Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

This module covers a wide range of queer writing from the early 20th century through to its end. It will also introduce students to the debates bookending this period, which our texts spring from and which they go on to shape. Beginning with late-Victorian sexology (such as Edward Carpenter’s philosophy of gender and its impact on E. M. Forster, and Havelock Ellis’ impact on Radclyffe Hall’s short story ‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself’, 1926), it traces a through line of resistance, threading through social satire of the 1920s (Lolly Willowes, 1926), intersectional depictions of the impact of mid-century misogyny, racism and poverty in James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962) and Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (Carol) (1952). Moving on to poet and activist Audre Lorde’s ground-breaking memoir Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), which introduced us to American Black lesbian experience in the 50s-80s, we move to the writing of the Thatcher and HIV-AIDS era with Jeanette Winterson and Alan Hollinghurst’s early work, ending with Sarah Waters’ joyful, carnivalesque reworking of the Victorian sensation novel in Fingersmith (2002). Canonical and non-canonical authors are considered side by side, encouraging students to consider a wide range of issues around the politics of representation which are of crucial importance to understanding of contemporary debates.