Across the last half-century, we have witnessed continued social, political, and legislative efforts to control, suppress, and eradicate queer life around the world; at the same time, LGBTQ+ creators have resisted these efforts by imagining new worlds on the street, the screen, and the page. In this humanities-oriented course, we will examine cultural histories of LGBTQ+ worldmaking in North America from the 1950s to the present through film, literature, and popular culture. Objects will include queer coming-of-age narratives and love stories that subvert archival silences; radical manifestos that imagine a world liberated from rigid gendered divides and homophobia; speculative fiction that rewrites the past, present, or future to center LGBTQ+ life; iconic queer music videos that invent new worlds in a matter of minutes; and documentaries capturing countercultural worlds of queer art, eroticism, and activism from the twentieth century to today. This reading and viewing-heavy course will culminate with a final project that combines historical research and creative remediation, so that students can try their hand at worldmaking of their own.
Gen&WS 340: Topics in LGBTQ+ Sexuality: Queer Worldmaking
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