Fin de siècle anxieties surrounding sexuality are the focus of this literature-based course in which British novels are presented as culturally-engaged responses to social, political, and economic tensions. With the help of nineteenth-century social science, sexology, and philosophy, we will explore the way English fears of cultural and biological deviance propelled the social construction of sexuality - and gender and race - during the period. By highlighting novels whose authors and characters exist on the margins of society because of their sexuality, the course showcases the political power of fiction to give voice to those who are silenced by the dominant cultural discourses. With the help of contemporary scholarship in the fields of history, sexuality, feminism, and queer studies, we will approach literature as a social tool providing a platform for the culturally disenfranchised, bearing witness to experiences of cultural oppression.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) introduces us to the underworld of British homosexuality at the turn of the century. Dracula (1897), by the Anglo-Irish writer Bram Stoker, links sexuality with fears of racial degeneration, capitalism run amok, and shifting gender roles. Jean Rhys' Voyage in the Dark (1934) and. Djuna Barnes' Nightwood (1936), reveal the often tragic, sometimes humorous, always poignant experiences of characters who, because of their sexuality, find themselves labelled, at best, as social misfits, and at worst, as cultural degenerates.

A two-day study trip takes us to the seaside town of Brighton, unofficial queer capital of England.

Professor: Erica Gene Delsandro, Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies, Bucknell University, delsandr@bucknell.edu