Gender and Sexuality in Film and Literature

Catalog description

This course examines the way gender and sexuality are represented in film and literature, beginning with an overview of lesbians and gays in film history with Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet. The course then moves through popular films and novels from the 1960s to the present day, looking at the ways attitudes about gender are enmeshed with representations of homosexuality. Themes and topics include: What is the relationship between gender and sexuality? How are concepts of masculinity and femininity presented in novels and on screen? How have these representations changed as our culture's rules about gender and sexuality have become less rigid? The course aims to develop an analysis of current cultural assumptions about gender and sexuality, as they are revealed in film and literature.