ENGL 6774 - Queer Time in Contemporary Fiction

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

M. K. McCullough.

What might it mean to queer time, and why might a fiction writer want to do so? In this seminar we will address these questions, reading both theory and fiction to explore the relationships among sexuality, time, and narrative form. We will track queer temporality both at the level of the stories authors tell and at the level of the formal strategies and structures they use to tell them and will ask what sorts of queer world-making possibilities are produced from these uses of queer time. We will begin by tracking the debate between the Utopian and the Antisocial strains of queer theory’s work on temporality, reading such theorists as José Esteban Muñoz, Elizabeth Freeman, Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam, and others; we will also consider work emerging from queer literary theory. Fiction under consideration may include texts by Alison Bechdel, Marusya Bociurkiw, Carol Rifka Brunt, Tony Kushner, Mia McKenzie, Achy Obejas, Monique Truong, and Craig Womack.