Queer Literatures of San Francisco: Experiments in Textual Representation 1970-1990

Catalog description

This course offers students an introduction to queer and narrative theory through an exploration works by queer and feminist American writers affiliated with the San Francisco-based, late twentieth-century "New Narrative" movement - an artistic group notable for literary experimentation that utilized collage and multi-modality to depict queer life and culture. Selected authors and texts will include Robert Gluck's Jack the Modernist, Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School, and Alison Mills Newman's Francisco, alongside supplementary core secondary readings in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. Through these works, we will examine the crucial role that textual innovation and print played within the history of queer culture in California. Because of the course content's ties to the Bay Area, students will also be able to take facilitated trips to independent press archives and art galleries affiliated with the New Narrative movement and queer publishing today. We will also be visiting Stanford's own print shop, where students will be able to practice hands-on approach to thinking about how print, form, and queer expression inform each other. Assignments will include a paper grounded in close-reading, as well as an option to submit either a traditional final paper, or a final portfolio and artist's statement that allows students to explore the possibilities of form, material, and experimental narrative on their own.