5-College LGBT Courses
Fall 2009
Amherst College
Sexuality and History in the Contemporary Novel
ENGL 60-01
Instructor: Judith Frank
Meets: TTH 11:30a.m. -12:50 p.m
A study of American and British gay and lesbian novelists, from 1990 to the present, who have written historical novels. We will examine such topics as the kinds of expressive and ideological possibilities the historical novel offers gay and lesbian novelists, the representation of sexuality in narratives that take place before Stonewall, and the way these authors position queer lives in history. Novelists include Sarah Waters, Emma Donoghue, Jeanette Winterson, Leslie Feinberg, Alan Hollinghurst, Colm Tóibín, and Michael Cunningham.
Hampshire College
Video I: Queer Looks
HACU 0209-1/HACU 0209-2
Instructor: Kara Lynch
Meets: M 7-9 p.m., T 7-10 p.m.
Video I is an introductory video production course. Over the course of the semester students will gain experience in pre-production, production and post-production techniques as well as learn to think and look critically about the making of the moving image. We will engage with video as a specific visual medium for expression, and we will apply queer theory and practice as a lens and sounding board in relation to issues of representation, spectatorship, identification, practice and distribution. Projects are designed to develop basic technical proficiency in the video medium as well as the necessary working skills and mental discipline so important to a successful working process. Final production projects will experiment with established media genres. Readings, screenings, In-class critiques and discussion will focus on media analysis and the role of technology in image production. There is a lab fee charged for the course. Prerequisite: 100 level course in media arts (Introduction to Media Arts, Introduction to Media Production, Introduction to Digital Photography & New Media, or equivalent).
Smith College
Queer Theories/ Queer Cultures
SWG 200-01
Instructor: Daniel Rivers
Meets: TTh 3-4:50 p.m.
This course will offer an introduction to the central historical and contemporary issues, concerns, and debates in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) studies. Using the course readings, film screenings, and class discussions, we will challenge ourselves to complicate our understandings of seemingly natural ideas such as sex/gender, man/woman or homosexual/heterosexual, as we experience them in our own daily lives and perceive them in the world around us. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we will explore the history, critical theory, cultural production, and politics of queer life in the United States, as well as queer identities in a transnational diasporic context. We will pay particular attention to how ideas of gender and sexuality intersect with social understandings of race, class, and citizenship. Prerequisite SWG 150.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Writing for Women's Studies Majors: Writing and Queer Representations
WOST 391W
Instructor: Mitch Boucher
Meets: MWF: 11:15-12:05 p.m.
This writing course fulfills the university junior year writing requirement. This year, the course will be organized around the theme of writing and queer representations. Students will be asked to learn and engage in a writing process that will prepare them to write for a variety of personal, political, and scholarly purposes. As students engage in their own writing projects, we will explore a variety of questions that arise at the intersections of queer and writing. How does writing work as a means through which queer people can represent themselves and their communities? How have queer people used writing to produce social, political, and historical representation? What are the limitations that arise in the attempt to use writing as a form of representation? What is the relationahsip between writing and the desire for recognition and representation? As we grapple with such questions and explore writing as a form of representation, we will look at a variety of queer texts including fiction, poetry, academic writing, editorials, zines, broadsides, speeches, performance pieces, memoirs, journals, and political tracts. Within this context and through our own writing projects, we will reflect upon how queering writing or writing queerly might open new representational and documentary possibilities for alternative genders and sexualities.
