01 TF3 CAC 15050 LUPTON MU-113
Gender Trouble in the Eighteenth Century
If you think of queer and trans experience as something that has come into focus recently, this is a seminar to challenge your assumptions. The texts we’ll read suggest that lived experiences of both sex and gender in the eighteenth century were complicated. They were also closely connected to the literary categories emerging in the period, of the novel, of life-writing, and of print circulation more generally. How did ideas about the gender binary becomes so tangled up with literature? How did reading and writing contribute to the ways the public tried to fix – and to transgress – those gender roles? How did clothing and dressing up play into new and old categories of identity?
In this course we’ll read John Cleland’s (lightly) pornographic novel Fanny Hill, the diaries and journals of Anne Lister, Horace Walpole, and the famously scandalous “Ladies of Llangollen,” Henry Fielding’s report, The Female Husband, Eliza Haywood’s novel Fantomina, Maria’s Edgeworth’s short tale, Angelina and Elizabeth Inchbald’s novel A Simple Story. These readings will be paired with theoretical readings from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and secondary readings by eighteenth-century scholars including Thomas Lacquer, Terry Castle, and Kathleen Lubey. Students will also work in pairs or small groups on a primary research project, using original eighteenth-century source to explore a gender-related theme of their choice.
Assessment will be divided equally between written exam, reading journal, and research results.