Gender, Sexuality, and Literature (361-0-21)

Topic

Sailors: Queer Agents of Empire? 

Instructors

Ty Blakeney

Meeting Info

University Hall 122: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

Sailors played a paradoxical role in European imperial projcts in the modern period. On the one hand, they were the agents of empire, spreading European civilization throughout the world. On the other, they were often drawn from the lower classes of society, and, in the case of France, from Brittany, a region of France that was itself a kind of colonized space, where residents mostly spoke Breton rather than French. The sailor was also closely associated with supposedly asocial behaviors: criminality, same-sex sexuality, rampant non-monogamous heterosexuality, and interracial relationships. In this class, we will explore these paradoxes of the figure of the sailor in French literature and film of the 19th and 20th centuries, through the works of Melville, Pierre Loti, Joseph Conrad, Jean Cocteau, RW Fassbinder, and Claire Denis.

Learning Objectives

In this course, students will learn to:
● Observe the forms of expression, in words, images, cultural and everyday practices by
way of close analysis.
● Gain awareness of the philosophical, cultural, and historical factors influencing the
problematic we are studying in our course.
● Appreciate how the works we read across various historical periods and cultural and
political landscapes reveal the differences and diversities as well as the continuity and
unity of questions about human culture and thought.
● Enhance the skills of literary and cultural interpretation, analysis, and commentary,
spoken, visual and written.
● Develop writing and oral skills by sharpening powers of interpretation, critique, and
aesthetic perception.
● Enlarge your conceptual vocabulary to understand and express abstract notions.
Global Overlay
In this course, students will learn to:
● Engage with visual, literary and cultural works to reflect on global intercultural relations
among groups, cultural traditions, and/or nations, in French and Francophone contexts.
● Explore the social, political, historical, and cultural bases of identity, be it national,
regional, racial, culture, and how they constitute themselves and are constituted by
others.
● Understand how such differences as race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexual
orientation are historically contingent and participate in the construction of otherness
and sameness.
● Analyze the key issue of colonialism.
Advanced Expression
The written and oral assignments in this course serve to:
● Focus on effective communication, be it through writing, speaking or other modes of
communication, in specific disciplinary or interdisciplinary contexts.
● understand and emulate field-specific conventions and protocols for communicating
findings to a range of audiences.
● develop the relationship between their voice and field-specific norms of expression,
aiming to achieve control over persuasive rhetoric.
● Pay attention to style, precision of language, the nature and potential of words for
thinking.
● Develop an individual style of argumentation and presentation of research.

Teaching Method

Discussion

Evaluation Method

- Attendance
- Class participation
- Exams
- Papers
- Presentations

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro