First Year Seminar 191HFA32 - FYS- Queer Shakespeare

This seminar will explore questions of queerness within the Shakespearean comedy, Twelfth Night. As a class, we will consider how queerness was constructed in the Renaissance to better inform discussions on how "queer" comes to be defined in the present moment. We will also consider the ethics of ascribing queerness to Twelfth Night - is it appropriate for readers to map out modern conceptions of queerness onto characters in the play, when that might not be what Shakespeare intended? Is it problematic to speculate on Shakespeare's own identity? What is gained from reading queerness in Twelfth Night, and what, if anything, is lost?

First-year (R1ST)