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PS-Surveying English Literatures: Queer Spatiotemporalities in the Modernist Metropolis

Karoline-Rosina Strauch

Kommentar

Modernist cities were sites of rapid transformation in the early 20th century, offering new possibilities for movement, identity, and desire. For many queer writers and artists, the metropolis became both a refuge and a site of alienation – shaping how queer lives were imagined and lived. This seminar explores how modernist literature by expatriate writers engages with queer spatiotemporalities (space & time) that diverge from heteronormative structures of chronology, domesticity, and progress.

In recent decades, queer temporality and spatiality have become central concerns in literary and cultural theory, offering new ways of understanding marginality, resistance, and alternative modes of living. Drawing on theoretical frameworks by Jack Halberstam, Elizabeth Freeman, Lee Edelman, and others, we will analyse and discuss how queer modernist authors, and their characters, navigated urban space, challenged normative life trajectories, and resisted dominant temporal logics.

In addition to material made available on Blackboard during the semester, we will read:

Isherwood, Christopher. Goodbye to Berlin. Vintage Classics, 2011. (Alternatively, you may also buy Isherwood, Christopher. The Berlin Novels. Vintage Classics, 1993 – it has both Berlin Novels in there and is only a few Euros more expensive.)
Mirrlees, Hope. Paris: A Poem. Faber & Faber, 2020.
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood. Faber & Faber, 2007

Please note that this is a reading-intensive course – it is a literature seminar which means that you will have to read either a novel or academic articles each week. The means of assessment is a 2000-word essay on a primary text we discussed in class.

Schließen

13 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Fr, 10:00 - 12:00 13 Termine

Fr, 25.04.2025 10:00 - 12:00

Dozenten:
Karoline-Rosina Strauch