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In recent years there have been significant shifts in how gender and sexuality are understood and experienced in the West and indeed across the world. The emergence and spread of new identity categories (such as ‘nonbinary’) has been accompanied by heightened public awareness of queer and trans identities, and increasing representation of these identities in a range of popular cultural genres. These changes have had mixed consequences, as gendered minorities in particular have come to occupy a disproportionate place in public ‘culture war’ debates. This course surveys and analyses how the aforementioned historical shifts have been produced by, and expressed in, contemporary LGBTQ+ fiction. Fiction has always held an important place in the intellectual cultures of social movements organised around gender and sexuality. In the wake of the liberation movements of the late 1960s, for example, fiction was a place where ‘positive’ images of gender and sexual minorities could be found when these were less likely to emerge in other cultural arenas such as film and TV. In this course, we will ask how current fictional representations relate to this earlier fixation on the ‘positive’? What kinds of diverse (and not always ‘positive’) ways of being LGBTQ+ are able to be expressed in recent fiction? What new genres have emerged to help express these ways of life? How do contemporary writers play with genres that have had long-standing associations with minoritized forms of life (like sci-fi and fantasy)? Ultimately, what historical and aesthetic shifts do the texts on the course help us to understand? 

The unit aims to:
- analyse how LGBTQ+ representation has shifted over the last two decades, with a focus on how this has been expressed in very recent fiction  

-  situate changes in fictional representation in their cultural and historical contexts  

- analyse how gender and sexuality intersect with other significant social formations like class, race, dis/ability and nationality  

- further develop students’ abilities to analyse fictional texts  

- develop skills of critical thought, speech, and writing in relation to complex questions of gender, sexuality and representation

This class will have 1 1-hr lecture and 1 2-hour seminar per week  

Materials including bibliographies, study questions, and exercises will be posted on Canvas each week.  
 

demonstrate a good knowledge of recent shifts in fictional LGBTQ+ representation  

demonstrate an understanding of how these shifts relate to earlier historical patterns in LGBTQ+ fictional representation  

demonstrate some knowledge of how very recent texts have been interpreted and of some of the broader interpretive frameworks from feminist, queer and trans theory that these texts relate to 

think critically and make critical judgments about queer and trans contemporary texts and their presentation of gender and sexuality

identify and outline key problems and issues in the interpretation of queer and trans contemporary fiction

develop and articulate a reasoned argument for a particular point of view about queer and trans contemporary fiction 

plan and execute independent research on queer and trans contemporary fiction

make good use of library, electronic, and online resources pertaining to the course

synthesize relevant information in order produce compelling arguments about queer and trans speculative fiction 

retrieve, sift, organise, synthesise and critically evaluate material from a range of different sources, including library, electronic, and online resources

produce written work using appropriate language for an academic audience and that collects and integrates evidence to formulate/test a critical argument

demonstrate the ability to think critically and independently, arriving at reasoned independent judgments

demonstrate good teamwork skills by acknowledging the views of others and working constructively with others 

Key primary texts:

- Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends (2021)

- Torrey Peters, Detransition Baby (2021)  

- Shola von Reinhold, Lote (2020)  

- Edouard Louis, The End of Eddy (2014/17)

- Rivers Solomon, The Deep (2019)

Secondary texts:

Melissa E. Sanchez, ed., The Routledge Companion to Queer Literary Studies (London; Routledge, 2025)  

Tyler Bradway and E. L. McCallum, eds., After Queer Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2019)  

Douglas A. Vakoch and Sabine Sharp, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (Routledge, 2024)