GWS 395-01 - Advanced Special Topic: Masculinity & American Literature

4 credits (Spring)

This course examines how masculinities are represented, contested, and negotiated in American literature. Foregrounding female and transgender masculinities, we will analyze the role of race, class, gender, and sexuality in depictions of masculinities in literature. We will ask why so many canonical texts, exhibit anxiety about masculinity in crisis, and link that literary history to our present and social and political context. At the same time, we will read marginal texts that offer a fluid range of masculine possibilities.

Prerequisite: GWS 111 and GWS 249.
Instructor: Allen