Queer Subversions

In an essay on the role of feminism in her life and work, English writer Angela Carter describes why she chose the fairy tale as the genre for her feminist retellings: “I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new wine makes the bottles explode.” This class takes as its point of departure the assumption that conventional literary genres can give writers a unique position to subvert and critique existing social norms and structures of power. By satisfying the conventions of the genre and simultaneously subverting certain aspects, writers can thus “explode” the old bottles from the inside out. This course will introduce students to the notion of retellings as uniquely rich sites to work through questions about sexuality and gender. We will study this phenomenon in several different literary genres, from fairy tales to Restoration Comedy to Victorian fiction, and in several different language traditions, in order to examine how gender and sexual politics function in retellings, and to consider the ways in which retellings can form a radical, critical engagement with an original text.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP)