This class explores the literatures of U.S. American modernism with a particular focus on questions of gender, sexuality, and queer reading. We will look at selected literary texts from the early 20th century and trace how they negotiated the challenges posed by technological modernization and consumer capitalism; urbanization, regionalism and internationalism; shifting concepts of race, gender, class, and sexuality; as well as by the (collective) trauma of wartime experience. We will explore how writers such as Gertrude Stein, Nella Larsen, or Carson McCullers engaged questions of sexual identity, desire, shame, queer kinship, interracial bonds, and historical identification. We will ask specifically how queer reading as an affectively charged practice of engagement with literary texts shapes our understanding of modernist texts.
- Lehrende/r: Leopold Lippert