Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies (490-0-20)

Topic

Queer Theory & Cinema

Instructors

Nick Davis
847/491-3433
1897 Sheridan, Uh 215, Evanston, IL 60208

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

"Queer theory" and "New Queer Cinema" were two neologisms born of the same early-1990s moment in Anglophone academia and public film culture. Both saw themselves as extending but also complicating the intellectual, aesthetic, and ideological parameters of prior formations like "gay and lesbian studies," "gay liberation," or "LGBT film." These new and spreading discourses stoked each other's productive advances. Scholars developed and illustrated new axioms through the medium of the movies, while filmmakers rooted stories and images in changing notions of gender performativity, counter-historiography, and coalitional politics.

This class honors but also decenters this peak period in the reclaiming of "queer." We will unpack relevant scholarly and filmic trends before, during, and after this much-revisited heyday of queer cinema. We will also track competing narratives and subsequent trajectories around "queer" in the way we perform readings, imagine bodies, absorb histories, spin narratives, form alliances, enter archives, and orient ourselves in space and time. Diversities of race, gender identity, nation, class, and political project will inflect our understandings of "queer" and even challenge the presumed primacy of sexuality as its key referent.

Learning Objectives

1) Develop skills of close-reading films in medium-specific terms;
2) Engage theory confidently and persuasively in writing and conversation;
3) Marshal theoretical claims in productive relation with other forms of analysis;
4) Gain practice and feedback in key genres of scholarly expression, including the academic abstract, the reader's report, and the conference paper

Teaching Method

Seminar-based discussion, including some components of formal presentation by the professor and the other participants

Evaluation Method

Written assignments, class participation

Class Materials (Required)

Provided in Canvas

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Pre-registration is reserved for Gender & Sexuality Studies students