IDND 200 - Advanced Topics in Gender, Race, and Area Studies

Global LGTBQ communities have successfully utilized various cultural, political, and legal strategies to enact social change: marriage equality, transgender visibility, job protection, and parental rights, to name a few. However, the pace of civil rights has not progressed evenly. LGBTQ people are not only denied their basic legal rights in many nations, government sanctioned violence toward LGBTQ people is increasing on a global level. Students will grapple with these historical, political and cultural tensions in a number of ways. First, students will examine the history of international LGBTQ social change that began with the Second World War. Next, students will explore the causes and ramifications of current discriminatory policies and actions against LGBTQ people in various geographical localities. Thirdly, students will engage in an action-research project in which they utilize the history to confront the current issues. The Center for Gender, Race and Area Studies (CGRAS) is offering LGBTQ Social Movements as its first course that connects CGRAS’s seven different interdisciplinary programs: Africana, Holocaust and Genocide, Latin American and Latino, Peace, Comparative Race and Ethnic, Asian, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Not only will the disciplinary standards of these programs frame the course, students will complete their final projects through the academic lenses of these various programs.  May be repeatable for credit.

Program of Liberal Studies (PLS) Designation: VP, DI

Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically