Genre Trouble: Monstrous Texts and Experiments in Writing

Catalog description

How do works of literature exploit and violate the “law of genre?” What emerges when genre boundaries are transgressed? How do disparate forms of writing negotiate meanings around gender and racial identity? How do figures of the “monstrous” invite us to analyze the definition of the “human,” as well as who is included and excluded from this category? How do choices around genre inform how we narrate the “self,” and how do attempts at writing the “self” transform our understandings of genre? To answer these questions, we will read literary and critical texts by authors such as Aristotle, Mary Shelley, Mikhail Bakhtin, Toni Morrison, Sophocles, Giorgio Agamben, Marie de France, Mel Chen, Judith Butler, Susan Stryker, Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Dionne Brande, and Saidiya Hartman. The courses invites students to play with their creative and critical voices through collaborative in-class exercises and writing prompts that encourage experimentation derived from Bernadette Meyer’s Experiments, Eve Sedgwick’s “Experimental Critical Writing,” techniques associated with OULIPO school, and surrealist games.