ENGL 0201P S01 [CRN: 25023]
By alternately demonizing, sentimentalizing, and fetishizing the disabled body throughout modern history, has Western society misrepresented the erotic desires of the physically impaired? Could these desires, if represented, in turn disable "normal" desire? Authors include Milton, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Ursula LeGuin. Screenings include John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Mark and Michael Polish's Twin Falls Idaho. Enrollment limited to 17. WRITAdditional Description from the Instructor:
Since the Middle Ages, Western literature has alternately demonized, sentimentalized, and fetishized the erotic desires of the physically impaired. In the vast majority of these instances, disability stands for something other than what it is: a limp might represent impotence, a birth defect the failure of empirical science, a deforming disease the dangers of lust. What might these one-dimensional representations tell us about the beliefs, anxieties, and oppressions of the various social and historical contexts from which they stem? And how might more complex representations of disabled desire affect our own perceptions of “normal” desire?
Over the course of the semester, we will explore these questions by analyzing literature and film from the early modern era to the present that represent, often tensely, the relationship between disability and desire. By considering these works alongside key theoretical essays, we will develop an understanding of how representations of disabled desire function rhetorically in literature and film and what these functions intimate about how these representations have both changed and remained the same across historic and cultural moments.
- Course Syllabus
- View Syllabus
- Assignments and Grading
- Students will be evaluated based on their participation in classroom and online discussion (20%); three 500-600 word response papers, which will be posted on MyCourses (30%); a 1200-1500 word single-text essay (20%); and a 2400-3000 word page final paper analyzing three texts, at least one of which must be a theoretical text (30%). All written work must follow MLA formatting. Because this is a writing designated course, we will dedicate substantial time to discussing and revising these papers. You will receive both instructor and peer feedback on your online response papers, and we will hold a combination of mandatory peer workshops and one-on-one instructor conferences to provide you with feedback on both longer essays before each is due.
- Readings and Texts
- Required Texts: Richard III, William Shakespeare The Faerie Queene, Book III-IV, Edmund Spenser (Ed. Dorothy Stephens) The Major Works, John Milton (Ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin Neuromancer, William Gibson Black Hole, Charles Burns Course packet, available at Allegra Printing at 102 Waterman Street Films: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell) The Sessions (dir. Ben Lewen) Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott)
- Term
- Spring 2013
- Credit Hours
- 1.0
- Maximum Enrollment
- 17
- Course Attributes
- Writing - Designated Courses
- Primary Instructor
- Meetings
- 11:00 am - 11:50 am Mon, Wed, Fri - from Jan 23, 2013 to May 17, 2013
- Exam Group Code
- 04 (May 16, 2013 2:00pm)