S Modernist Fiction

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!!!UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!


COURSE OUTLINE

3.02.150 S Whispers from the Closet: Representing the "Unspeakable" in Literature and Film

  • [Module] Motifs - Themes - Issues (and their Media)
  • [Credits] 6 KP
  • [Instructor] Dr. Christian Lassen
  • [Time] Wednesday, 08.15 am - 09.45 am, weekly session, consisting of the following two parts: plenary session, discussing the asynchronous presentation (8.15 am - 9.30 am); and prepararory session for presentation groups (9.30 am - 9.45 am); nota bene: presentations will not be given in class but they will be made available on Stud.IP the Friday before they are scheduled, i.e. watching the presentations prior to the relevant sessions constitues a mandatory course requirement.
  • [Room] A01 0-009
  • [Description] Inquiries into mainstream culture's representations of otherness are of key relevance for an academic field like literary and cultural studies, whose principal claims are based on the idea that culture has an all-encompassing influence on identity formation, both collective and individual, and that, consequently, our identities and our sense of self do not come from inside ourselves so much as from a pre-existing culture that determines intelligible ways of living, while it disciplines allegedly unintelligible ones. In other words, it is through cultural representations – and thus largely through novels, plays, and movies, etc. - that we learn what it means to be different in a normative culture. And paradoxical as it may sound, when it comes to sexual difference, this learning process was, up until the end of the twentieth century, largely informed by misrepresentation, or even non-representation, as the vigilant influence of censorship and anti-gay legislation banned examples of queer life and queer role models to a space of virtual invisibility: the closet. While the Lord Chamberlain's Office and the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) monitored Britain's theatres and her film industry closely, the Motion Picture Production Code, or Hays Code, meticulously classified a number of violations, including "sex perversion" and other allegedly undesirable contents, deemed inappropriate or even offensive in classical Hollywood cinema. Unsurprisingly, these institutions took ample liberties to rewrite, distort, or even delete material in order to render queer life, or at least positive images of queer life, invisible. As a result, any kind of (positive self-) identification with queer cultural role models was obliterated. And yet, writing under the influence of censorship and anti-gay legislation allowed many nineteenth- and twentieth-century novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers to develop and explore the numerous subtle ways by which "unspeakable" lesbian and gay subtexts could be communicated and placed in a text. Bargaining on the deep gulf between queer knowledge and heteronormative incomprehension (and thus on the truism that 'it takes one to know one'), these artists made use of various genres (Victorian gothic; horror; film noir; seafaring tales; westerns; musicals; boarding school dramas; etc.), various stock characters (the double; the 'handsome sailor'; the 'apparitional' lesbian; the femme fatale; the tomboy; the 'artistic' teenager; etc.), and various modes of performativity (camp; parody; pastiche; intertextuality; etc.) to undermine the regimes of censorship and to render queer characters visible – at least between the lines. In order to analyse the management of (non-) knowledge and compulsory (in-)comprehension that govern the open-secret structures of the closet, we are going to take a closer look at the contexts and the specific formal and function designs of R.L. Stevenson's Victorian gothic novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Herman Melville's seafaring tale Billy Budd, Sailor, Alfred Hitchcock's film noir classic Rebecca (based on the eponymous novel by Daphne du Maurier); David Butler's western musical Calamity Jane (starring Doris Day); and Peter Weir's boarding school film Dead Poets Society. In addition, the documentary film The Celluloid Closet (based on Vito Russo's pioneering study of the same title) will provide as with a historical overview of the representation of homosexuality in the movies.
  • [Office Hours] Tuesday, 11.00 am - 12.00 am


PRIMARY TEXTS (Mandatory Texts)

Novellas:

  • Stevenson, Robert Louis. 1886. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Print.
  • Melville, Herman. 1924 [1891]. Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales. Oxford: OUP, 2009. Print.

Documentary Features:

  • The Celluloid Closet. [dt. Gefangen in der Traumfabrik.] Dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. HBO, 1995. Pro Fun Media, 2004.

Movies:

  • Rebecca. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson. United Artists, 1940. Alfred Hitchcock Collection. Great Movies, 2015. DVD.
  • Calamity Jane. [dt. Schwere Colts in Zarter Hand.] Dir. David Butler. Perf. Doris Day and Howard Keel. Warner Bros., 1953. Warner Home Video, 2020. DVD.
  • Dead Poets Society. [dt. Der Club der toten Dichter.] Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. ‎ Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke. Touchstone, 1989. Disney Home Entertainment, 2002. DVD.


