Contemporary Trans Literature

Catalog description

This course surveys contemporary trans-authored fiction, poetry, and life-writing to consider the question: what makes "trans literature" trans? By reading a broad variety of genres alongside trans literary criticism, we will explore formal, generic, and political strategies of trans authorship, including self-publication and re-publication, radically fictionalized memoirs, and dysphoric body horror. We will study how trans authors engage and respond to dominant characterizations of transness, like "born in the wrong body" narratives or bio-essentialist understandings of transition, and investigate how literature might offer a venue for creating new kinds of trans experiences. Examining trans representations of messy, fanciful, and sensational trans stories, this course pays particular attention to the contemporary political and theoretical context and implications of North American trans literature, probing the limits of literary visibility.