This course will examine outlooks on topics of disgust and disorder proffered by theorists such as (but not limited to), Mary Douglas, William Ian Miller, and Sianne Ngai to support our exploration of literary elements and devices comprising the elegantly “icky” contours of a variety of contemporary novels and novellas. Throughout the semester we will closely read works from, for example, Andre Aciman (Call Me by Your Name, 2007), Augustina Bazterrica (Tender is the Flesh, 2017), A.S. Byatt (Angels & Insects: Two Novellas, 1992), Rivers Solomon (Model Home, 2024), and Tade Thompson (The Murders of Molly Southbourne, 2017) to analyze textual and sub-textual aspects of the crushingly awkward, gory, horrific, and taboo-crossing subject-matters that these novels and/or novellas portray in differing ways.