230274 Cross-Dressing and Gender-Bending in Fiction and Film (S) (WiSe 2014/2015)

The English, among all Western cultures, seem to have a particular affinity to cross-dressing: not only did they insist, longer than other countries, on boy actors playing female parts on stage; they also delighted in plays that showed these female characters playing boys. The English Christmas pantomime has preserved this quaint custom of bearded ladies and girls in breeches. In the 20th century, this cultural practice has become a tool to explore gender identities in ways that are often playful and occasionally radical and dangerous. Focussing on English (or at least British, mostly) history, fiction and films, we will discuss and try to assess why and to what effect men have dressed as women and women have dressed as men, and how they have been represented.

Bibliography

To be announced. But we will start by looking at some scenes involving female characters dressed as boys in English Renaissance drama, i.e. scenes from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and As You Like It, possibly also Cymbeline, and Middleton & Dekker's The Roaring Girl. Virginia Woolf's Orlando is on the cards, as is a recent romantic genre novel by Australian writer Anna Cowan, Untamed.
As for films, there will be Stage Beauty, and a comparison of Tootsie (by the well-known British director Sydney Pollack and the equally well-known British actor Dustin Hoffman...) and "Albert Nobbs" (with Glen Close, the well-known... yes, you geddit).
I may be open to suggestion; so if there is a title you would like to discuss, send me an email.