Gender, Sexuality, and Literature (361-0-1)
Topic
Queering Girlhood
Instructors
Samantha Marie English
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-430: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM
Overview of class
From Barbie to bows, 2023 was in many ways the year of girlhood's return. But is girlhood really so monolithic as TikTok makes it out to be? Where does girlhood get messy or monstrous, gross or gay? Who gets to be a girl, and whose bodies are forgotten in our popular narratives about girlhood? In this course, we will explore queer representations of girlhood in 20th and 21st century Anglo-American literature, cinema, and television. Our readings will ask us to consider girlhood as a contradictory set of experiences that can happen to people of all genders. We will ask what girlhood feels like to children who are all too often excluded from or only partially imagined within it, as well as for children who desire a girlhood that rejects them or reject the girlhood that is thrust upon them. To structure our questions, we will devote significant time to analyzing Kathryn Bond Stockton's "The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century" (2009). We'll learn what it means to understand, stretch, and interrogate a major piece of queer theory through literature and art. Finally, we'll think about a cast of characters that emerge—to various degrees—in our renditions of the many places where queerness meets girlhood, including but not limited to the kid killer, the lesbian child, the tomboy, the femboy, the black femme, and the toxic (and maybe homoerotic) best friend. Core texts will include Shirley Jackson's "Hangsaman" (1951), Toni Morrison's "Sula" (1973), Kassi Lemmons' "Eve's Bayou" (1997), and episodes of Showtime's "Yellowjackets" (2021—), with possible additions from Cassius Adair, Lucy Dacus, Jack Halberstam, Kara Keeling, Carmen Maria Machado, Barbara Smith, and Jenny Zhang, among others.
Teaching Method
Class participation, discussion, readings
Evaluation Method
Attendance, participation, short writing assignments, final project
Class Materials (Required)
Sula by Toni Morrison (ISBN: 1400033438). Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson (ISBN: 0143107046). All other course materials will be provided on Canvas.
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area