by Brooke Robbins
[“Red Riding Hood – Werewolf” by Guillermo Ramirez. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives Works 3.0 License.]
ENG 206 Adapting Gender & Sexuality is one of the Topics in Literature courses offered during the Fall 2024 semester. The class is taught by Professor Meagan Nyland and utilizes lectures in addition to in-class discussion and writings to have students study representations of sexuality and gender in various forms of media. This class moves through fairytales, literary classics, superheroes, and Greek mythology to explore how different stories play with, emphasize, reframe, and swap the gender identity and sexual orientation of their characters. This class also aims to have students examine how these changes impact both the story itself and the audience’s understanding of gender and sexuality, culture, and the reactions to the media.
What is unique about this class compared to other English classes offered?
What I think is fun about the theory of adaptations is how versatile it is. It’s a standalone way of looking at texts, sure, but it can easily be paired with other critical theories and lenses, such as Sexuality and Gender, to zero in on the intention and impact of creative choices in stories. When students analyze texts, they can be quite good at recognizing themes and messages about any given topic, but what many students struggle with is explaining how those themes and messages are formed or how they were influenced by culture or creator. Adaptation puts everything they’re analyzing in direct comparison with something else (the original, another adaptation, society itself). This act of comparison, which is a natural part of thinking of Adaptations, results in specific questions. It makes the how easier to explain and the why easier to trace.
What was the process for choosing what characters/adaptations would be highlighted throughout the course?
This was so hard! Adaptations are everywhere, and adaptations that highlight something interesting about sexuality and gender grow more prominent every year. So, I had to narrow it down to pieces that had something interesting to discover about not only adaptations as a natural part of storytelling, but about sexuality and gender specifically. And further, I wanted to acknowledge how adaptations can and are being actively used to address issues of representation in both positive and, let’s say, “needs work” ways. I wanted to look at pieces across time, across culture, to show long-term revelations from adaptations, but I also wanted to acknowledge the masterful, more self-aware work of modern adaptations. Every story included had to meet more than one of these goals in creative and interesting ways. So, something like “Red Riding Hood” fits this perfectly. It’s one of the most adapted stories worldwide, and it was created to warn young girls off of putting themselves in situations where they’d be exposed to predatory men. When you look at the wolf as the dangerous, “can’t-be helped” side of masculinity and Red as what needs to be protected about femineity — then the changes to these characters over time becomes a fascinating exploration of gender, especially in renditions where Red and the Wolf are one in the same. And we’re still writing those stories.
What is the importance of teaching adaptations, specifically in terms of gender and sexuality?
When it comes to sexuality and gender specifically, there seems to be this kind of myth of modernity, as if spectrums of identity are a new invention. When it comes to gender norms, the opposite myth exists, as if gender is this static, innate biological thing and something must therefore be malfunctioning in those that express gender differently than those norms. But when you look at adaptation, you’re almost always looking at changes over time (there are some recent exceptions). You find out that even something as simple as “blue is for boys and pink is for girls” is less than a hundred years old. You realize that different expressions of sexuality and gender are historical and cultural. You can easily track the changes in how these characters are represented, treated, rewarded and punished by society, in creative and relatable ways, which definitely breaks down those myths. You also recognize what is important to a society, and how you can use that importance to draw attention to something they’ve overlooked.