ASSIGNMENTS

  • [Prüfungsleistung] asynchrones (Gruppen-)Referat (max. 3 Personen; ca. 20 Folien) mit Schriftlicher Ausarbeitung (10 Seiten) [oder in Ausnahmefällen: Hausarbeit (15 Seiten)]
  • [Aktive Teilnahme] Regular Attendance (cf. Richtlinien der Fakultät III, Studiendekanat), Course Preparation (i.e. watching the asynchronous presentations), 4 Abstracts

Please note that written assignments (abstracts, short term papers, long term papers) need to be composed according to the style sheet ("Leitfaden") of the University of Oldenburg, which can be accessed via the 'Institutswiki'-page of the English department. The style sheet not only provides relevant information on how to write a correct bibliography but it may also help you to structure your work according to academic standards.

Please make sure to sign the "Erklärung zum 'Plagiat'" and to attach it to your research papers.

  • [Abgabefrist] 15. September 2023.




Session 01, April 12: Introduction

Organisational Matters

  • Assignments

Assignments are graded and mandatory. In order to obtain 6 credits (KP), you will have to give an asynchronous (group) presentation (Referat, 20 Folien) on one of the presentation topics specified in the syllabus. In addition to that, you will have to hand in a short term paper (Ausarbeitung, 10 Seiten) by the end of term (15. September). In exceptional cases, you may hand in a long term paper (Hausarbeit, 15 Seiten) instead of the above. However, an exception is only granted upon consultation.

  • Presentation Topics, Presentation Groups

Presentation Topics are specified in your syllabus. In order to prepare your presentations, please pick a topic, get together in groups (see below) and write up a power-point presentation. Add your audio commentary to the presentation, save the file and send it on to me so that we can discuss your presentation during your preparatory session before you upload it. After that, you make your file available on Stud.IP on the Friday before your presentation is due so that all participants can read/ watch the presentation in time, i.e. before the session.

Requests regarding your choice of presentation topics can be send to me via e-mail, starting on Monday, April 03. Please send me three possible presentation topics and prioritise them according to your preferences. I will sign you in in the order of the requests' arrival. Please check this page regularly to see if your requests have been met.

Preparatory Sessions for presentations take place in the second part of the weekly sessions, i.e. Wednesday 9.30 am - 9.45 am. Please make sure that you send me your presentation at least one day prior to your preparatory session and that you attend said session the week before your presentation is due.

  • Active Participation

Active Participation is ungraded but mandatory. In order to fulfil the requirements, you will have to attend class regularly and watch the asynchronous presentations prior to the relevant sessions. Moreover, you will have to write four abstracts, each including a topic, a state of research, a thesis statement, and a brief outline of your argument (approx. 1 page), in the course of the seminar. You can choose your own topic; however: all abstracts have to address different primary texts. In other words, your abstracts will have to cover four out of five primary materials. They are due by the end of the week (i.e. Friday) that marks the ending of the respective sections, i.e. due date Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: May 5; due date Billy Budd, Sailor: May 19; due date Rebecca: June 9; due date Calamity Jane June 23; due date Dead Poets Society July 7) 

   Summary: Presentations

1. Pick a presentation topic and contact me via e-mail (starting April 03). Check below for available places. Presentation groups may consist of a maximum of 3 people.

2. Contact the other members of your group and prepare your presentation, i.e. power-point presentation with audio commentary.

3. Send me your presentation 8 days before your presentation is scheduled.

4. Discuss your presentation with me in your preparatory session 7 days, i.e week, before your presentation is scheduled. Preparatory sessions take place during the second part of class, i.e. Wednesday 9.30 am - 9.45 am.

5. Upload your file on the Friday before your presentation is scheduled.

6. Be ready to answer questions on the day of your presentation.

Introductory Lecture: Sexual Identity in Cultural Studies

In preparation for the seminar, please work thorough the slides of the lecture above in order to familiarise yourself with the history of the term sexual identity, starting with the discursive production of the cultural concept of sexuality in the late nineteenth century.

Session 02, April 19: Theory Session I - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet

Theory Texts

Introductory Lecture: Sexual Identity in Cultural Studies

Guiding Questions

  • Historical Context:

Sedgwick begins her monograph by claiming that "many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western culture as a whole are structured - indeed, fractured - by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition, indicatively male, dating from the end of the nineteenth century" (1). Likewise, the introductory lecture "Writing Sexual Identity" chooses to begin its discussion of modernity's conception of desire, and specifically same-sex desire, in the late nineteenth century.

Why is this point in time, historically speaking, so siginificant for the discursive development of concepts surrounding same-sex desire?

What are the major discourses that begin to shape and cement new knowledges about same-sex desire?

What knowledges are being produced?

How do these new knowledges become so dominant, culturally speaking, that their conceptions of (same-sex) desire, their terminology, their classifications and categorisations continue to define the ways 'we' speak, think and talk about desire in the 21st century?

