Instructor: B. Calabresi
Prerequisites: the instructor’s permission.
This course examines literary and artistic works by and about women from the 16th and 17th centuries alongside recent historical and theoretical criticism on gender and sexuality in the Renaissance. We will cover a range of literary genres that reflect and produce early modern notions of sex and gender in England, France, Italy and Spain, as well as medical guides, self-portraits, conduct manuals, and scurrilous tracts on females behavior. Topics include Queens (rulers) and Queens (prostitutes); cross-dressing and biological difference; the status of work and school; separatist communities and same-sex eroticism; kinship, patronage and domesticity; the gender and economics of authorship; the sexuality of racial and national identity. Readings in the original language provided and strongly encouraged. Secondary readings or films will be provided each week.
