COML2301 - Queer Poetry from Homer to Hughes

This course will offer students a preview of the first anthology of queer poetry available in English, “All The World in Thee”: An Historical Book of Queer Poems, edited by Stephanie Burt, Drew Daniel, and Melissa E. Sanchez (forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2025). Reading selections of poetry from the classics through the early twentieth century, we will consider how this work makes visible a long history of queer desire and gender nonconformity right at the center of the Western canon. Students will conduct research projects on the poem of their choice, with research results to be presented at a final conference and celebration.