ENGL 62.16 Victorian Faces/Facial Politics

In Victorian England, a person’s face was his or her calling card: a clue to social identity, a signifier of inner personality, or a mask, a socially-constructed and performed persona. The period witnessed the expansion of photography, the popularity of pseudo-sciences such as physiognomy and phrenology, and the “scientific” study of race—disciplines that focused on the policing of a material body. At the same time, the Victorian period witnessed the emergence of an alternative vector of realism that rejected an emphasis on the “seen” and expanded the categories of who and what could be represented: women, industrial workers, and people of color. In analyzing these competing fields of realism, this colloquium will read literary texts alongside artistic manifestos, scientific and pseudo-scientific prose, visual images, and contemporary literary criticism (poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist, queer, performance theory, critical race). Possible authors include Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Amy Levy, and Bram Stoker.

Instructor

Not being offered in 2022-23

Prerequisite

Recommended: two completed English courses.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Junior Colloquium: Course Group II