Courses / Module

In the late twentieth-century LGBT people, first in Western societies but increasingly globally, mobilised to demand new political rights (the human right to dignity and freedom from discrimination; recognition of relationships and families). At certain historical moments during those decades this demand for recognition intersected with a much more powerful quest for sexual liberation – the radical transformation of all social relations and the creation of yet to be imagined erotic and emotional possibilities. This political project was inseparable from the creation of vibrant subcultures of solidarity, support and creative identity – often under terrible conditions, most notably the worst years of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s.
In this module we will explore the dynamic relationship between these political and cultural projects – in all their complexity and diversity – and literature. How has literature (particularly fiction and poetry) provided an imaginative space for the evolution of new forms of consciousness and new structure of thought and feeling? How has literature facilitated – but also complicated and challenged – the emergence of new forms of sexual identity and politics? How have these texts imaginatively confronted a persistent problem – how we envisage sexual freedom in late capitalist and neo-liberal societies? And how has literature created a space to celebrate the erotic pleasures of the body while grieving over painful, individual and collective, experiences of shame and loss?