WMNST 227Introduction to Queer Theory

3 credits · Women's Studies · Penn State

ENGL 227 Introduction to Sexuality Studies (3) (GH;US) This course focuses on the body of critical writings known as queer theory in order to analyze issues of sexuality and gender since 1969. The course interrogates sexual norms and their deviations, with a particular focus on the relationships between sexuality, imagination, and ethics in the making of sexual communities and fostering activism around sexuality and gender. We will study how class, race, and gender have been shaped, and themselves shape, the production of and resistance to sexual norms. Queer Theory engages issues "queer space" and "queer time," related concepts that relate bodies and environments to history and memory, and to fantasy, imagination, and utopianism. We will also explore the ways marginalization, shame, and criminalization have been transformed into visionary acts of "world-making" that have changed contemporary understandings of bodies, identities, social formations, literature and visual culture. Throughout, our focus will be on the relationships between sexuality and ethics, and how both shape the history of queer culture and activism.