LGBT Studies Course Descriptions

LGBT200 Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies.

(No Prerequisite.) Not open to students who have completed WMST298E. Credit will be granted for only one one of the following: LGBT200 or WMST298E. An interdisciplinary study of the historical and social contexts of personal, cultural and political aspects of LGBT life. Sources from a variety of fields, such as anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, and women's studies, focusing on writings by and about LGBT people. Required course for LGBT Studies Certificate or Minor. Core SB & D.

LGBT265 Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Literature

(No Prerequisite.) A study of the pervasiveness of homoeroticism in literature from the Renaissance to the present. Emphasis on recurrent themes and motifs and the struggle to find voice within a context of stigma, suppression, and silence. Writers might include Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, Andre Lorde, Adrienne Rich. Lower Division Literature. Required course for LGBT Studies Certificate or Minor. Core HL & D.

LGBT 291 International Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Studies

(No Prerequisite.) Also offered as CMLT291. Not open to students who have completed CMLT291. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: CMLT291 or LGBT291. Exploration of the construction and representation of sexualities in culture around the globe, with particular emphasis on literature and media.

LGBT298 Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

(No Prerequisite.) Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Study of particular themes and issues in LGBT studies. Past special topics courses have included: Queer American Cultures, and Sexuality and Gender in Popular Culture.

LGBT327 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Film and Video

(Prerequisite: Junior standing.) Comparative analysis of forms, themes, and the politics of representation in film and video by and/or about LGBT people. This course begins from the premise that movies are designed to give us a variety of meaningful viewing experiences, sometimes pleasurable, sometimes not. The class teaches a range of analytical approaches for understanding how films create meanings and what those meanings may be. In this course, we will trace both the diversity and similarities between global and Western representations of what we call homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identities as represented in film and video. Film selections might include works directed by Lisa Cholodenko, Ang Lee, Cheryl Dunye, Marlon Riggs, Paul Verhoven, Deepa Mehta, Alfred Hitchcock, John Cameron Mitchell, and Kimberly Pierce.

LGBT350 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People and Communication

(Prerequisite: LGBT200 & permission of the program.) Study of differences, stereotypes, and values distinguishing LGBT people and of effective means of communicating such differences to non-LGBT people. Emphasis on contemporary LGBT life and on the development of didactic skills. Preparation and presentation of forums on LGBT people; facilitation of workshops in various outreach locations (residence halls, Greek system, classes). This course fills the Upper Division Personal, Social, Political, or Historical requirement for the LGBT Studies Certificate or Minor.

LGBT 359 Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Literatures

(Prerequisite: two lower-level English courses, at least one in literature.) Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Also offered as ENGL359. Study of selected writers or particular themes in Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, and Transgender literatures. Past Special Topics courses have included: The Beginnings of Queer Identity, 1660-1900, Queer Film and Video, LGBT Writing in the U.S., Queer Poetics, or Gay is Very American, and Love, Sex, and Poetry in the Long 19th Century.

LGBT 359B: Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Literatures: Queer Poetics, or Gay is Very American

(Prerequisite: two lower-level English courses, at least one in literature.) An intensive study of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer inscriptions in American poetry, this course will examine the queerness of nineteenth-century poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and will then turn to the poetic productions and cultural reproductions of poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, H.D., Gertrude Stein, Judy Grahn, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Minnie Bruce Pratt, as well as Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, Frank O’Hara, and Paul Monette. While we will probe ways in which LGBT or queer expressions are inflected by issues of race, gender, class, and high/low culture, we will especially scrutinize ways in which the performances and receptions of poets identified (by themselves or others) as LGBT or queer may perpetuate, challenge, and modify cultural mythologies about sexualities and their relevance to literary endeavors. Written assignments will be a short paper and a longer, more ambitious essay (10-15 pp.) exploring in depth some aspect raised by our course of study, as well as a reading journal (maintaining this journal will count as one of your exams). Collaborative writing endeavors are welcomed. Our meetings will often depend upon group work for leading discussions in the individual sessions, and each class member will participate in a group presentation.

