Gay and lesbian literature introduced to students

By Lauren Dake

For Christopher Hughes, a sophomore Latin major, Professor Linda Garber's "Gay and Lesbian Literature" class is much more than just another English class.

After "coming out" to his parents a few weeks before summer, they forced him to drop the class. He is now auditing it without their knowledge.

Hughes is one of the six students, both gay and straight, taking a class specifically focused on gay and lesbian issues. This is the first quarter that Santa Clara University has offered such a class.

According to "Women, Gender and History" Professor Barbara Molony, it took time for the University to recognize that gay and lesbian issues were being under-served as a diversity issue.

The University is now making up for lost time by offering "Gay and Lesbian Literature II" next quarter and "Gay and Lesbian U.S. History" class in spring.

Garber sees the classes as a natural step in the University's commitment to ethical and social justice issues.

"This is an academic field that is big and booming across the United States," said Garber. "It's a field I've been working in a long time. It's really not a new, fringy, strange thing; it's just new to our campus."

Garber was hired prior to fall quarter by Santa Clara administrators for her expertise in gay and lesbian studies. Last year she taught gay and lesbian courses, among others, at California State University, Fresno. She also focused on gay and lesbian studies while attending graduate school at Stanford University.

Several larger universities across the United States such as University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles, are now offering majors and minors in gay and lesbian studies. Garber admits that Santa Clara has not yet begun to think about possibly offering majors or minors.

For senior Alicia Ross, who is enrolled in this quarter's "Gay and Lesbian Literature" class, much of the class is about reading works by authors she had studied in high school, only in a new light.

According to Ross, Garber's class allows the students to examine issues that are normally neglected, such as how being homosexual has affected the author's life and in turn, their writings.

"I've studied some of the authors before but I never realized they were gay," Ross said.

"I'm kind of horrified that I didn't know before because it is such a key theme in the author's work."

The class began by studying Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in the mid-19th century and tours through history examining either gay and lesbian writers or texts with gay themes.

Examples of writers they study include Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes and Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood's most famous work became the basis for the ever-popular play "Cabaret." Garber noted that it was important to her to choose authors with varied backgrounds in ethnicity and class, to foster an understanding that gay and lesbian people come from various backgrounds.

For Garber, one of the most exciting aspects of the class is not only the introduction of new works, but teaching students like Ross how to look at familiar works in a different way.

"We have probably all read Walt Whitman in high school, but no one has ever taught it as gay literature," Garber said. "The class is an interesting exercise in how literary texts and other artifacts are either taught or not taught, what is passed on, what is revealed, and what is distorted."

Garber pointed out that Whitman often wrote about intense emotional, spiritual and sexual connections with other men but coded what he was saying. High school classes often escape these themes by reading Whitman's civil war poetry or skipping over certain passages.

"[Whitman] was purposely writing so people in his era could read it and miss that he was talking about his love for other men," Garber said. "His poetry is coded, it's closeted, but the closet door is open ... to someone with the key or code to know exactly what he was talking about."

A self-described "queer person," Hughes admits that he has a personal interest in the information. The literature is expanding his knowledge of gay and lesbian history as well as offering a bit of comfort.

"These are books that are written throughout the past couple of centuries by people who are as you are, who are like you," Hughes said. "Also, the tolerant atmosphere of the class has definitely improved my overall happiness level."

Ross agrees that it is refreshing to discuss what she considers a very normal part of humanity, in an open environment.

"It's almost funny to me sometimes, it's so taboo in our society but in our class it's as if we were talking about the Revolutionary War: it's [gay and lesbian themes in literature] presented as very normal," Ross said.

History Professor Nancy Unger feels that concentrating on gay and lesbian issues is just as important as focusing on other specific groups, such as women.

"The more ways you can look at U.S. history, the more detailed it becomes. It is an excellent way of completing the picture of U.S. history. This is a subject worthy of a unique concentration because of how important it is to the larger history canon," Unger said.

Garber said she has received an overwhelming amount of support from both faculty and staff. She contends that despite the image of a stereotypical Catholic university as being homophobic, she has found quite the opposite at Santa Clara.

However, she does not neglect to mention that there have been students afraid to take her class for fear of being tagged gay or lesbian. Due to an understanding that there may be homophobic consequences of having a gay and lesbian literature class on one's transcript, it is possible to have this, and future classes, show up as independent study courses.

Ross expects that more students will be interested in taking the courses in the future.

"I hope more people feel brave enough to explore what it means to be gay in our society. It is an important aspect of the human experience and the only way to really learn about it is to study it."