Topics in Comparative Literature

This course will consider the contemporary and queer fate of three Greek tragedies, Sophocles’ Oedipus, the King and Antigone, and Euripides’, The Bacchae. In our readings, we will pay attention to how “tragic” consequences take place when the actions of characters deviate from kinship norms or when kinship relations are not recognized. We will consider as well how queer rewritings of tragic scenes seek to generate alternative ways of thinking about non-normative kinship.  Are all forms of non-normative kinship tragic? What are the conditions under which we come to recognize new forms of kinship that do not lead only to tragic consequences?  The course will pair Greek tragedies with writings, films, and plays by James Baldwin, Colm Toibin, James Baldwin, Tony Kushner, Alison Bechdel, Monique Wittig, and Octavia Butler, among others. We will also read some theoretical essays on tragedy and queer kinship, including texts from anthropology, feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis, and consider contemporary films that replay – and rework – key themes of tragic kinship and queer life.

Requirements:  Students will be required to submit three short papers ( one paper of 3 pages, and two papers 4-5 pages in length) and one longer paper (9-10 pages), to attend class regularly, and to contribute to class discussion. Prompts will be provided for all four papers.  There will be no final exam.

Schedule:

Week I and II:  Introduction to tragedy, kinship, queer theory.

Reading: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex

Secondary readings:  selections from anthropologists Claude-Levi-Strauss, Gayle Rubin, and literary theorists Lee Edelman, Eve Sedgwick, selections from Sigmund Freud

Week III: Modern Retellings of Oedipus:  Colm Toibin, Mothers and Sons; James Baldwin “Sonny’s Blues”

Week IV- V: Rageful Daughters, Stubborn Laws:  Sophocles’s Antigone

Critical Readings:  Jennifer Wallace, The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (Fate, Politics, Gender)

Week VI: Reimagining the Future through the Past, Octavia Butler, Kindred,

Critical readings from Donna Haraway, Elisabeth Freeman on queer temporality

Week VII:  Murderous Impulse and its Alternatives:  Euripides’ The Bacchae

Week VIII: More Murderous Impulse and its Alternatives: Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

Week IX:  New Kinship, Survival, and Tragedy: Tony Kushner “Angels in America” (film)

Week X:   Rewriting Kinship and Belonging: two films: Panos Koutras, “Strella” and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, “A Kid with a Bike”

Week XI: Tragi-Comedy: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home

Week XII: Readings in New Queer Kinship, including Sarah Franklin, Peter Wade, Jose Munoz

Week XIII: Queer stories and Tragic Endings? Casey Charles, “Race, Kinship, and the Ambivalence of Identity” from Critical Queer Studies;  Lamya H, “Not Your Tragic Queer Muslim Story”.

Week XIV: review of material and final paper preparation.

Books:

1.)    The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, tr. Robert Fagles,  Penguin Classic, ISBN  014 044. 425.4

2.)    Euripides, The Bacchae, University of Chicago, tr. Grene,  ISBN 10 -0-226 30898- 7

3.)    Colm Toibin, Mothers and Sons, Simon and Shuster, Scribner,  ISBN  4165 3465 – 2

4.)    Alison Bechdel, Fun Home,  A Family Tragicomic, Houghton Miflin,  ISBN 10 61847794 2

5.)    The Book of Salt, Monique Truong,  978 -0-618-44688-9

6.)    Monique Wittig,  Les Guillerieres, University of Illinois, 978-0-252-07482-0

7.)    Octavia Butler, Kindred, Beacon Press, 978-0-8070-8369-7