Elit 48 c class 34

Elit 48 c class 34

• 1.
  ELIT 48C Class34 Composed or Comprised You may never have a new team comprised/composed of more than 50% of any prior team.
• 2.
  You may neverhave a new team comprised/composed of more than 50% of any prior team.  Composed means, more or less, “made up of” — and when you say something is composed of {these things} you may or may not be including all of the {things} of which it is made, opting for only the items most relevant to making your point.  To comprise means “to contain” and the correct usage will usually include ALL the parts making up the whole. Oh, and with comprise, the whole should come before the parts.  Thus, the board comprises five members, whereas five members compose (or make up) the board. It is also correct to say that the board is composed (not comprised) of five members.
• 3.
  Chair Poet? 'Writing freeverse is like playing tennis with the net down.' Robert Frost
• 4.
  AGENDA Lesbian, Gay, andQueer Theory Author Introduction:  Allen Ginsberg
• 5.
  Discuss Discuss: Five minutes!
• 6.
  Lesbian criticism isconcerned with issues of personal identity and politics analogous to those analyzed by feminists (see chapter 4). However, while feminism addresses issues related to sexism and the difficulties involved in carving out a space for personal identity and political action beyond the influence of sexist ideologies, lesbian critics address issues related to both sexism and heterosexism. In other words, lesbian critics must deal with the psychological, social, economic, and political oppression fostered not only by patriarchal male privilege, but by heterosexual privilege as well. (Tyson 322- 23) Lesbian Criticism
• 7.
  Gay Criticism The kindsof analyses that tend to engage the attention of gay critics often fall under the heading of gay sensibility. How does being gay influence the way one sees the world, sees oneself and others, creates and responds to art and music, creates and interprets literature, or experiences and expresses emotion? In a heterosexist culture such as the one we inhabit at the turn of the twenty-first century in America, gay sensibility includes an awareness of being different, at least in certain ways, from the members of the mainstream, dominant culture, and the complex feelings that result from an implicit, ongoing social oppression. In other words, part of seeing the world as a gay man includes the ways in which one deals with being oppressed as a gay man. Among others, three important domains of gay sensibility, all of which involve responses to heterosexist oppression, are drag, camp, and dealing with the issue of AIDS. (Tyson 330)
• 8.
  Queer Theory For queertheory, categories of sexuality cannot be defined by such simple oppositions as homosexual/heterosexual. Building on deconstruction’s insights into human subjectivity (selfhood) as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible “selves,” queer theory define individual sexuality as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible sexualities. Our sexuality may be different at different times over the course of our lives or even at different times over the course of a week because sexuality is a dynamic range of desire. Gay sexuality, lesbian sexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality are, for all of us, possibilities along a continuum of sexual possibilities. And what these categories mean to different individuals will be influenced by how they conceive their own racial and class identities as well. Thus, sexuality is completely controlled neither by our biological sex (male or female) nor by the way our culture translates biological sex into gender roles (masculine or feminine). Sexuality exceeds these definitions and has a will, a creativity, an expressive need of its own. (Tyson 335)
• 9.
   Finally, lesbian,gay, and queer criticism often rely on similar kinds of textual evidence. For example, in addition to the more obvious forms of textual cues—such as homoerotic imagery and erotic encounters between same-sex characters—there are rather subtle textual cues that can create a homoerotic atmosphere even in an otherwise heterosexual text, as we saw in the examples of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism provided earlier. No single textual cue can stand on its own as evidence of a homoerotic atmosphere in a text. Nor can a small number of such cues support a lesbian, gay, or queer reading. But a preponderance of these cues, especially if coupled with other kinds of textual or biographical evidence, can strengthen a lesbian, gay, or queer interpretation even of an apparently heterosexual text. (Tyson 339)
• 10.
   Homosocial bonding— The depiction of strong emotional ties between same-sex characters.  Gay or lesbian “signs”—  “feminine” male characters or “masculine” female characters.  coded signs created by the gay or lesbian subculture itself.  Same-sex “doubles”—  same-sex characters who look alike, act alike, or have parallel experiences.  Transgressive sexuality—  A text’s focus on transgressive sexuality, including transgressive heterosexuality (such as extramarital romance).
• 11.
  Typical questions: 1. Whatare the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters? 2. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer works? 3. What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history? 4. How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are apparently homosexual? 5. How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay or queer presence? That is, does the work have an unconscious lesbian, gay or queer desire or conflict that it submerges?
• 12.
  More Questions 6. Whatdoes the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) homophobic? 7. How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual "identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual? 8. What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual)? 9. What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these traditional roles? 10. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
• 13.
  Queer Reading ofGatsby  Specifically, I will argue that the novel’s treatment of sexual transgression and its proliferation of gay and lesbian signs work together to create a homoerotic subtext that disrupts and destabilizes the heterosexual narrative, creating, in the process, a sexually ambiguous novel. And as we shall see, this homoerotic subtext finds its most complete embodiment in the characterization of narrator Nick Carraway, who is, I believe, unaware of his gay orientation. Put another way, The Great Gatsby’s sexual ambiguity results from the delivery of a heterosexual plot through the medium of a closeted gay sensibility. In addition, I will suggest that the novel’s sexual ambiguity mirrors the conflicts Fitzgerald apparently experienced concerning his own sexuality. (Tyson 342-43)
• 14.
  Discussion
• 15.
  Applications 1. Do gayor lesbian “signs” appear in The Great Gatsby? 2. It is quite easy to apply queer theory to Jordan. 3. “I, Too, Sing America” by Langston Hughes: there are underlying tones of homosexuality, and the homosexual experience found throughout the poem. 4. In Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, there is a quality of homoeroticism. 5. On the topic of Nick’s relationship with Gatsby, instead of it being a one sided, hidden homosexual love of Gatsby by Nick, I believe it to be a mutual homosocial relationship between the two.
• 16.
  Allen Ginsberg  Bornin New Jersey in 1926 to a poet/schoolteacher father and a Russian émigré mother  Educated at Columbia University  Unofficially educated by William Burroughs  Experienced a mystical vision of the poet William Blake  Moved to San Francisco in 1954
• 17.
   The storyof Allen Ginsberg’s early life is as colorful and as interesting as Ginsberg’s poetry. From his humble beginnings in the shadow of New York City in Newark, New Jersey, to his off- and-on education at Columbia, Ginsberg’s journey as a social outsider who ultimately finds a place for himself is a quintessentially American story.
• 18.
  HOMEWORK Read Allen Ginsbergpp. 490-492  Howl and “A Footnote to Howl” pp. 492-500 Post #32  QHQ  Or paraphrase 8-10 lines from Howl.