New Undergraduate Course Added to Fall 2011 Offerings: Queer Theories

Update: course was cancelled.

A new course has been added to the list of upper-division (100+) courses being offered in Fall 2011.

English 236 Queer Theories (Course ID# 6582)
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
Mondays 6:00 - 8:30 PM


This course is an introduction to contemporary critical theory in LGBTQ studies. We will be reading and discussing a number of texts which raise questions about the social construction of sexual identity and the organization of sexual categories and hierarchies; the politics of representation of multiple sexualities in contemporary culture; the existence of dichotomies such as homo/herero, in/out, same/different; the ways race, class, and gender intersect with sexuality to construct identity; the ways AIDS reshaped consciousness and the social fabric; the relationship between sexual and gender identities; and the nature of the LGBTQ community.

We will also explore the roots of contemporary queer theory in the history of the U.S. LGBTQ social/political movement that gradually emerged after World War II; in Michel Foucault's analysis of the ways sexuality has been "put into discourse" via our social institutions (e.g., religious, medical, juridical, educational, psychiatric) in the last three centuries; in the lesbian/feminist movement of the 1970s; and in the debates about social constructionism vs. essentialism in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, we will look at how these earlier discussions inform current issues and debates in LGBTQ lives--e.g., marriage equality, gays in the military, transgender realities, etc.

For more information, e-mail Professor Malinowitz at harriet.malinowitz@liu.edu.


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