The course introduces students to current research in the study of same-sex individuals, relationships and communities and the social construction framework for analyzing contemporary gendered identities, sexualities, and the discourses and practices that maintain them. Satisfies Social Science Perspective GenEd requirement; satisfies SEEDS Analyzing Cultures and Societies student learning outcome in alignment with Social Justice and Equity value.
Prerequisite(s): GLQS 100. Building on lessons from the required GLQS 100 course, this course will explore ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ as positions that allow for shifting identities. We will engage in a critical analysis of gender, sexuality, race, class, and ecology, and synthesize methodologies from various disciplines in the humanities to gain a broad intersectional, multicultural, and historical understanding of the term “queer”—and of queer and transgender studies. We will explore issues such as gender performance, the third sex, transgender issues, intersex issues, the political underpinnings and the transgressive nature of ‘queer’, the history of queer politics (from AIDS activism to the gay marriage issue), schisms within the LGBTQ political movements, queers and disability, and issues of representation within the queer community.
Prerequisite(s): GLQS 100. The period from 2010 to the present has been an era of increasing rights, visibility, and eventual backlash for trans and gender-nonconforming people. Yet this time period—most famously framed as the “Transgender Tipping Point” in 2014 by Time Magazine—is not as unique as it would seem; much as trans people have always been present, so, in various ways, have trans rights. This course looks at the ways in which transness has developed, mainly in the United States, throughout the 1950s to the present. While some theoretical reading will be required at the start of the course, the majority of the materials covered throughout the semester will be creative in nature. Through poems, essays, film excerpts, music, and more, the class will investigate several intersections of trans identity—focusing especially on lines of race, class, gender, and ability. The semester will culminate in two major works the students will produce: an essay-length piece of critical analysis on a work of trans writing we cover in the class, and a creative assignment responding to the themes of the class.
Prerequisite(s): GSWS 102 or GLQS 100. Fat Studies emerged as an academic field in the 1990s and early 2000s. Covid sparked a resurgence of anti-fat rhetoric and policies, following the "obesity epidemic" panic of the last three decades. #BodyPositive is one of the most popular hashtags today, yet #BodyPositivity often centers those with the most body privilege, obscuring the fat feminist roots of the movement, which began in the 1970s. This class debunks myths about fatness and maps the racist origins of anti-fatness, revealing how weight stigma today often serves as a proxy for racism, misogyny, class stigma, ableism, and anti-queer bias. This course also explores cultural work—poetry, music videos, visual art, film, TV—that celebrates the fat body. Students will leave this class with a new understanding of themselves, others, and society. More specifically, the course will explore fatness as a minoritized identity, how anti-fat bias harms fat people, and the social construction of fatness as part of the project of scientific racism and white supremacy. Students will examine the intersections of fatness and race, class, gender, queerness, and ability, the creation of the “Obesity epidemic” and the medicalization of fatness, interventions against anti-fatness, and including the Health at Every Size movement. Finally the course will explore fat activism, body positivity (and bopo’s shortcomings), fat poetics and fat art, and pop culture representations of the fat body and fat people.
Prerequisite(s): GLQS 201 or RELG 221 or EDFD 220 or HUMN 201 or HUMN 202 or HUMN 285. This special topics course examines topics, themes, issues, motifs, theories or critical approaches with an interdisciplinary orientation related to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies, and will explore a topic which is either not covered in the curriculum or which deserves more in-depth treatment than is possible in an existing course (such as Queer National Cinemas, Queer Science Fiction, Queering the Sciences, etc). The specific topic will be announced each time the course is offered. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 credits if topic is different.