This module is available to all MA students in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies. It may be taken as either the Critical Theory requirement or as an optional module. Students from other departments are welcome to request permission to join this module.

Seminar: Thursdays, 2-4, E0.23 (Social Sciences building) E0.23 (warwick.ac.uk)Link opens in a new window [Term 2]

Seminar tutor: Dr Ross G. Forman
r.g.forman@warwick.ac.uk
FAB5.11

Office Hours:
Wednesdays, 12-1
Thursdays, 4-5
or by appointment

Sign up for Office Hours here.

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This module aims to familiarise students with current theories of gender and sexuality, with a particular focus on literary and historical methodologies. You will learn about the effect of legal, medical, and moral frameworks on the emergence of forms of sexual identity worldwide and the impact of globalization on local forms of sexuality and sexual practice. You will work with Intersectional approaches to literary and cultural study that involve queer theory.

Please purchase the following texts:

Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.

A fictional or other text to be decided by the group to read for Week 9.

Critical readings will mostly be available through Talis Aspire.

Seminar Schedule:

Gayle S. Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" in Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader

Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexualiy and Lesbian Existence" in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader 227-254.

Jack Halberstam, "Making Trans Bodies," Trans* 22-44.

Heather Love, "Queer," Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.12 (2014): 172-5.

K-Ming Chang, "Homophone," in Gods of Want.

Anthony So, "The Monks," in Afterparties.

Leo Bursani, "Is the Rectum a Grave?" October 43 (1987): 197-222.

Gayle Rubin, “The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole” in Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader, 224–240.

D. A. Miller, "Anal Rope," Representations 32 (1990): 114-133.

José Muñoz, "Ghosts of Public Sex: Utopian Longings, Queer Memories" in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity 33-48 and notes.

Eve Sedgwick, "Queer and Now." Tendencies 1-22.

Recommended Viewing:

Rope, dir. Alfred Hitchcock

AVAILABLE VIA THE LIBRARY DATABASE BOX OF BROADCASTS AT https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0000E86B?bcast=115655679https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0000E86B?bcast=115655679

Madhavi Menon, "Introduction: Queer Shakes," Shakesqueer, ed. Madhavi Menon 1-27.

Valerie Traub, "The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies." Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns. 1-34 and notes.

Carolyn Dinshaw, “Black Skin, Green Masks: Medieval Foliate Heads, Racial Trauma, and Queer World-making” in Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones, eds., The Middle Ages in the Modern World 276–304.

Shoshana Adler, "Spoiled History: Leprosy and the Lessons of Queer Medieval Historiography." boundary 2 50.3 (2023): 211–231.

Leila Rupp, "Finding Each Other (1600-1900)," Chapter 6, Sapphistries 105-141

Terry Castle, "The Diaries of Anne Lister" in The Apparitional Lesbian 92-107.

Sharon Marcus, "Just Reading: Female Friendship and the Marriage Plot." Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. 73-108 and notes.

Simon Joyce, "Two Women Walk into a Theater Restroom." LGBT Victorians.

Jack Saul [pseud.], The Sins of the Cities of the Plains. Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol 1: 96-106.

Zeb Tortirici, "Introduction: Archiving the Unnatural" in Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain 1-24

María Elena Martínez, "Archives, Bodies, and Imagination: The Case of Juana Aguilar and Queer Approaches to History, Sexuality, and Politics," Radical History Review 120 (2014): 159-182

Juliana Martinez, "Dressed Like a Man? Of Language, Bodies, and Monsters in the Trial of Enrique/Enriqueta Favez and Its Contemporary Accounts," Journal of the History of Sexuality 26.2 (2017): 188-206

Carlos Halaburda, "Turn-of-the-Century Buenos Aires: A Capital of Queer Spectacles" in Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century.

Greg Mitchell, "Street Hustling in Brazil," in The Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society.

Dustin Friedman, "Teaching Queer Theory beyond the Western Classroom." Pedagogy 21.3 (2021): 521-532.

Emmanuel David and Christian Joy P. Cruz, "Deaf Turns, Beki Turns, Transformations: Toward New Forms of Deaf Queer Sociality." Feminist Formations 31.1 (2018): 91-116.

James Welker, "Introduction: Boys Love (BL) Media and Its Asian Transfigurations." Queer Transfigurations, ed. James Welker and Allison Alexey.

Howard Chiang, "Trans without Borders: Resisting the Telos of Transgender Knowledge." Journal of the History of Sexuality 32.1 (2023).

