TOPICS: INTRODUCTION TO QUEER THEORY in Spring 2019 (GS2091)

This course introduces students to key concepts and issues in the academic sub-discipline of queer theory. What does it mean to be “queer”? Mutating from a slur to appropriation by hit TV series such as Queer as Folk, has queer become a fashionable label or does it really provide opportunities for resistance of dominant knowledge and power systems relating to sexuality and gender? Students will consider if queer’s chief concern is breakdown or reconstruction. Does queerness really liquidate gender and sexuality as axes that define personal identity or, alternatively, does it offer the reconstruction of gender and sexuality as something new? To answer this question, we will begin with a look at queer theory’s origins academic and epistemic breakdown: in the critique of second-wave feminism and LGBT studies, and in queer’s hybrid status as a grassroots movement emerging from the failure of academic theory. Students will read Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis, and other key academic queer thinkers alongside Queer Nation tracts, accounts of the feminist activist group Dyke Tactics, and accounts of drag queen resistance in the Stonewall Riots. Queer’s reconstruction of gender and sexuality categories as non-oppressive entities may also entail reification and reinforcement. If queer theory has been praised for resisting gender and sexual fixity, it has also been accused of the reinforcing white dominance and American national hegemony in the form of white “Homonationalism” as Jasbir Puar describes. This course will turn students’ attention to queer theories and forms of activism emerging from Chicana and Black feminisms, and from non-American contexts such as France, Eastern Europe, and India.