The Yellow Nineties

This course invites students to explore how yellow came to accrue the set of meanings it took on at the end of the nineteenth century. This color’s associations with decadence and social upheaval are particularly linked with representations of shifting gender norms (stereotyped in the figures of the decadent male aesthete and the increasingly independent New Woman) as well as an increasing subcultural visibility that led to the emerging conception of a homosexual identity. In addition to exploring literary depictions of the relationships between gender and sexuality from a time when sexology was becoming a field of science, this course also examines the relationship between the politics and fashions of the day and contemporary publishing trends in news, cultural criticism, and fictional literature.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

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