2019-2020 Academic Catalog

Apr 18, 2024

2019-2020 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

WGS 221 - American LBGTQ History

This course explores the histories of LGBTQ peoples, communities, and identities in the modern United States. Students will assess how historians have utilized the methodologies of queer theory and oral history to write about how same-sex sexuality has been constructed, produced, policed and experienced throughout American history. Beginning with antebellum slavery and ending with drag culture, the course proceeds chronologically and thematically. Students will question how same-sex sexuality and queerness have been conceptualized, regulated and experienced in relation to race, class, ability and gender in specific historical and geographical settings. We will also focus on how historians have utilized intersectional analysis in forming their oral history methodologies. Students, by engaging with texts written through the lenses of identity, power, and resistance, will assess the ways in which the writing of LGBTQ history is a distinct American social movement in of itself. Topics of discussion include, but are not limited to, transgenderism, multiple masculinities, love across the color line, feminist activism, bar culture, immigrant sexualities, drag performances, sexual sciences, queering the color line, popular culture, and political movements.

May be repeatable (twice) for credit.

Course Designation/Attribute: DI, VP

Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically