WGST 222 - LGBT/Queer Literatures [GEUS or GEKH]
The purpose of this class is to provide students with a survey of important texts in the LGBT/Queer literary canon. Literature provides a window into the lives, experiences, and histories of people and cultures; and it allows us to see how creative expression can shape individual and community understandings of the world. Key theoretical concepts from the fields of gender and sexuality studies, such as “normativity,” “intersectionality,” “genderqueer,” and “pride,” will direct our inquiry into literature that explores queer lives, history, politics, and activism. Cross-Listed with LITR 222
Credit 3 hrs May not be repeated for additional credit
Grade Mode Normal (A-F) Course Rotation
Prerequisites -
Restriction by Major -
Restriction by Class - Undergraduate standing
The purpose of this class is to provide students with a survey of important texts in the LGBT/Queer literary canon. Students will learn to examine the complexity of their own social and cultural identities through rigorous literary interpretation and dialogue with these texts and with one another. Over the course of the semester, students will acquire a more nuanced language to express and navigate their participation as individuals and agents who live in community with others – on campus, in the U.S., and across the globe.
Through extensive reading of poems, plays and fiction, and through intensive processes of responding to different literary modes in a variety of written formats– including creative composition, analytical essay writing, and informal journaling– the course provides ongoing opportunities to enter into critical conversation about the ways that literature represents lived experiences, imagined histories, and possible futures. Our focus on LGBT/Queer literature provides a lens through which we can examine anew familiar canonical texts, such as Shakespeare’s “young man sonnets, ” in light of and alongside literature that has been historically eclipsed from the mainstream canon, like Ivan Coyote’s Tomboy Survival Guide. By drawing from a wide range of LGBT/Queer literature, the course allows students to explore ways that gender and sexual discrimination are often sustained by other forms of exclusion based on ability, class, race, and/or ethnicity. Assigned readings explore the personal and institutional consequences of social intolerance, and regular quizzes, exploratory discussions, and formal writing assignments reinforce students’ ability to demonstrate their understanding of these power relations. In all formal and informal literary interpretations, students learn to generate their own ideas about the world and about how literature works to change that world by challenging conventions and by cultivating empathy and understanding. Over the course of the semester, students will acquire a more nuanced language to express and navigate their participation as individuals and agents who live in community with others – on campus, in the U. S., and across the globe.
Keywords: gender , literature , U.S. Diversity (GEUS) , Knowledge of the Disciplines - Humanities
Equivalent Courses: LITR 222
Updates: Approved for GEUS & GEKH 3/2019, New Course 11/2018, effective Fall 2019
Winter 2025 Course Sections
Fall 2024 Course Sections
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