240098 PS Gender Trouble: Gender Benders in English Literature (2020W)

As Judith Butler observed in her seminal book Gender Trouble, gender is neither a natural nor a stable category. On the contrary, gender must be understood as a 'free-floating artifice', a fluid concept in which 'man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one' (Butler, Gender Trouble 9).

Throughout history, many literary texts have proven themselves sensitive to the troubling qualities of gender stereotypes and have attempted to break with them by depicting men and women who defy neat classifications. Literary representations of such ‘gender benders’ are the focus of this course.

Students will be acquainted with literary character types that challenge established notions of femininity and masculinity but also with their more conventional counterparts. Through teacher and peer input, students will be familiarised with the historical cultural and political backgrounds that promoted an age’s respective gender ideals (as well as their subversion) and that led to the emergence of certain literary character types. Moreover, students will be familiarised with the key concepts of gender studies by reading a wide variety of key theoretical texts and will be encouraged to apply these concepts to the analysis of selected literary texts. By means of group and classroom discussions, we will explore the narrative functions of gender benders in literary texts and how literary images of ‘troubled’ femininities/masculinities relate to the categories of class and race.