240003 SE Transgender Visibility through Readability: transgender narratives and activism in literature (2020S)

The last decade has seen a surge of heightened transgender visibility on TV and in the media, signalling at least a sense of social progress for trans, intersex, and nonbinary people’s rights. Unfortunately, while more fluid forms of gender have gained wider recognition and
transparency, this visibility has not stopped violence and discrimination. Moreover, the rise in genderqueer representation on TV and in the news often neglects to tell the challenging histories
and differences across trans populations. Therefore, this class turns to the medium of literature to ask how written narratives work to broaden readers’ perspectives of sex and gender, and how the
novel form is particularly suited to express unique stories of trans, intersex, and queer subjects.
In this course, students will read novels such as Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and discern the ways in which gender, sex, and identity are conveyed in the stories as, on the one hand, individually determined and, on the other, culturally constructed. The class will also contemplate how the novels can be approached as various genres as fictional memoirs, as the Bildungsroman, but also as examples of literary activism.
We will identify various rhetorical strategies used by the authors to engage the reader’s empathy and how the stories petition for action and change.
Students will also encounter an array of academic theory, including seminal works by Judith Butler and Anne Fausto Sterling, which will support an investigation of the notions of sex and gender through the lenses of history, institutions, and cultural productions. Bridging academic discourse to practical and everyday issues, we will further consider contemporary terminology and address ethical concerns outside the abstract realm of theory. Returning to the novels, we will reflect on the ways in which the narratives aptly represent how the personal is political. This course offers an introduction to literary analysis through gender theory, queer theory, and transfeminism, in which students will be asked to develop research methods, writing skills, and a scholarly interest sensitive to humanist concerns.