Literary Theory Ms Nicole CIS Literature What have you learned about gender expectations and behavior Focus power disparity as a result of adhering torejecting gender roles Focus power disparity as a result of heterosexism ID: 377930
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Slide1
LGBT (Queer)
Literary Theory
Ms. Nicole
CIS Literature Slide2
What have you learned about gender expectations and behavior?Slide3
Focus: power disparity as a result of adhering to/rejecting gender roles
Focus: power disparity as a result of heterosexism
Focus: power disparity as a result of male dominationSlide4
A person’s gender is …
Created category focused on “feminine/masculine” behavior, but behavior is a performance
Masculine
Feminine Slide5
A person’s sexuality is…
Similarly a spectrum = difficult to define in simple terms
Homosexual
Heterosexual
Asexual
Bisexual
Trans-sexual &
Transgender Slide6
Queer Theory: Early History
All people have “homoerotic” feelingsHoly, transitional rite of passage, tabooSlide7
Queer Theory: Victorians (mid-1800s)
Homosexuality as separate IDInherent/unchanging part of personalityU.S.: Gay life flourishes through 1920sU.S. 1930s: researchers prove homosexuality is significant proportion of population and not correlated to any significant difference Slide8
History Continued
1950s/Postwar America: needs order to support capitalismGender roles solidified in public and private sphereLegislation to criminalize gay people/treat as psychiatric condition Slide9
1969: Gay Liberation Movement responds to police brutality
1970s: Institutionalization ends (ECT, Lobotomy, prison, aversion therapy)1990: Restrictions on homosexual immigration lifted from 1952Slide10Slide11
A person’s sexuality is…
Element of identity and therefore difficult to research empirically ID formation in youth: self-categorization in teen years; family and faith communitySociety often separates sexual acts into “normative” (heteronormative) and “deviant” Slide12
Homophobia: fear, loathing of homosexuality
Mild bias
Overt phobia
Form of social control – intimidate sexual minorities, validate heterosexuality
Results from view that gender order is disrupted – similar to fear of ethnic minorities
Can lead to discrimination Slide13
What to do?
Character’s options/playing out of expectations?Access to power based on sex and gender?How does the text represent gender roles and/or sexuality?Slide14
Questions to ask of the text
What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer works?What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are apparently homosexual?
What does the work reveal about
social, political, and/or psychological homophobia?
How does the literary text illustrate the
problematics
of sexuality and sexual "identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual
?Slide15
BIG QUESTION
How does the text comment on power disparities resulting from characters’ sexual orientation?