With regard to identity formation, what does Foucault mean when he points out - quoted in Sedgwick - that afetr this discursive development "the homosexual was now a species" (9)?

  • Identity Formation:

With "the homosexual" emerging as a "species", the question of visibility arises with all its ambivalent aspects. On the one hand, gay visibility has allowed for communitiy formation and concerted political action in times of crisis - e.g. Gay Liberation (after the Stonewall Riots) or ACT-UP (during the AIDS epidemic). On the other hand, however, visibility has come and continues to come at a price, as the identity of "the homosexual" has suffered (and continues to suffer) the effects of pathologisation, criminalisation (cf. Labouchère Amendment; Section 28), and other forms of institutionalised discrimination.

What makes things even more precarious is that, according to Sedgwick, in a homophobic culture such as ours, the continuum between homosocial, i.e. patriarchal, desire ("men promoting the interests of men") and homosexual desire ("men loving men") is "radically disrupted" (Sedgwick, Between Men 3) so that homosocial and homosexual desire have come to exclude each other. That is to say, such a patriarchal culture strongly invites the entertainment of homosocial bonds between men, while it ostracises the entertainment of homosexual bonds between them - and it does so, knowing that expressions of both forms of desire can be so similar as to be virtually indistinguishable. According to Sedgwick, the effect is clear: a social mechanism of policing male-male desire that makes it unable for the individual to - publicly or privately - ascertain that their bonds are exclusively homosocial.As a result of this "new" visibility, the individual becomes increasingly vulnerable to external assaults (e.g. "blackmailability") and internal crises (e.g. the return of the repressed), which, according to Sedgwick, frequently lead them into the psychological state of "homosexual panic".

What does the term "homosexual panic" mean? And how can an allegedly individual state of panic, anxiety, or fear be of social consequence?

How can this act of "(self-) disciplining" through homosexual panic be used as a policing mechanism organising male-male bonds in a specific culture/society?

What are the characteristics of a social, cultural, political regime that - according to Sedgwick - actively exploits the anxieties and fears of its subjects? Who benefits from this exploitation - and how?

Or is it "just" a coincident that the crisis of "homo/heterosexual definition" has become such a powerful organising mechanism in our culture? (Note Sedgwick's observation that other forms of sexual difference ( i.e. "masturbator (9)) have completely lost their siginficance to transport social or cultural meaning.)

  • The Closet:

In light of the above, it is no wonder that the crisis of "homo/heterosexual definition" has resulted in a phenomenon that structures sexual (non-)knowledge and (in-)comprehension along the dynamic lines of secrecy and disclosure: the closet. Sedgwick impressively demonstrates, quoting much discussed legal cases, that the relationship between secrecy/disclosure is never simply a progressive or even a liberating one, allegedly expressed in the move "out of the closet", i.e., from the state of "being in the closet" to the state of "coming out of the closet" - although "coming out" can, of course, have precisely this liberating effect. Still, rather than viewing the closet as either a protective shield or a cage to leave behind, it would do better justice to this phenomenon, if we conceptualised the closet itself as a dynamic queer tool in a homophobic society/culture whose anti-gay objective operates thorough the paradoxical, yet intentional catch-22 that "disclosure [be] at once compulsory and forbidden" (71).

Considering the anti-gay paradoxes of a homophobic culture, how do other allegedly binary argumentative structures - minoritising views/universalising views; essentialism/constructivism; censorship/freedom of speech - operate in order to pre-empt any gay-affirmative position from the beginning? And how can a gay-affirmative response seek to disempower these deliberately paradoxical anti-gay positions?

Could you conceive of strategic gay-affirmative speech acts that are able to forestall the heteronormative catch-22 that "disclosure [be] at once compulsory and forbidden" (71)?

What purpose could any of the following speech acts/representations serve: silence(s); sociolects; double entendres; indirection; camp performativity; irony; parody; metaphors; metonymies; intertextuality; etc?

What purpose could any of the following literary or cinematic motifs serve - think of our primary material: the double; doppelgänger; the handsome sailor; the ghost/the apparition; the tomboy; the "artistic" teenager; or simply staged/meaningful absence?

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Annemieke Müller, Fiona Stack, Tanja Jaworski

Session 03, April 26: Analysing Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I - Victorian Gothic Fiction and the Queer Double

Primary Material

  • Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "The thorough and primitive duality of man," or: Sexual Identities, Homosexual Panic, the Double, and the Externalisation of Same-Sex Desire in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
  • Presentation Group: Annemieke Müller, Fiona Stack, Tanja Jaworski

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Viktoriya Tuparova, Deya Zaharieva

Session 04, May 03: Analysing Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde II - Metonymies and Topographies of Same-Sex Desire

Primary Material

  • Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "Black Mail House is what I call the place with the door," or: the Body, the House, and the Street as Metonymies of Same-Sex Desire in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
  • Presentation Group: Viktoriya Tuparova, Deya Zaharieva

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group:

Session 05, May 10: Analysing Billy Budd, Sailor I - Seafaring Novels and the Handsome Sailor

Primary Material

  • Melville, Herman, Billy Budd, Sailor.