LGBT359C Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Literatures: Queer Films and Videos

(Prerequisite: two lower-level English courses, at least one in literature.) This course charts the development of Queer Cinema from the late 1940s to the present day. Analyzing the work of directors including Kenneth Anger, Sadie Benning, John Waters, Todd Haynes, Cheryl Dunye, Rose Troche, Gregg Araki, John Cameron Mitchell, Marlon Riggs, Jennie Livingston, Isaac Julien, John Greyson, and Pedro Almodóvar, among others, this course will examine prevalent themes, conventions, aesthetics, narrative techniques, and cultural contribution of Queer filmmakers telling Queer stories through film and video. Some of the topics we will grapple with include positioning Race within Queer Cinema, multi-lingual and multi-national Queer Cinemas, Sex in Queer Film, and filming Queer bodies. Course Requirements: viewing films outside of class, short response papers, a larger final paper, occasional quizzes, active class participation, and a final exam.

LGBT386 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Organization Internship

(Prerequisite: 9 credits in LGBT Studies & permission of the program.) Supervised internship experience with a community organization that expressly serves lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Students will be expected to relate course material to experience in an analysis of an organization's activities. Students in the LGBT Certificate or Minor program can use LGBT386 to fill the Capstone Course requirement.

LGBT 407 Gay and Lesbian Philosophy

Also offered as PHIL407. Not open to students who have completed PHIL407. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: PHIL407 or LGBT407. An examination in historical and social context of personal, cultural, and political aspects of gay and lesbian life, paying particular attention to conceptual, ontological, epistemological, and social justice issues.

LGBT448 Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

(Prerequisites: LGBT200 and permission of program.) Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Not open to students who have completed CMLT498Y. Formerly CMLT498Y. Developments in theories and methods of LGBT Studies, with emphasis upon interaction between the humanities and the social sciences in the elaboration of this interdisciplinary area of scholarship. Past special topics courses have included: Law and Identities, LGBT Families, Asian American Sexualities, and Sex and the City.

LGBT448C Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies: Sex and the City

(Prerequisites: LGBT200 and permission of program.) This class will adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the study of gender, race, sexuality, and geography. The class will include an expansive understanding of marginalized sexualities to include those outside of dominant racialized concepts of heterosexuality. Possible units include Progressive-era city reforms, sub-cultural studies of the Chicago School, the history of pre-Stonewall sexual minority communities, “slumming” and sex tourism, the Moynihan Report and “culture of poverty” debates, race-, gender-, and sexuality-based social movements, theories of the public versus private sphere, accessibility and the built environment, theories of race, gender, and sexual migration, public sex, gentrification, street safety and the politics of violence, new transnational human rights and development models, and the language of space in counter-publics and cultural production. This course fills the Upper Division Personal, Social, Political, or Historical requirement for the LGBT Studies Certificate or Minor.

LGBT448E Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies: Asian American Sexualities

(Prerequisites: LGBT200 and permission of program.) Grounded in interdisciplinary approaches, this course investigates Asian American Sexualities from multiple conceptual and methodological angles. Paying close attention to historical, cultural, political, and social constructions of sexual knowledge and identities, the central purpose of this course is to broadly examine the multiple meanings of sexuality to Asian Americans, a diverse group defined by limitless differences. Approved Elective.

LGBT448F Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies: LGBT Families

(Prerequisites: LGBT200 and permission of program.) In this course, we examine the shifting meanings and practices of families within LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) communities and vis-à-vis notions of “the family” in the United States more broadly. We consider the myriad configurations of family created by LGBTQ-identified people, and how these have intersected with, assimilated into, and deconstructed the very notion of “the family” in the U.S. national imaginary. We explore the ways in which both the concept of family and actual families are deployed as “proof” of authenticity by advocates and opponents of LGBTQ family formations. We reflect on how the increasing visibility of LGBTQ families has changed the face and direction of LGBTQ organizations and the legal regulation of LGBTQ families. We conclude by examining what it means to reconceptualize “families” both formally and informally in ways that are more inclusive.This course fills the Upper Division Personal, Social, Political, or Historical requirement for the LGBT Studies Certificate or Minor.

