Gender, Sexuality, and Performance (372-0-20)

Topic

Feminist Performance

Instructors

Archita Arun

Meeting Info

AM Swift Krause Studio 103: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Janelle Monáe's fourth studio album, The Age of Pleasure, released in 2023 to great anticipation. The Grammy-nominated musician is known to create ‘concept albums' spanning the themes of Afrofuturism, cyberpunk, and queerness. Disregarding the bounds of genre, Monáe's latest album has been described as "a sex record, a frothy, horny ode to erotic delight that breezes past in a carnal blur." How do we understand the notions of ‘desire,' ‘pleasure,' and the ‘erotic' in 2026? What role does technology play in attuning us to these concepts when we listen to music? Starting from ‘The Age of Pleasure,' this course examines queer, erotic music-making and listening practices by Black and Brown artists that reimagine the erotic, pleasure, and desire. Students will learn to listen both with and to contemporary performances of queerness and pay attention to the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Through the examination of studio albums, music videos, literature, and theory, students will learn to critically think across performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, black feminist theory, diaspora studies, and sound studies. This course will introduce students to the subfield of ‘queer of color critique' that provides a method of analyzing the cultural formations of gender and sexuality at the intersections of race, colonialism, capitalism, and national identity. Final projects can be submitted as a scholarly research paper, creative fiction/non-fiction writing, or a performance.

Class Materials (Required)

All materials will be provided in Canvas.

Class Attributes

SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro