Writing Queerness

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The different written genres that construct ideas of sexuality in the English-speaking world
• The history of writing about sexuality from the nineteenth century to the present day
• Scholarship and critical theory concerning the history of sexuality

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Respond creatively to historical, archival, or theoretical material about sexuality
• Design and deliver critical and creative writing on topics of one's own choosing
• Conceptualise the cultural expression of sexuality in abstract theoretical terms
• Write critical essays that can draw on work from different disciplines

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Plan and write critical essays on the literary history of sexuality
• Use archive and theoretical material about sexuality to inform critical and creative writing
• Draw on theoretical and philosophical ideas about sexuality and identity in written work
• Place the literature of sexuality within its historical and social contexts

In this module, you will read literary texts alongside texts from different disciplines, like medicine and law, as well as autobiographies and diaries. This range and variety will mean the texts you study each year will change, but you may study texts including: 'Autobiography of An Androgyne' (1918) by Jennie June, 'Stone Butch Blues' (1993) by Leslie Feinberg, 'The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan' (2019), by Lou Sullivan; you might study selections from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic case studies, the archives of sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld, poetry by Alan Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara and Adrienne Rich, online texts by Juliana Huxtable, and more.

Teaching methods include

• lectures
• teacher and student-led seminar discussions
• workshops on theory, archival research, and creative composition

Learning activities include

• participating in and leading small and all-group discussions
• in class research and writing exercises
• independent research and writing

This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible contact hour, 5 in total, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.