Queer Asian Cinema: History of Survival and Politics of Representation

3.0 credits · Graduate

This course surveys the evolution of queer Asian cinema as a critical and artistic mode of production. Students will rigorously examine and analyze each representative work of queer Asian cinema beyond cultural and national borders. Students will also deliberate on the meaning, politics, and usability of cinema in times when people stopped going to the movies by historicizing and contextualizing queer Asian cinema as a minor cinema. Ranging from queer avant-garde films of the 1960s, through politically charged and stylistically innovative queer films of the 1990s, to the recent mainstream films, the course will historicize the politics of queer Asian cinema that has survived various historical setbacks, oppression, and crises.