This class will introduce students to literature, popular culture, and critical theory which engages with issues of gender and sexual identity. Through careful reading, class discussion, and critical and creative writing, students will be invited to broaden their perspective on gender and sexuality beyond those offered by the dominant culture. We will interrogate the historical construction of gender and how it intersects with other identity categories, such as race and class. We will interrogate the terms of gender (man, masculine, woman, feminine, androgynous, etc.) and of sexual identity (heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, etc.), and we will question notions of a "natural" gender or sexual identity. We'll particularly focus on works which explore gender as a site of critique and resistance against enforced roles and standards and ideals of "beauty," "health," and "deviance." In order to establish a shared vocabulary, we'll begin with some scholarly texts, but mostly we'll focus on American literature-fiction, poems, creative nonfiction, as well as an occasional movie. Possible authors include Kathy Acker, bell hooks, Ernest Hemingway, Justin Chin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Iceberg Slim, Cormac McCarthy, Kimiko Hahn, Hilton Als, Harriet Jacobs, Bhanu Kapil, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Judy Grahn, Audre Lorde, Megan Milks, Jasmyn West, and TC Tolbert.

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