From homosexual to LGBTQIA+: How we got queer in the USA, 1920—present

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course covers the varied experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (and other gender-fluid) Americans over the course of the twentieth century. As much as possible, it will focus on the voices of LGBT people themselves, in the context of the changing meanings of what it was to claim those identities. To do this we will draw on primary sources—art, music, film, literature, interviews and oral histories, memoirs and autobiographies, plays, films. The focus will be on the ways people understood who they were--and what homosexual/gay/lesbian/queer/transsexual/transgender/et al identities meant to them--and how these identities changed over the course of the twentieth century, using a wide variety of primary sources and relevant disciplinary frameworks.