A hand-copied Rochester manuscript. A famous portrait of Lord Rochester. Rochester's verse satire against King Charles II.
Jonathan Kramnick (2002) on Rochester, the history of sexuality, "Love a Woman" and other poems.
"Fair Chloris" in our own clean text. Pastoral. Also pastoral. Definitely not pastoral.
Writers can make identity seem unstable. Or fluid. Or like a slot machine. Maybe sex can make identity go away. Or maybe we want to build a community with inclusive labels.
Rochester's Dildo. The future King, James II (portrait by Lely). Mary of Modena, whose arrival occasioned the poem. Tom Killigrew. Slightly later dildos and their source.
Rochester's poem "The Disabled Debauchee." Rochester's poem in tercets "Upon Nothing." One nothing. Another nothing. And another; and another? Not this guy.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Introducing our course and some of the things we can study
Lord Rochester. Also heroic modern feminist writers. Also Walt. Also other identities, ways of writing and performing sex and gender and other intersections, and ways of making up people. (More about making up people.)
Inside the penis museum. Passion and/or fertility and/or lust.
Social conventions, life partners and the life course, conventions and weddings and more weddings.
What kind of person do you think that you are?
Disaggregating concepts, doing genealogy. But are we really so different from writers a long time ago? In some ways, maybe not!
Some important letters. Even more letters. However: literature. Also new literature.
To study what's unusual you also have to study the norms. They haven't always been exactly the same.
We know we have chromosomes. What do they do? We tend to think partners should be semi-equal. Do we know what porn is? What about sex work?
We're not in ancient Athens. Or Renaissance Florence. Or in a world before modern biology.
Don't step on one of these. Or one of these. Or one of these.
Unusual genders in the late eighteenth century. Performing gender in famous plays. Performing a fabulous gender. Living, and writing, complicated gender for real.
Thinking about sex workers. Thinking about violence. Thinking about what's called love.
We'll never ask you how you see yourself.
Three poly folks buy a bed, by Jade Sylvan, whom we will meet this spring. Jade has no single identity. Bonus personal essay by Anshuman Iddamsetty: "Desire that is pure and honest doesn't require a narrative." Really?
Inside the penis museum. Passion and/or fertility and/or lust.
Social conventions, life partners and the life course, conventions and weddings and more weddings.
What kind of person do you think that you are?
Disaggregating concepts, doing genealogy. But are we really so different from writers a long time ago? In some ways, maybe not!
Some important letters. Even more letters. However: literature. Also new literature.
To study what's unusual you also have to study the norms. They haven't always been exactly the same.
We know we have chromosomes. What do they do? We tend to think partners should be semi-equal. Do we know what porn is? What about sex work?
We're not in ancient Athens. Or Renaissance Florence. Or in a world before modern biology.
Don't step on one of these. Or one of these. Or one of these.
Unusual genders in the late eighteenth century. Performing gender in famous plays. Performing a fabulous gender. Living, and writing, complicated gender for real.
Thinking about sex workers. Thinking about violence. Thinking about what's called love.
We'll never ask you how you see yourself.
Three poly folks buy a bed, by Jade Sylvan, whom we will meet this spring. Jade has no single identity. Bonus personal essay by Anshuman Iddamsetty: "Desire that is pure and honest doesn't require a narrative." Really?
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