Gender Studies 204ET - Women and Gender in the Study of Culture: 'Rovers, Cuckqueens, and Country Wives of All Kinds: The Queer Eighteenth Century'

With the rise of the two-sex model, the eighteenth century might be seen to be a bastion of heteronormativity leading directly to Victorian cisgender binary roles of angel in the house and the bourgeois patriarch. Yet, beginning with the Restoration's reinvention of ribald theater, this period was host to a radical array of experimentation in gender and sexuality, alongside intense play with genre (e.g., the invention of the novel). We will explore queerness in all its forms alongside consideration of how to write queer literary histories.

Course limited to sophomores, juniors and seniors