Queer Times

This first-year seminar brings together poems, fiction, films, contemporary art, and nonfiction (essays, op-eds and critical theory) that focus on expressions of queer identities across different historical moments and cultural contexts. We will explore how understandings of queerness have shifted across times and cultures, how queer subjects (now and in the past) have negotiated dominant discourses of sexuality and gender, and how narratives of queerness in our course texts intersect with other positionalities such as race, ethnicity, religion, and citizenship.

Organized around three sections (queer pasts, queer presents and queer futures), the course will consider the following questions: How has queerness been articulated and defined at various points in the past, especially outside of Western Europe and North America,  and how does this inform or change the way we view it today? What are some of the key preoccupations of queer writers and activists in our present day and how might we participate in their conversations? How do we envision queer futures, and how can queer imaginings of the future allow us to think critically about our presents today? 

Readings are subject to change but will likely include a selection from the following and more: fiction and poetry by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Akwaeke Emezi, Irena Klepfisz, Alexis Pauline Gumbs; memoirs and essays by Carmen Maria Machado, Edafe Okporo, Kazim Ali; artwork by Zanele Muholi, Salman Toor and Nilbar Gures, films and documentaries on various course topics, as well as critical theory by Michel Foucault, Heather Love and others.