Anjali Arondekar, "Archival Attachments: The Story of an India-Rubber Dildo," For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India 97-130.

Gayatri Gopinath, "Queer Regions: Imagining Kerala from the Diaspora" in Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora.

Shraddha Chatterjee, "Transgender Shifts: Notes on Resignification of Gender and Sexuality in India," Transgender Quarterly 5.3 (2018): 311-320.

Michelle Schut and Eva van Baarle, "Dancing Boys and the Moral Dilemmas of Military Missions: The Practice of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan" in International Security and Peacebuilding: Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, ed. Abu Bakkar Bah 77-98.

K. J. Dykstra,"Toxic Sexing: Aaron Apps’ Intersex Poetics in Our Chemically Altered Age" in Interdisciplinary and Global Perspectives on Intersex.

Cal (Crystal) Biruk, "'Fake Gays' in Queer Africa: NGOs, Metrics, and Modes of (Queer) Theory)." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 26.3 (2020)

Zethu Matebeni, "Queer Theory, Africa" in The Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, vol. 2.

Niko Besnier, Susan Brownwell, and Thomas F. Carter, "Sport and Sex, Gender, and Sexuality" in The Anthropology of Sport 127-157.

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Although the module does not hold with the idea that "theory" and "praxis" are necessarily distinct, the two concluding workshops are designed to help students think about the relationship between them in terms of how we use critical methodologies to write about literary and cultural texts.

CO-CREATION WEEK:

Pride, dir. Matthew Warchus

Diarmaid Kelliher, "Solidarity and Sexuality: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners 1984-5" in History Workshop Journal

Anamarija Horvat, "Reimagining LGSM: Gendered Activism and Neoliberalism in Matthew Warchus's Pride. (recommended)

Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer (recommended)

Ann Cvetkovich, "Drawing the Archive in Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home,'" Women's Studies Quarterly 36.1/2 (2008): 111-128.

Ramzi Fawaz and Shanté Paradigm Smalls, "Queers Read This! LGBTQ Literature Now," GLQ 24.2-3 (2018): 169-187

Aggleton, Peter, and Richard Parker. Routledge Handbook of Sexuality, Health and Rights. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Arondekar, Anjali. For the Record. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2009.

Boellstroff, Tom. The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.

Boone, Joseph. The Homoerotics of Orientalism. New York: Columbia UP, 2014.

Bristow, Joseph. Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Chen, Mel Y. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham: Duke UP, 2012.

Chiang, Howard, and Alvin K. Wong. "Queering the Transnational Turn: Regionalism and Queer Asias" Gender, Place & Culture (2016).

Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa. Ed. Mark Gevisser and Edwin Cameron. Bramfontein: Ravan Press, 1994.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2012.

Doan, Laura. Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women's Experience of Modern War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Eng, David."The End(s) of Race." PMLA 123.5 (2008): 1479-1493.

--. The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.

Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke UP, 2005.

Halberstam, Jack [formerly Judith]. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York UP, 2005.

--. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.

Halperin, David, and Valerie Traub. Gay Shame. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010.

Hoad, Neville. "Queer Customs against the Law." Research in African Literatures 47.2 (2016): 1-19.

Kaplan, Morris. Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2005.

Jagose, Annamarie. Orgasmology. Durham: Duke UP, 2012.

Lim, Eng-Beng. Brown Boys and Rice Queens: Spellbinding Performances in the Asias. New York: New York UP, 2014.

Manalansan, Martin F. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Durham: Duke UP, 2003.

Martin, Fran. Backwards Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary. Durham: Duke UP, 2004.

Menon, Madhavi, ed. Shakesqueer:A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Durham: Duke UP, 2011.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-sex Desire in Contemporary Iran. Durham: Duke UP, 2014.

Narrain, Arvind, and Gautum Bhan, eds. Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005.

Ngyuen, Tan Hoang. A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation. Durham: Duke UP, 2014.

Patton, Cindy, and Bengino Sanchez-Eppler, eds. Queer Diasporas. Durham: Duke UP, 2000.

Prosser, Jay. Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia UP, 1998.

Puar, Jasbir K. The Right to Maim. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2017.

--. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalisms in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.

Puri, Jyoti. Sexual States: Goveranance and the Struggle over the Anti-sodomy Law in India. Durham: Duke UP, 2016.

Reddy, Gayatri. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005.

Ross, Oliver. Same-sex Desire in Indian Culture: Representations in Literature and Film, 1970-2016. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia. Ed. Mark McClelland and Vera Mackie. London: Routledge, 2014.