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Looking back at how queerness entered both the political realm and academic vocabulary in American Studies, this course will provide an overview of key concepts in queer theory from heteronormativity, the heterosexual matrix to queer of colour epistemologies. Revisiting central topics of American Studies, such as representation, memory and space, in relation to methodologies from narratology and media studies, we will analyse a range of cultural materials from the United States (including literary texts, TV shows and Internet memes). We will begin in the 1980s and 1990s and enquire how the AIDS crisis and activism, radical feminism by women and lesbians of color as well as transgender studies have shaped an understanding of sexuality and gender as culturally constructed and implicated in other intersectional processes of social stratification such as race, class and ability. In the 2000s, the fight for the introduction of gay marriage gave rise to a critical interrogation of notions such as progress and neoliberal inclusion of sexual minorities into the mainstream under the heading of homonormativity. More recently, the attacks on LGBTQI rights under the Trump administration pose a new set of challenges for queer activism, such as the so-called “bathroom bills” in the policing of transgender access to public spaces that need to come under scrutiny. In short, we will ask how the queering of identities has shaped the contemporary United States and methods in American Studies.
A reader with selected materials will be made available at the beginning of the term via Moodle.
Please note: Should digital teaching continue in the winter term, students need to be able to join synchronous ZOOM sessions during the time slot of the seminar. This seminar is only open to MA American Studies students. |
