ENGL 274 will explore various intersections of gender, sexuality, and politics, ranging from masculinist fascists and their violent sexual urges to freedom-fighting anti-fascist lesbians. This course is comprised of four units: “WWI,” “The Interwar Period,” “The Spanish Civil War,” and “WWII.” Each unit will consider one or two political orientations—including but not limited to pacifism, fascism, communism, and anarchism—in relation to texts’ representations of non-normative gender and sexuality. Students will develop their critical thinking and writing skills as they learn to discern how political orientations construct and revise cultural narratives about sexual and gender identity, often to suit a nation’s war aims. Assigned texts may include D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920), Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Spanish Civil War love poems, Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin (1939), Bob Fosse’s film Cabaret (1972) starring Liza Minnelli, and Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night. Assignments will be tiered to emphasize and reward student growth. These assignments will likely include a short close reading assignment, an essay proposal, and a final essay
