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This course examines the different ways Asian American feminists and queers have used cultural production to speak up against issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, identity, diaspora, nation, justice, art, and activism. Asian American feminist and queer critiques can bring to light the ways that structures of domination uphold and further perpetuate Asian American marginalization within the U.S.

Explores feminist activism from a hemispheric perspective, drawing on select case studies and theoretical approaches from a range of disciplines—such as Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Feminist Studies, Geography, and more. Feminist activism broadly construed will be explored through ethnography, interviews, documentaries, public facing scholarship, among other forms of intellectual production. Applies transdisciplinary perspectives to consider work from a range of academic fields and topics to understand the major political, economic, and social issues framing feminist social movements across the Americas.

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.

This course builds on concepts and information covered in Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies (GWS 200). It explores the experiences, needs, and goals of BPA people, as well as their interactions with the mainstream lesbian & gay community and overlap and coalition building with other marginalized groups.