01:353:389
Issues and Problems in Literary Theory

01-"The Uses of History in Queer Culture"

The course focuses on the central role that ideas of history have played in cultures of sexual minorities. Our primary goals will be to develop a sense of the historical instability of sexual and gender identities, and to analyze how artists, scholars , literary critics, and activists negotiate their investments in the queer past. We’ll ask about the ethical demands the past makes on us: what, if anything, do queers today owe their “ancestors”? What do those ancestors owe us? What authority, comfort, and trouble do queer communities inherit from the past? Literary and critical readings will center on three historical periods: classical antiquity, modernism, and our contemporary moment. In addition to delving into the historical specificities of lost sexual cultures, we’ll analyze the high stakes for queers in the present of claiming connection to history, with particular attention to the fascination of contemporary queer artists with the distant and recent past—from ancient Greece to the Harlem Renaissance to Britain between the two world wars.