FREAKS & AESTHETES IN FIFTIES FAMILIES

From the “tomboy” Frankie Adams of Carson McCullers to fragile and tigerish Blanche Du Bois of Tennessee Williams, to the unnervingly mature Esme of J.D. Salinger, to the enraged Jim Stark (Rebel Without a Cause), to the unnervingly calm Maud Martha of Gwendolyn Brooks and the grotesques of Flannery O'Connor, among others, this course examines a galaxy of compellingly eccentric outsiders—the “freak” or “queer” figure, the misfit— and looks at how their status, power, fate is dramatized as they attempt to improvise an alternative family or community within the larger family of which they are part. Race, gender, sexuality, class are all important strands in a web of considerations that will explore the creative self-fashioning of discordant mid-century American presences in crucial texts by important authors.