PS-Surveying English Literatures: Queer Modernist Biographical Writing
Karoline-Rosina Strauch
Comments
In 2020, biographer Diana Souhami published the book “No Modernism Without Lesbians” (Head of Zeus, 2020) emphasising the importance of queer women and gender non-conforming people in the modernist literary landscape. Souhami briefly traces the lives of four influential modernists: Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, and Bryher to illustrate their queerness and achievements. Her book challenges the androcentric modernist canon and attempts to reframe modernist history. This however is not the only attempt to remember or to be remembered, as many queer modernists themselves turned to modes of biographical writing to make sure they, their peers, and their work would not be forgotten.
This course looks at different sub-genres of life-writing and how different modernists used them to write (queer) history. We examine the differences between biography, (fictionalised) autobiography, memoir, roman à clef, etc. and explore what censorship and libel laws of the early twentieth century meant when it came to publishing (explicitly) queer biographical content. Moreover, we will talk about the issue of fact vs. fiction in biographical material and investigate queer memorial practices through ‘archival activism’.
In addition to material made available on Blackboard during the semester, we will read:
Barney, Natalie. Women Lovers, or the Third Woman. University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. (The book is available online via Primo)
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Combined Academic Publishing, 1991.
Souhami, Diana. No Modernism Without Lesbians. Head of Zeus, 2020.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Vintage Classics, 2016. (Other editions of the novel are also fine)
Please read the section on Sylvia Beach in Diana Souhami’s No Modernism Without Lesbians before the first class.
close
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments