This course is designed to fulfill the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement. The primary goal of this course is to develop students' reading and writing skills through a series of assignments that will provide them with the opportunity to formulate observations made in class discussions into coherent argumentative essays. Emphasis will be placed on the refinement of effective sentence, paragraph, and thesis formation, keeping in mind the notion of writing as a process. Other goals in this course are a familiarization with French literature and the specific questions that are relevant to this field. In addition, students will be introduced to different methods of literary and linguistic analysis in their nonliterary readings.

Public discourses around gender and sexuality have tended to fall into two broad categories when considering identity and desire. Some understand them in terms of interiority and individuality: as intrinsic, innate, and/or corporeal manifestations of human subjectivity. In opposition to this essentialist view is the constructivist perspective, which stresses exteriority and collective influence: gender and sexuality are the products of social, cultural, and historical conditioning. This course will seek to contribute to attempts to complicate this tired binary by examining texts and media that represent gender and sexuality as sites of intertwining and reciprocal influence: between character and setting, material environment and embodied experience, and topography and social identity, among others. Students will be expected to engage with course content and ideas through in-class discussions, online journals, writing workshops, and research papers. Full-Length Texts (additional selected readings/excerpts, available on bCourses): Guillaume Dustan, The Works of Guillaume Dustan, Vol. 1 (ISBN 978-1635901429) Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (978-1555838539) Émile Zola, The Kill (ISBN 978-0199536924)

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills