Studies in Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment (389-0-20)

Topic

Queering Girlhood

Instructors

Samantha Marie English

Meeting Info

University Hall 412: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

Sugar and spice and everything nice, bows and Barbies and bronzing drops from Sephora. Is that what girlhood is really made of? Where does girlhood get messy or monstrous, stressful or strange? Who gets to be a girl, and who is forgotten in our popular narratives about girlhood? In this course, we'll examine representations of girlhood in 20th and 21st century Anglo-American literature, cinema, and television through the lens of queer theory. Our readings will ask us to consider girlhood as a contradictory set of experiences that can happen to people of all genders. We'll think about what girlhood feels like to children who are all too often excluded from or only ever 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. Writing assignments such as the song analysis, where we'll each add a song of our choice to a course playlist and explain how it enlivens our course themes, will help us challenge our own assumptions about what queerness really looks and feels like in practice. Finally, we'll identify and complicate a wide cast of characters that emerge—to various degrees—in our cultural renditions of the many places where girlhood looks queer, such as tomboys, children who kill, effeminate sons, and toxic (and maybe homoerotic) best friends. Core texts will include Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman (1951), Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), Eve's Bayou (1997), and episodes of Showtime's Yellowjackets (2021—), with possible additions from Lucy Dacus, Jack Halberstam, Karen Russell, and Jenny Zhang, among others.

Teaching Method

Seminar discussion, short lectures.

Evaluation Method

Participation, two short essays, creative final project.

Class Materials (Required)

Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman (1951); Toni Morrison, Sula (1973); Heavenly Creatures (1994), dir. Peter Jackson; Eve's Bayou (1997), dir. Kasi Lemmons; Tomboy (2011), dir. Celine Sciamma; torrin a. greathouse, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (2018); short stories by Margaret Atwood, Dantiel W. Moniz, Karen Russell, and Jenny Zhang; critical theory by Kathryn Bond Stockton, Sarah Projansky, and Jack Halberstam, among others.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro