Why are gender and sexuality so important in modern French literature? Are ways of understanding sexuality and gender linked to certain times and places? That is, are ideas about gender and sexuality somehow culture-specific? Is there something “modern” or “western” about certain ways of thinking about sexuality and gender? Do we distort things about the past if we look at it through our contemporary lens? Here’s a different version of that question: does the past change for us as our own ways of thinking about sexuality and gender evolve, as new forms of understanding and new identities emerge? We will ask these questions, and also notice that other people asked these (or similar) questions in earlier times (the nineteenth century, for instance) as we read a selection of critical and literary texts, as well as some work by contemporary writers on these kinds of questions. We will read some of Michel Foucault’s classic History of Sexuality, along with parts of contemporary works of scholarship like Rachel Mesch’s Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France. We will also read a series of literary works drawn from key literary movements of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries: Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin; Colette, The Pure and the Impure; Rachilde, The Juggler; Gide, The Immoralist; Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers; Taïa, A Country for Dying.

Taught in English.