Anglophone literary and sexual history: the so-called Renaissance, when book production exploded thanks to the printing press and England was rocked by rapid cultural, racial, and religious upheaval. Examining representations of sex and gender in books, manuscripts, maps, printed images, and other textual media from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, we will ask: how did different communities share ideas about sex? What could be published in print and what had to stay private? What texts survive today, and why? What distinguishes art from obscenity? In the process of exploring these questions, students will have the opportunity to work hands-on with premodern books.

Teaching Method

Discussion, occasional short lectures, group work.

Evaluation Method

Presentation, participation, writing portfolio.

Class Materials (Required)

Texts will be available at: Canvas and elsewhere online.

Class Materials (Suggested)

Texts include: Selected poetry, prose, visual texts/images, and secondary readings (available online).

Class Attributes

Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area