Course Notes: This course will have synchronous meetings during the originally scheduled class time where all students will be required to be present by Zoom. While it is possible, and even likely, that the course will not meet for the entire scheduled time online, details regarding online meeting requirements will be shared on the first day of class. Contemporary Women Writers: Lesbian & Queer Literature: This course will survey twentieth-century British and American novels that have been identified as belonging in the lesbian literary tradition; many of the texts foreground nonbinary as well as cis genders, and sexualities that intersect with gender in complex and ¿queer¿ ways. One of the central questions of the course will be how we define ¿lesbian¿ literature¿does it refer to lesbian and queer-authored texts? Texts with lesbian and queer characters? Texts read by lesbian and queer readers? How do we define the very identities signified by terms like ¿lesbian¿ ¿queer¿ and ¿trans¿? Is it appropriate to locate transgender literature in a lesbian literary tradition? How have answers to these questions, and the questions themselves, changed and shifted over the last hundred years? Course materials will include texts that have become classics within the ¿lesbian literary tradition,¿ pulp fiction and popular texts, and postmodern fiction, as well as critical essays about literature, identity, and culture. Throughout the course, we will develop and maintain a focus on issues of identity, race, class, and sexuality in discussing topics such as subcultures, feminisms, and literary style.