To pass is to be recognized as belonging to a race, sexuality, gender, or class that differs from one’s own. This course begins by tracing the notion of passing in literature backwards in time across historical periods, from racial passing in American Modernism, to sexual passing in nineteenth-century poetry and fiction, to class and gender passing in eighteenth-century fiction and autobiography. How does passing enable certain rights, protections, and privileges, while foreclosing on others? To what degree does passing involve performing a different identity versus concealing an identity of one’s own (what is sometimes referred to as “covering”)? After exploring literary passing in its early manifestations, we turn our attention to post-WWII literature. Does the history of passing/covering offer us ways of understanding contemporary questions of identity, such as who we are when we are online, or what it means to belong to multiple subjugated or marginalized groups? How does this history inform or hinder discourses of becoming, as in writing about trans identity? In answering these questions, we will think not just across identity categories but across media: novels, short stories, poetry, drama, autobiographical prose, films and graphic novels.