COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS

This seminar entirely taught in French - introduces and focuses on novelists, filmmakers, and scholars
who have analyzed the creation of new forms of possible character development for male and female gender
roles and identities. These authors reconsider views on gender performativity and gender norms as well as
the incest taboo, social violence, and social transformation.
With the help of several theorists from both sides of the Atlantic, the seminar will focus on French novels
and films that were published/produced between 1980 and 2000. As in other parts of the Western world, in
France, these two decades were the theater of major occurrences that had a direct impact on the defining and
interpretations of gender and sexuality: the arrival, spreading, and recognition of the AIDS epidemics as well
as cybernetics; the organization and increased visibility of gay groups and activists; and important new
legislation such as the Civil Pact of Solidarity (PACS) a form of civil union between two adults (same sex or
opposite sex) for organizing their joint life.
The objective of this seminar is to identify and examine the several characteristics that seem to shape the
corpus of French texts and films dealing with gender and sexuality during the key decades of the 1980s and
1990s as well as to study and discuss the (often controversial) public and academic reactions to such works.
Consequently, we will examine:

The blurring, uniformization, disappearance, redefinition, or eradication of the notion of gender:

the main character in Tahar ben Jellouns Lenfant de sable is a girl raised as a boy; we never know
for the entire novel if A***, the main protagonist, is a man or a woman in Anne Garrtas Sphinx;
and the notion of gender is erased by the end of Michel Houellebecqs The Elementary
Particles leaving us with cyborgs.

The social transformation of gender roles and sexuality in France: in both Marguerite
Duras Lamant and Annie Ernauxs Passion simple the female narrators claim their sexuality and
terminate the masculine hegemony in the bedroom; in Marie Darrieussecqs Truismes, the female
narrator progressively transforms herself into a sow; and we see the raise and coming out of a
French homosexual community in Benot Duteurtres Gaiet parisienne and Ann
Scotts Superstars.

The physical, psychological and social effects of AIDS in France in the 1980s and 1990s as
recounted and witnessed by Herv Guiberts A lami qui ne ma pas sauv la vie and Lhomme au
chapeau rouge as well as in Vincent Borels Un ruban noir.

Violence like rapes, abuse, and taboos such as Sadism and Masochism or incest: novels like
Christine Angots Linceste and Virginie Despentes Baise-moi stage a confrontation of the
discourses of violence and taboos to open up a space of ethical critique that effectively answers the
challenges that violence poses to representation.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Novels (final selection to be determined)

Angot, Christine. LInceste [Incest]. Paris: Stock, 1999.

Ben Jelloun, Tahar. Lenfant de sable. Paris: Seuil, 1985. Translated as The Sand Child.
Borel, Vincent. Un ruban noir [A Black Ruban]. Arles: Actes Sud, 1995.
Darrieussecq, Marie. Truismes. Paris: P.O.L., 1996. Translated as Pig Tales. A Novel of Lust and
Transformation.
Despentes, Virginie. Baise-moi. Paris: Florent Massot, 1994. Translated as Rape Me.
Duras, Marguerite. Lamant. Paris: Minuit, 1984. Translated as The Lover.
Duteurtre, Benot. Gaiet parisienne [French Gayness]. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
Ernaux, Annie. Passion simple. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.
Garrta, Anne. Sphinx. Paris: Grasset, 1986.
Guibert, Herv. Lhomme au chapeau rouge. Paris: Gallimard, 1992. Translated as The Man in the Red Hat.
---. A lami qui ne ma pas sauv la vie. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. Trans. as To the Friend Who Did not Save
my Life.
Houellebecq, Michel. Les Particules lmentaires. Paris: Flammarion, 1998. Trans. as The Elementary
Particles.
Scott, Ann. Superstars. Paris: Flammarion, 1999.
Wittig, Monique. Virgile, non. Paris: Minuit, 1985. Translated as Across the Acheron.
Films (final selection to be determined)
Annaud, Jean-Jacques. Lamant, 1992.
Balasko, Josiane. Gazon maudit, 1995.
Berliner, Alain. Ma vie en rose, 1997.
Blier, Bertrand. Tenue de soire, 1987.
Chreau, Patrice. LHomme bless, 1983.
Collard, Cyril. Les nuits fauves, 1992.
Denis, Claire. Beau travail, 1999.
Fontaine, Anne. Nettoyage sec, 1997.
Tchin, Andr. Les Roseaux sauvages, 1994.
Theory (final selection to be determined)
Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.

---. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Durand, Alain-Philippe. Pascal Bruckner et Michel Houellebecq. Deux transcrivains au milieu du
monde. Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe. Eds. Murielle Lucie Clment and Sabine van Wesemael.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 153-67.
---. Un Monde techno. Nouveaux espaces lectroniques dans le roman franais des annes 1980 et 1990[A
Techno World. New Electronic Spaces in theFrench Novel of the 1980s and 1990s]. Preface de Marc Aug.
Berlin: Weidler, 2004.
---. Discothques. Sur Sphinx dAnne Garrta. LAtelier du Roman 18 (1999): 126-34.
Durand, Alain-Philippe and Naomi Mandel, eds. Novels of the Contemporary Extreme. New York:
Continuum, 2006.
Fassin, Eric. L'inversion de la question homosexuelle. Paris: Amsterdam, 2005.
Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la sexualit. Tome 1: La volont de savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1984. Translated
as The History of Sexuality Vol. 1.
Garrta, Anne. Pour en finir avec le genre humain [Finishing Off Gender]. Paris: F. Bourin, 1987.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.
Martel, Frdric. Le Rose et le Noir: Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968. Paris: Seuil, 1996. Translated
as The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968.
Schehr, Lawrence R. French Post-Modern Masculinities: From Neuromatrices to Seropositivity. Liverpool:
Liverpool UP, 2010.
---. Alcibiades at the Door: Gay Discourses in French Literature. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1995.
Wittig, Monique. The Straight Mind. Boston: Beacon P, 1992. Translated as La pense straight.