Module ENGL3861: Sexology and the Novel

Department: English Studies

ENGL3861: Sexology and the Novel

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To examine the dialectical relationship between sexology and literature, as they mutually inform each other’s discourses, aesthetics, and epistemic protocols over the last century.
• To examine how sexual subject formation and minority claims to political recognition have been articulated through literary works.
• To examine the various ways that the novel operates as a cultural technology for asserting normative sexual behaviour, how it has been conscripted as data by the sciences, and how it has functioned as a tool of minoritarian resistance.

Content

• The module will follow a roughly chronological sequence covering the last century, from the 1920s-2020s, modified where appropriate to allow direct comparison of novels distinguished in terms of place, gender, language and political stance.
• Students will read a selection of novels from Europe and America that are informed by the prevailing scientific views of their historical moment regarding human sexuality.
• Literary texts will be drawn from the work of Radclyffe Hall, Djuna Barnes, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Patricia Highsmith, John Rechy, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, T.C. Boyle, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jordy Rosenberg, and Torrey Peters. o Literary readings will be supplemented by a range of primary sources in sexology from US, UK, and German contexts.
• Sexological texts and novels will be contextualized with secondary critical materials from the fields of modernist literary studies, science and literature, sexuality studies, and contemporary literary studies.

Learning Outcomes

• knowledge of the transatlantic history of sexuality in the last century.
• knowledge of the modern and contemporary history of the novel.
• knowledge of scientific, linguistic, literary, cultural, and socio-historical contexts in which literature is written and, specifically, an understanding of the evolving cultural and political contexts of sexuality.
• the ability to engage with recent and contemporary critical approaches to literature and culture, including especially science and literature, medical humanities, disability studies, and queer and trans studies.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts.
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches.
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts.
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language.
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature.
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies.
• skills of effective communication and argument.
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation.
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology.
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically.
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject.
• competence in the planning and execution of assessed work.
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others.
• skills in critical reasoning.
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner.
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information. • organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before Assessment 1, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the assessment and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also if they wish, discuss their ideas for Assessment 2 at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University