Queer Theory

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course offers a foundation in queer theory. In order to understand the contested definitions of the term "queer" and explore the contours of the field's major debates, we will work to historicize queer theory's emergence in the 1980s and 1990s amidst the AIDS crisis and later developments in the twenty-first century, especially the emergence of queer and trans of color critique. The course aims to place these theoretical texts within the context of the intellectual, activist, and artistic and literary communities out of which they emerged. Major topics to discuss will include queer grief and melancholia; coalition and community; desire, devotion, and affective attachment; queer theory's ritual conventions; modes of queer critique; assumptions about queer theory's secularity; and the significance, challenge, and critiques of queer and trans joy.