This course provides a unique and exciting opportunity for students to examine a wide range of British literature from various genres and periods through the lens of gender and sexuality. You will discuss representations of the changing roles of women in Early Modern England, from Isabella Whitney’s A Sweet Nosegay and William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in the 16th Century to ‘breeches’ plays of the 17th Century. You will explore themes of womanhood, sexuality, and maternity in Romanticism and the Gothic through works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the poems of Mary Robinson. Further areas of discussion will include censorship and (homo)sexuality, and differing constructions of masculinity in 20th Century British literature, as well as exploring queer literature in contemporary Britain, such as the works of Mary Jean Chan and Hanif Kureishi. Theoretical frameworks, including feminist literary theory and queer theory, will be examined and applied throughout the course, and lectures and supplementary resources will equip you with the historical and cultural knowledge to contextualise the texts you will study.

Gender and sexuality studies trains you to examine gender relations and the construction of gender and sexual difference from a globally-informed perspective and to consider how gender and sexuality intersect with the social categories of race, class, ethnicity, disability, and age to produce our complex social identities.

The Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program at Washington and Lee University offer students both the opportunity to complete a multi-disciplinary minor in feminist and gender studies and a stimulating co-curricular environment in which to develop as intellectual and community leaders. Founded in 2001, the WGSS is a vibrant academic program that links the classroom with the world and offers the theoretical basis for activism and social change. A demanding introductory course and disciplinary distribution requirements give all students a sound theoretical orientation to defining and articulating concepts and practices in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, while diverse course offerings from professors in disciplines that range from psychology to English, from Romance languages to political science, philosophy to sociology and anthropology, make it easy for students to draw connections between their major fields of studies and the evolving work of gender scholars. Our faculty encourages students to see their studies as relevant to their everyday lives and important for understanding and responding to social justice issues. Students do just that--in a math student's investigation into why so few women study math in college, in a fraternity member's paper analyzing how his fraternity brothers' drinking habits shape male privilege, or in a missionary's daughter's attempt to better understand how a feminist might read the Bible. The flexible Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies capstone requirement allow students to pursue their particular interests with the kind of intensity that turns classroom competence into an abiding passion. Do you want to make audiences laugh with women's humor? Or challenge the ways in which media images invade our consciousness and control our bodies? Study women artists or find out how women changed history? Want to learn how we might get more diverse elected officials, and figure out why homophobia is still part of public policy? Or write a poem that moves its readers to action against sexist oppression? Join us. That's what we do.