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ENG32200

Academic Year 2024/2025

Sexuality & American Modernism (ENG32200)

Subject:
English
College:
Arts & Humanities
School:
English, Drama & Film
Level:
3 (Degree)
Credits:
10
Module Coordinator:
Ginevra Bianchini
Trimester:
Spring
Mode of Delivery:
Online
Internship Module:
No
How will I be graded?
Letter grades

Curricular information is subject to change.

(2025)
This module will explore North American modernity in connection to literary modernisms and postmodernisms through changes in courtship, marriage and divorce, sexuality, race, gender identity, female independence, sexual liberation, and sexual violence from the early twentieth century to our contemporaneity. We will concentrate on the romance plot, female individuality, experiences of violence and more in twentieth- and twenty-first century American and Canadian fiction, tracing its modern transformations, alternatives and reiterations. We will work with narrative and social structures central to the fiction of the eras—courtship and marriage; divorce and adultery; the platonic, single, voyeuristic, queer, and polyamorous. Readings will include poetry, novels and short stories; essays; social studies; and contemporary race, queer, gender, and sexuality studies. The course will take shape around weekly discussions, close readings, and a final essay.

(other years)
This module will explore American literary modernisms and modernity through changes in courtship, marriage and divorce, sexuality, race, and gender identity in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. We will cross the century’s early decades, following its lovers through rural towns, Greenwich Village bohemia, expatriate Paris, modernist Harlem, and the American south. We will explore the diversity of modern and modernist love, from courtship to the marital home and beyond—to divorce capitals, queer liaisons, utopias, and friendships. Readings will include novels and short stories; speeches and essays; readings in early sexology; local newspapers and legal history; and contemporary queer, gender, and sexuality studies. Course readings may include works by Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Kate Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, and Richard Bruce Nugent. The course will take shape around weekly discussions, close readings, and a final essay.

About this Module

Learning Outcomes:

● Demonstrate ability to discuss complex ideas in class and in written assignments
● Perform close-reading of texts leading to nuanced analysis
● Work with key insights in critical race theory, social history, narrative theory, gender & sexuality.
● Awareness of historical context, expression & regulation of gender, sexual, and racial identities
● Proficiency in American literary modernisms

Indicative Module Content:

(2025)
The course will explore the effects of colonialism, consumer culture, feminisms and more upon the form and range of narrated relationships. We will cross the century’s early decades, following its lovers through rural towns, modernist Harlem, Canadian big-city life, and the space of the reservation. The course will take shape around weekly discussions. Readings from journals, novels, and short fiction will be placed in dialogue with the journalists, psychologists, activists, and reformers of the eras. The course will proceed in three parts, “Courtship to Altar: The Evolution of Modern Marriage,” “Broken Bonds: Sexual Liberation, Non-Traditional Relations, Sexual Violence,” and “Beyond the Marriage Plot: Queer, Free Loving, and Single.” We will explore the diversity of modern love, from courtship to the marital home and beyond—to queer liaisons, utopias, and friendships.

(other years)
The course will explore the effects of world wars, depressions, feminism, and changing cityscapes upon the form and range of narrated relationships. We will cross the century’s early decades, following its lovers through rural towns, Greenwich Village bohemia, expatriate Paris, modernist Harlem, and the American south. The course will take shape around weekly discussions. Readings from magazines, novels, and short fiction will be placed in dialogue with the journalists, psychologists, sexologists, activists, and reformers of the era. The course will proceed in three parts, “Courtship to Altar: The Evolution of Modern Marriage,” “Broken Bonds: Adultery, Divorce, Violence,” and “Beyond the Marriage Plot: Queer, Free Loving, and Single.” We will explore the diversity of modern and modernist love, from courtship to the marital home and beyond—to divorce capitals, queer liaisons, utopias, and friendships.

Course readings may include works by Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Kate Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, and Richard Bruce Nugent.

Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24

Specified Learning Activities

80

Autonomous Student Learning

100

Total

204


Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
The course will take shape around weekly discussions, close readings, and a final essay.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade In Module Component Repeat Offered
Assignment(Including Essay): Final Research Essay. Due Date (after Week 10) set by School at start of trimester. Week 11, Week 12, Week 14, Week 15 Graded No
70
No
Quizzes/Short Exercises: Essay Proposal Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10 Graded No
20
No
Participation in Learning Activities: Discussion Questions (3) & Relevant Classroom Engagement Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10 Graded No
10
No

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 

Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Online automated feedback
• Peer review activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Draft

Indicative Course Texts:

In 2025 only:
Nella Larsen, Passing
Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
Marian Engel, Bear
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Joshua Whitehead, Jonny Appleseed

I have designed our course to include a broad array of (provided) cultural materials and a range of short fictional and nonfictional writings. I hope that this will offer broad access to American modernity and literary modernism.

Most years:
Printed texts will still be required (in a paginated format), for weekly class meetings.
Nella Larsen, Passing
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
John D’Emilio, Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters (3rd Ed.)

Name Role
Ginevra Bianchini Lecturer / Co-Lecturer

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
Spring Seminar Offering 1 Week(s) - 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Wed 10:00 - 11:50