LGBT448L Special Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies: Law and Identities

(Prerequisites: LGBT200 and permission of program.) Approved Elective. This course is designed to allow students to explore the complex and contested interactions between the law and the construction of group and individual identities. Students will study theories of identity and community including racial, gender, religious, national, and sexual, and will focus on how the law has been central in defining, rewarding, and punishing difference. After a general examination of how diverse communities define themselves and their legal and contemporary problems, the class will engage with the current research of faculty and outside speakers.

LGBT 459 Selected Topics in Sexuality and Literature

(Prerequisite: two lower-level English courses, at least one in literature.) Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Also offered as ENGL459. Detailed study of sexuality as an aspect of literary and cultural expression. Past courses have included: Trans Literature.

LGBT 459A: Special Topics in Sexuality and Literature: Trans Literature

(Prerequisite: two lower-level English courses, at least one in literature.) For the purposes of this course, the term “trans literature” will describe literary and cinematic representations of a broad range of gender variance and ambiguity, from gender queerness and transitivity to hormonally and surgically defined transsexualism. Our study of novels, memoirs, autobiographies, and film will be supplemented by theoretical interventions by Judith Halberstam, Jay Prosser, Sandy Stone, Susan Stryker, and others who have recently brought trans issues to the forefront of LGBT and queer studies. Throughout, we will be interested in questions of embodiment; the role of medical and legal authorities in the construction of trans identities and of trans subjects challenging those constructions; issues of safety, risk, visibility, and passing; debates about whether the “proper” ending of trans stories is a sense of being “at home” in a male or female body or of being “in-between” genders. We will also give careful consideration to the ethics of producing and consuming trans stories. Work for the course will include response papers, a group oral presentation, a 12-15 page essay, and a final exam.

LGBT 465 Theories of Sexuality and Literature

(Prerequisite: two lower-level English courses, at least one in literature.) Also offered as ENGL465. Not open to students who have completed ENGL465. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: ENGL465 or LGBT465. An in-depth study of the ways in which sexuality and sexual difference create or confound the conditions of meaning in the production of literary texts. Attention to psychoanalysis, history of sexuality, feminist theory, and other accounts of sexual identity.

LGBT 488 Seminar in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

(Prerequisites: 9 credits in LGBT Studies and permission of program.) Recommended: LGBT200 and LGBT265 or CMLT291. Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Not open to students who have completed CMLT498Y. Formerly CMLT498Y. Developments in theories and methods of LGBT Studies, with emphasis upon interaction between the humanities and the social sciences in the elaboration of this interdisciplinary area of scholarship. Past seminar topics have included: LGBTQ Politics and Social Movements, Race, Sexuality and the Transnational, Queering Citizenship. Students in the LGBT Certificate or Minor program can use LGBT488 to fill the Capstone Course requirement.

LGBT494 Lesbian Communities and Differences

(Prerequisite: One course in Women's Studies, preferably WMST200.) Also offered as WMST494. Not open to students who have completed WMST494. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: WMST494 or LGBT494. The meanings of lesbian communities across many lines of difference. Using lesbian feminists of the 1970s as a starting point, we will look both back and forward in history, tracing changes and exploring the meanings of these in their social and historical contexts.

LGBT499 Independent Study

(Prerequisite: LGBT200 and permission of department.) Individual Instruction course: contact department or instructor to obtain section number. Senior standing. Repeatable to 6 credits if content differs. Directed research and analysis in LGBT Studies on a topic selected by the student.