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Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies (490-0-26)

Topic

Gender, Power, Politics

Instructors

Ann Shola Orloff
847/491-3719
1808 Chicago Ave. Rm. 201

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 222: Wed 9:30AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Queering the Crown: Marlowe and Shakespeare, Pre-texts and Afterlives
This course will simultaneously engage a set of methods within/around literary/performance studies and interrogate the transhistoricity of queerness. It follows the long representational career of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (c. 1592): from Holinshed's Tudor-era chronicle history and other "pre-texts" through Shakespeare's adaptation/revision/rewriting in Richard II, to the emergence of the theatrical-alienation effect in Bertolt Brecht's early twentieth-century translation/adaptation Leben Eduards des Zweiten, twentieth-century productions and films tied to the early gay-liberation movement (Ian McKellen in repertory as both kings) and the early AIDS crisis (Derek Jarman and "New Queer Cinema"), to contemporary re-writings -- Tom Stuart's play After Edward; a German opera that weaves together antisemitism and homophobia; the recent rom-com "Red, White, and Royal Blue." Critical readings in the history of sexuality, queer theory, "source" study, history of the book, adaptation theory, theory of tragedy, critical race studies and casting, and performance studies.