ENG 213W, Section 1

“Odbhuth” India: Queer Vernaculars of Indian Literature (Syllabus)

Spring 2024

“Queer” comes out of the Global North and has a widely taxonomic and political purchase today, prominently as a shorthand for the LGBTQIA+. Before its appropriation as a slur, and its reclamation by those who sustained its injury, “queer,” like the Bangla word, “odbhuth,” implied the strange and peculiar, sometimes the unknown or misfit. But how portable is “queer” to the Global South? Using India and its “odbhuth” literature as a case study, this course invites students to respond to this query. Readings include: short fiction, in English and in translation, by Pandey Bechan Sharma “Ugra,” Aruni Kashyap, Vasundhendra, Ismat Chughtai, Krishn Chander; cinema (Lihaaf: The Quilt, Sixth Happiness, Fire); young people’s literature by Ashutosh Pathak and Kanak Shashi; a novel by Firdaus Kanga; poetry by Suniti Namjoshi, Agha Shahid Ali, Minal Hajratwala, Hoshang Merchant; scholarship of Gayatri Gopinath, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Hilary Chute, et al; a graphic novel by Amruta Patil; a translated “Nirala” novella by Satti Khanna; and the archives of Trikone recently acquired by the Rose Library at Emory University.  Readings and discussions in this course will animate the tensions that arise when taxonomies of the Global North, like “queer,” become a part of non-heteronormative spaces in the Global South. Can a complete decolonisation from such “imported” taxonomies be possible? Or are there some benefits to the syncretism that arises when two worlds, and the two ways of accenting queerness, collide?

ENGRD 101, Section 23
Desiring Elsewhere (Syllabus)

Spring 2023

This first-year writing course introduces students to key texts and theories that collectively aspire to do queer studies from “elsewhere” by redistributing the monopoly of queer hermeneutics, which originated in the 1990s in the U.S. academy, to vernaculars and cartographies of desire beyond their inaugural scene. Students will read academic writing across a moderately expansive disciplinary breadth — from literary studies to anthropology — and hone their skills at understanding the architecture and rhetorical contingencies of various academic genres of writing. The (provisional) texts for this seminar come from Anjali Arondekar and Geeta Patel, Margot Weiss, Gayatri Gopinath, Jasbir K. Puar, Kadji Amin, K’eguro Macharia, Rovel Sequeira, Benjamin Kahan, et al.  Each seminar will comprise discussions guided by students’ responses to the texts. Assignments for this seminar will include weekly discussion posts, a literature review, a conference paper, a journal article, and a portfolio.

ENGRD 101, Section 8
Queer Intimacies Around the World (Syllabus)
Spring 2022

This first-year writing course cultivates responses to queer intimacies which have been written about, painted, performed on film, and photographed around the world. Students will read “texts” in myriad modes to refine techniques of observation, analysis and composition, to learn the architectures of varied genres of critical writing, and to develop adaptability to various rhetorical contingencies. Assignments will include a curatorial essay, a comparative film review, an abstract for a journal article, and a literary analysis. Materials that students will engage with include a compilation of queer paintings by Sola Olulode, Uttam Chitrakar, Louis Fratino, Cao Xue, Salman Toor, et al; scholarship by Rita Felski, Gayatri Gopinath, J. Jack Halberstam, Madhavi Menon, Alka Pande, Somdatta Mandal, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Anuradha Ghosh, Lawrence W. Preston, Vinay Lal; academic reviews by Darryl B. Hill and Rachel Adams; documentaries directed by Naveen Kishore (Performing the Goddess, 1999), and Alexandra Shiva, Sean MacDonald, and Michelle Gucovsky (Bombay Eunuch, 2001); public writing by Durga Chew Bose, Ambika Trasi, Hilton Als, and Namwali Serpell; and Chinelo Okparanta’s novel, Under the Udala Trees (2015).


ENGRD 101, Section 3
Queer Intimacies Around the World (Syllabus)
Fall 2021

This first-year writing course cultivates responses to queer intimacies which have been written about, painted, performed on film, and photographed around the world. Students will read “texts” in myriad modes to refine techniques of observation, analysis, and composition. Assignments with various rhetorical contingencies include a literacy narrative, a literary analysis, a video essay, and a profile or a report based upon archival materials from the LGBTQ collection at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Books Library, Emory University. Materials that students will engage with include a compilation of queer paintings by Sola Olulode, Uttam Chitrakar, Louis Fratino, Cao Xue, Salman Toor, et al.; a selection of Sunil Gupta’s photographs collected in Queer (2011) and Wish You Were Here (2009); Andrea Lawlor’s 2017 novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl; short films directed by Akosua Adoma Owusu (Relcutantly Queer, 2016) and Tammy Rae Carland (Dear Mom, 1995); and public writing by Durga Chew-Bose and E. Alex Jung.