Illustration from Carmilla (1872)
Queer and Trans Gothic
This class’s exploration of gender, sexuality, and literature will focus on gothic fiction. Since gothic fiction’s beginnings in the eighteenth century, queer and trans characters, forms, aesthetics, and authors have found a (haunted) home in the genre. Across the semester, we will read and watch a range of gothic fictions from the eighteenth century to the present to trace how these texts represent, remake, and resist dominant systems of gender and sexuality and consider how the genre’s conventions have been shaped and deployed by queer and trans writers.
Readings may include (very provisional list! but trust that we will be reading a bunch of cool stuff…):
- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
- Matthew Lewis, The Monk
- Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
- Bram Stoker, Dracula
- Richard Marsh, The Beetle
- Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca
- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
- Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage”
- Chase Berggrun, R E D
Assignments will likely include an annotation assignment, an analysis of a scholarly article, a creative assignment, and an essay.