The best paper I ever wrote for my English classes at Columbia University was a final paper arguing that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was a proto-transgender text.
Well… best according to my professor, at least.
During my junior year of college, I enrolled in a Shakespeare seminar—under the tutelage of the worst possible professor.
Before I knew it, we were learning not only about how Shakespeare’s sonnets suggested that he was gay but also about how A Midsummer Night’s Dream was about queer desire.
Several weeks later, I had lost two points on an otherwise perfect exam because I had failed to mention—on two separate occasions—that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was about “queer desire.”
Embracing the absurdity of the class over the next several weeks, I wrote my final paper on the topic of Twelfth Night and transgenderism (because Viola dresses up as a man and so on).
I got an A+ not only on the paper itself but also for the entire course.
I recently spoke with Fox News about how English departments no longer teach literature—and how Columbia University made me a conservative. Check out my favorite clip from the interview below, and watch my full interview here.
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Wow, making your way onto a Fox News interview! Congratulations!