| This course will read our late twentieth century anxieties concerning gender, race, sexuality, and technological advance through and against late-nineteenth century counterparts in order to articulate what it means to live at the end of the century and/or millenium. The apocalyptic tenor of our own recent end of the century find its uncanny predecessor in the furore of the Wilde and Dreyfus trials, the Darwinian threat of degeneration, the New Woman debates and the decadence of 1890s in Europe. In the mirror we can see not only how much we resemble our Victorian predecessors, but also the extent to which we differ from them, both for the better and worse. |
