Introduction to Queer Studies
(still from Pose)
Course Information
Meets: M/W from 3:30 pm - 5:20 pm
Where: On Zoom
Instructor: Dr. Daniel Elliot Roberts (he/him)
eMail: derob@uw.edu
Office Hours: Thursdays from 12:00-2:00 pm
Course Description
Welcome to Intro to Queer Studies! This course is designed to introduce students to the field of Queer Studies and some of its orienting questions, debates, and intersecting fields. Topics covered range from normalization and criminalization, to gender performativity and (dis)identification, to queer of color critique, queer/disabled embodiment and community, and more. Special emphasis will be placed on queer cultural production in the form of film, television, and poetry.
Learning Goals
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Critically analyze the rhetoric found in a variety of queer cultural objects ranging from scholarship to film, television, and poetry.
- Grapple with critical theory about queer and trans experience and power relations.
- Engage in disciplinary discussions and debates around queerness and transness.
- Produce pieces of written scholarship with attention to the stakes of their argument.
- Critically reflect on questions of power, desire, and embodiment as explored in course materials, popular culture, and in life.
Learning Objectives
- Demonstrate proficiency in reflecting on, analyzing, and unpacking critical theory about gender, sexuality, race, ability, and desire.
- Develop a critical vocabulary through which students may analyze the cultural practices in literature, film, and art that articulate and give meaning to bodies, sexualities, and desires.
- Learn to think and write critically about identity, power, inequalities, and marginality in scholarly and public situations.
Required Texts
Many of our readings and viewings will be made available to you in digital format on Canvas in the Modules and/or Files pages. The following texts are course materials that are not posted to Canvas, which you must acquire or access on your own. They are listed in the order that we will discuss them. All of the books are available as eBooks except for Sympathetic Little Monster. You are welcome to use whatever format you find most accessible.
- By Hook or By Crook (directed by Silas Howard and Harry Dodge)
- NOTE: I have asked the library to purchase a digital copy of this film, so with any luck you will not have to rent it
- Rent here
- Pose (episodes TBA)
- Stream on Hulu or Purchase/Rent from Amazon
- Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon, 978-0593094655, Penguin Workshop
- Femme in Public, Alok Vaid-Menon:
- Tonguebreaker, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, 978-1551527574, Arsenal Pulp Press
- Sympathetic Little Monster, Cameron Awkward-Rich, 978-1938900174, Ricochet Editions
Suggested Texts
Suggested texts are sources that students may choose to read based on their areas of interest, either for personal reasons or for research for the major essays assigned in this class. Some of the suggested sources are grouped with required sources that share commonalities in topic and/or critical orienting questions. Other suggested sources are not linked to on the syllabus, but are included below. All suggested sources listed on the syllabus will be posted on Canvas in Files > Suggested Texts. This is not an exhaustive list. Students can and should do their own research for their major essays in addition to perusing this list.
Suggested Texts
Suggested texts are sources that students may choose to read based on their areas of interest, either for personal reasons or for research for the major essays assigned in this class. Some of the suggested sources are grouped with required sources that share commonalities in topic and/or critical orienting questions. Other suggested sources are not linked to on the syllabus, but are included below. All suggested sources listed on the syllabus will be posted on Canvas in Files > Suggested Texts. This is not an exhaustive list. Students can and should do their own research for their major essays in addition to perusing this list.
Scholarship
- Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion
- Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness
- Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology
- Anzaldúa, Borderlands: La Frontera
- Baldwin, Collected Essays
- Barad, “Trans*Materialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings”
- Barker, Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies
- Beauchamp, Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices
- Berlant, Cruel Optimism
- Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship
- Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?”
- Bey, Black Trans Feminism
- Clare, Nonbinary: A Feminist Autotheory
- Driskill et al, Queer Indigenous Studies
- Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America
- Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive
- Foucault, History of Sexuality: Vol 1
- Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child
- Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures
- Halberstam, Female Masculinity
- Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip
- Lorde, A Burst of Light and Other Essays
- Lorde, Sister Outsider
- Lothian, Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility
- Malatino, Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad
- Malatino, Trans Care
- McRuer and Mollow (ed.), Sex and Disability
- Mortimer-Sandilands et al (ed), Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire
- Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
- Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
- Puar, Terrorist Assemblages
- Reddy, Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State
- Roughgarden, Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
- Scott, Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination
- Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet
- Sedgwick, Touching Feeling
- Stryker, Transgender History
- Transgender Studies Reader 1 (ed. Stryker and Whittle)
- Transgender Studies Reader 2 (ed. Stryker and Aizura)
- Transgender Studies Remix (ed. Stryker and Blackston)
Novels, Films, Memoirs, Poetry
- Anzaldúa, Borderlands: La Frontera
- Babbit (dir.), But I’m a Cheerleader
- Baker (dir.), Tangerine
- Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
- Barnes, Nightwood
- Bechdel, Fun Home
- Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For
- Black Rose Kapri, Black Queer Hoe
- Cameron Mitchell (dir.), Hedwig and the Angry Inch
- Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
- Driskill et al (ed.), Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature
- Dunye (dir.), Watermelon Woman
- Espinoza, There Should Be Flowers
- Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues
- Felker-Martin, Manhunt
- Fitzpatrick and Plett, Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers
- Haynes (dir.), Carol
- Haynes (dir.), Poison
- Haynes (dir.), Velvet Goldmine
- Jenkins (dir.), Moonlight
- Jones Jr., The Prophets
- Kobabe, Gender Queer: A Memoir
- Labelle, Down with the cis-tem (Assigned Male Comics issue n.01)
- Labelle, Gender Euphoria (Assigned Male Comics issue n.02)
- Labelle, The Trans Agenda
- Logan (dir.), They/Them
- Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
- Moraga, Loving in the War Years
- Peters, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones
- Peters, Detransition, Baby
- Riggs (dir.), Tongues Untied
- Rose and Piepzna-Samarasinha, Our Work is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance
- sax, Madness
- sax, Bury It
- Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead
- Smith, Homie
- Smith, [insert] boy
- Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure
- Walden, On a Sunbeam
- Whitehead (ed.), Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction
- Winterson, Written on the Body
- Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R’s
Course Assessment
25% - Essay One
5% 1st Draft
20% Final Draft
25% - Final Essay/Project
5% 1st Draft
20% Final Draft
25% - Question/Answer Discussion Post Assignment
15% Posts
10% Replies
25% - Participation
15% Class Discussion
10% Informal Assignments
Assignment Descriptions
Q/A Posts and Replies (7 posts and 7 replies):
Q/A Posts (250-350 words): Due by 11:59pm the night before the reading/viewing is due—see syllabus for exact deadlines.
