Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(63ΛΕ167) -  Αθανάσιος Δημάκης

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

Primary Sources:

 

Novels

A Room with a View (1908), E. M. Forster

Orlando: A Biography (1928), Virginia Woolf

Another Country (1962), James Baldwin

 

Short Stories

“The Border Line” (1924), D. H. Lawrence

“The Demon Lover” (1945), Elizabeth Bowen

“Blessed Assurance” (1963), Langston Hughes

“Girl” (1978), Jamaica Kincaid

“The Poetics of Sex” (1993), Jeanette Winterson

“The Thing Around Your Neck” (2009), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

This course explores gender and sexuality in 20th-century Anglophone Literature focusing on prose fiction (novels and short stories). It traces some of the main questions that have triggered theoretical discussion around the study of gendered subjects and sexualities in literature. It explores how Anglophone novels and short stories represent prescribed gender roles and heteronormative, patriarchal cultures, register love and gender relations, define sexual difference and same-sex desire, embrace the Postcolonial reconfigurations of the family unit, and adapt, towards the end of the 20^th century, to the evolving notional understanding and fluidity of these complex terms at a moment prior to the looming radicalism of LGBTIQA+. We will explore the figuration of sexuality in a range of literary texts and illustrate through literary examples the difference between sex and gender examining through specific examples the ways in which gender roles appear to be constructed. The uncanniness of gender in, for example, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) foregrounds the sense of radical uncertainty about sexual identity and the transgressive possibilities that 20th-century literature conveys. The course surveys theoretical and critical perspectives (Gender Studies, Feminist Criticism, Queer Theory, Postcolonial Sexualities) and charts how different theories and methodologies work in practice engaging with a variety of literary texts. The broad range of themes and approaches explored will assist students build a sound critical discourse. The course aims at developing a critical understanding of the literary intersections of gender and sexuality with questions of race, class, and nationality, presenting the centrality of gender and sexuality in the discussion of literature.

 

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Τρίτη 5 Μαρτίου 2024