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "The Deadly Space Between," or: Homosocial Spaces, Homoerotic Desires, and the Ship as Heterotopia par excellence
  • Presentation Group:

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Vanessa Janßen, Lasse Stegat

Session 06, May 17: Analysing Billy Budd, Sailor II - Narratology and the Management of (Non-)Knowledge

Primary Material

  • Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor.

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "What was the matter with the master-at-arms?", or: Open-Secret Structures, Compulsory (In-)Comprehension, and Terrorising Narrative Designs in Billy Budd, Sailor
  • Presentation Group: Vanessa Janßen, Lasse Stegat

Session 07, May 24, Theory Session II - Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet

Theory Texts

Further Reading

  • Benshoff, Harry M. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester, Manchester UP, 1997. Print.
  • Dyer, Richard. Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.
  • Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. Revised Edition. New York et al.: Harper & Row, 1987. Print.

Guiding Questions

  • TBA

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Rebekka Hänßler, Jessika Häfker, Elias Isfort

Session 08, May 31: Analysing Rebecca I - Film Noir, Gothic Romance, and the Apparitional Lesbian

Primary Material

  • Hitchcock, Alfred, dir. Rebecca

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,": Lesbian Specters, Haunted Houses and the Discplacement of Female Same-Sex Desire in Rebecca
  • Presentation Group: Rebekka Hänßler, Jessika Häfker, Elias Isfort

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Marie Becker, Artur Ladilov

Session 09, June 07: Analysing Rebecca II - Narration, Focalisation, and (Performating) Heteronormative (In-)Comprehension

Primary Material

  • Hitchcock, Alfred, dir. Rebecca

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "I'll play the part of a devoted wife," or: Lesbian Desire, Lesbian Panic, and Performing Heteronormative Incomprehension in Rebecca
  • Presentation Group: Marie Becker, Artur Ladilov

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Verena Liebl

Session 10, June 14: Analysing Calamity Jane I - Westerns, Musicals, and the Tomboy

Primary Material

  • Butler, David, dir. Calamity Jane

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "Once I Had a Secret Love," or: 'Gay' Songs, Lesbian Subtexts, and the Queering of the Western Genre in Calamity Jane
  • Presentation Group: Verena Liebl

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Lisa Czuma, Ida Witt

Session 11, June 21: Analysing Calamity Jane II - Camp Attacks on the Western Genre

Primary Material

  • Butler, David, dir. Calamity Jane

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • "A Woman's Touch," or: Camp, Theatricality, and the Parodic Subversion of Heteronormative Gender Performmances in Calamity Jane
  • Presentation Group: Lisa Czuma, Ida Witt

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Franciska Wendel, Jannik Ferdinand, Keno Kienetz

Session 12, June 28: Analysing Dead Poets Society I - All-Male Boarding School Films and the "Artistic" Teenager

Primary Material

  • Weir, Peter, dir. Dead Poets Society

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • Disavowing the "Barbaric Yawp"?, or: Nostalgia, Elitism, and the Exploitative Silencing of Otherness in Dead Poets Society
  • Presentation Group: Franciska Wendel, Jannik Ferdinand, Keno Kienetz

Preparatory Session

  • Preparatory Session Group: Sofie Friedrich, Nick Beckmann

Session 13, July 05: Analysing Dead Poets Society - Homosocial Genres and Homoerotic Intertexts

Primary Material

  • Weir, Peter, dir. Dead Poets Society

Theory Texts

Further Reading

Presentation

  • Universalising Dead Poets, or: Shakespeare, Whitman, and the Unqueer Representation of Queer Intertexts and Genres in Dead Poets Society
  • Presentation Group: Sofie Friedrich, Nick Beckmann

Session 14, July 12: RPO Session

Guidelines for finding your RPO topic:

Your RPO topic needs to be related to at least one of the primary texts 

   September 15: Term Paper Due

Please upload your paper to the folder "Ausarbeitungen und Hausarbeiten" on our Stud.IP page and send a printed copy to the address below.

Bitte stellen Sie Ihre Prüfungsleistung in den Ordner "Ausarbeitungen und Hausarbeiten" auf unserer Stud.IP-Seite ein und senden Sie eine gedruckte Fassung an die untenstehende Adresse.

Dr. Christian Lassen

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Fakultät III: Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften

Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

Ammerländer Heerstraße 114-118

26129 Oldenburg

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