Topics in Anthropology (490-0-3)

Topic

Queer Pleasure & Politics

Instructors

LaShandra Sullivan

Meeting Info

Locy Hall 303: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course focuses on queer politics and personhood as differently articulated and practiced across diverse cultural contexts. Focusing on how a range of pleasures, intimacies, desires, caretaking and kin relations present an outside to cis-heteronormativity, the course examines the ways that queerness might challenge racial and gendered settler colonial, nationalist, and capitalist projects. Specifically, we focus on ethnographic and historiographic works that push the boundaries of queer theory, exploring the blurred lines between what constitutes LGBTQIA+ activism and decolonial practices of living otherwise to cis-heteronormativity.

Instructor Bio:
LaShandra Sullivan (Ph.D., University of Chicago 2013) researches social movements, race, and environmental politics in Brazil. She conducts fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, as well as in the center-west state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Sullivan's research in Rio de Janeiro focuses on the intersections of Black activism, LGBTQ organizing, and black empowerment in the city, particularly as it regards historical transformations in land ownership and land occupation. In Mato Grosso do Sul, Sullivan conducted research in roadside squatter camps of indigenous land protesters and their confrontations with agribusiness plantation owners. She analyzes the emergence of squatter protests with rural economic development—specifically deforestation, mass displacement of indigenous people, and the casualization of labor—in recent decades.

Teaching Method

Seminar (discussion based)

Class Materials (Required)

Books (available electronically and/or hard copy via the library and book store), book chapters, and articles provided electronically via library and canvas

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Reserved for Graduate Students.