What makes art transgressive? Edgy content? Eccentric style? In a moment of heightened repression and censorship in the United States, exemplified by a surge of book bans, this course asks: What can we make of texts that announce their antagonism, books that bite back? Looking at literary movements and subcultures of the mid to late-20th century, we will explore how transgression might serve not just as a catch-all for objectionable depictions of sex and violence, but as a genre that gives expression to heterogeneous ways of thinking and living that are typically banished to the grimy underbelly of American literature and culture. Alongside famously censored novelists and visual artists, Beat poets and avant-gardists – some from St. Louis – we will encounter various essays, films, short stories, and poetry by multiply marginalized scholars and cultural producers, who urge us to think critically about transgression’s possibilities. 

"I’m excited to explore how multiply marginalized subjects deploy transgression as an aesthetic and political strategy to challenge cultural norms of politeness and civility. In this course we’ll read texts by Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Toni Morrison, Essex Hemphill, Eileen Myles, Andrea Abi-Karam, and more. Through the lens of transgression, we’ll examine key moments of controversy and censorship to ask what they reveal about American life and culture. "

- Gabriel Ridout

Gabriel Ridout is pursuing a PhD in English at WashU. Research interests include 20th- and 21st-century American art and literature, trans of color critique, affect theory, and cultural studies. At WashU, Ridout is a McDonnell Academy Scholar and a Representative on the Graduate and Professional Student Council. The winner of a 2020 Academy of American Poets University Prize, Ridout has published creative writing on poets.org, in Nightboat Books’s Permanent Record anthology, and elsewhere.