Culture and Media: Introduction to Queer Studies - Detailseite

In this seminar, we will seek to trace the arguments and development of queer theory from the early 1990s when the term was first introduced to the present, including earlier texts that helped to shape the discourse. Special focus will lie on the political and rhetorical strategies that these texts employ and how they establish queerness as a lens through which we can analyze US American culture and cultural productions. To test the scope and limits of a queer framework, we will also ask ourselves how queer theory relates to interrelated discourses such as feminism, transgender studies, intersex studies, critical race theory, and disability studies. We will discuss such topics as compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity, women of color feminism and queer of color critique, queer negativity versus utopianism, homonormativity and homonationalism, crip theory, and trans studies as queer theory’s supposed evil twin.