Queer Desires

This course sets out to trace a genealogy of the terms “queer” and “to queer” through the fields of feminist, queer studies, and cultural studies. We will be examining the ways in which these fields interrogate institutions of power as they operate produce and reinforce stabilized categories of binary gender, sex, and sexuality in the U.S. context. This is not to foreclose an international lens, but is rather to recognize that there is value in specifying and understanding how “queer” comes to be constructed through U.S.-centric scholarship which therefore affects how the concept travels and becomes applied globally. 

This course will excavate how sexuality, queerness, and gender become constituted within and through institutions such as education, medicine, marriage, and the family. By tracing the ways these institutions construct, define, and police the very concepts of gender and sexuality, we can begin to understand how wide and complex the webs of power are that function to produce and affect our very understandings of ourselves.

Our primary texts will examine “queering” as a framework, methodology, and instrument of critique. Through our course texts, we will develop a foundational understanding of queer theory as well as its application to critique, self-reflexivity, and potential future-building.