Abstract: Genre is facing an identity crisis; digital and multimodal writing “dis-compose” classic forms of academic writing and reading, while a new era of identity “dis-composes” cultural narratives. Femme writers are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways, as queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics away from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on femme embodiments, embodiment theory, gender, disability, race, and racialized bodies. The confluences of these (often mutable) identities offer readers new opportunities for storytelling and theorizing about writing. These forms also make space for feminine arts: reclamations of hysteria, emotionality, and the naming of practices such as textual masculinity and emotional labor correlate with new cultural trends towards identity models of social justice. This course explores the significance of this “women’s work,” contemporary cultural politics, and rhetorics of self and other in literature.
Instructions: You may view/download both the syllabus-in-progress and the accompanying reflection, or you may access the editable Google Doc version of the syllabus HERE.