Comparative Literature 390Q - Queering World Literature

In this course, we will read a range of literary representations of what, in the US-Anglophone context, may be called queer or LGBTQIA+ identities. We will pay particular attention to non-Western literatures and cultures and to texts not originally in English. We will study how queer identities have developed separately and in relation to globally dominant US-Anglophone frameworks of queerness, and?with a focus on questions of power? we will examine how the global forces of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism have functioned in the construction of queer identities, often in conjunction with constructions of race and ethnicity. With literary texts as our primary material, we will investigate how authors use aesthetics, style, and genre as means of representing queerness.