English 219 - Poetry, Gender, and Sexuality, and the Limits of Privacy

This course focuses on the legacy of confessional poetry written by women and queer, trans and nonbinary writers in the US. Frequently misread as self-indulgent, the poets under our purview use radical self-disclosure to trouble the social and legal treatment of gender and sexuality as “private” concerns unworthy of political engagement. In so doing, they resist the universalized heteronormativity of the mainstream confessional tradition and contemporary poetry writ large. Poets studied include Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Paul Monette, Essex Hemphill, Claudia Rankine, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Danez Smith. Enrollment limited to 30.