Submit your posts as a “reply” or “comment” to my discussion thread for the day in question.
Question/Answer blog posts are a vital virtual extension of our learning community. Please come to class prepared to share your critical question and tentative “answer” with the rest of the class. Throughout the quarter you are required to submit 7 discussion posts to Canvas. You may select which weeks/days to contribute, but you must post by the deadline on the syllabus. Each blog post must engage with the section of the reading, or the viewing, we will be discussing in class the following day (always refer to the syllabus for these reading and Q/A deadlines). Your Q/A post should cite directly from this section of reading, and include the page numbers where the passages appear, or time stamps for films. You are welcome to contribute a post to one thread and a reply to another, or you can contribute both a post and a reply to the same discussion thread. You can choose which 7 discussion threads you would like to submit to.
Your blog posts should open with a critical question you have about the assigned reading/viewing for the day. Your questions can look however you want, but if you get stuck, here are some possible models of questions you can pull from:
What is the relationship between A and B (according to the reading and to me)?
How does this text invite us to think about X and why is this significant?
What are the stakes of Z?
How can we use this text to help us understand X [current event]?
These are only a few examples--you can shape your questions however you want. In responding to your question (or seeking to "answer" it) you should turn to, and incorporate, evidence from that particular section of reading while responding to them with your own perspective. You do not need to arrive at a thesis by the end of your post--the purpose of these blog posts is to provide you low-stakes opportunities to practice textual analysis, and test your ideas out on your peers and I. You may revise and extend the questions you pursue in these blog posts in your formal essays and projects, but you do not have to. Q/A posts will receive a completion grade. If your post does not meet the required word count, does not engage with direct quotations from the text, or is not primarily focused on the section of reading assigned for the next day, you will lose points. You will not receive written feedback from me on these posts. If you plan to extend an analysis from one of your Q/A posts into one of your Major Projects, please come to my office hours for verbal feedback on this post.
Q/A Replies (150-200 words): Due by 11:59pm the night before the reading/viewing is due.
Q/A Responses (150-200 words): In addition to submitting a total of 7 Q/A posts to Canvas, you are required to submit a total of 7 replies to your peers’ Q/A posts. Like your Q/A posts, you can choose which 7 days you want to submit a reply to a classmates' post. Your responses should speak to the question posed by your peer and the way they sought to "answer" this question. Be sure to go beyond saying you "agree" or "disagree" with the assertions made by your peer--ideally you should challenge, extend, and/or otherwise build on your classmate's post by furthering the conversation they take up in therein.
Essays:
This quarter you will write two 6-8 page, formal argumentative essays that analyze and make an argument about some of our course texts. You will be given prompts for each of these two essays. Together, these two essays will account for 50% of your final grade.
Participation:
Your participation grade will be based on your participation in class discussion, and your timely submission of informal assignments and class activities. The discussion portion of your participation grade will be based on your overall participation in small and large group discussions over the course of the quarter. Students will not receive a 4.0 on their participation grade for simply coming to class. As this is a discussion-based class, its success largely depends on your willingness to step outside of your comfort zone and share your thoughts, questions, and critiques. Keep in mind that your thoughts don’t have to be coherent or fully-formed to share them. Part of what we will do in class discussion is think through questions and issues together. If you are worried about this portion of the course, please come speak with me in office hours or send me an email. Here are some ways students might participate in class discussion:
- Sharing your question and answer from your Q/A post. You can even just read it! I had to write things down to read in class discussions when I was an undergrad student, otherwise I was too anxious to speak up.
- Posing a question about the reading. This might be a clarification question about the reading/viewing assigned for the day, or it could be a question designed to extend or critique an argument from the reading/viewing.
- Flagging a passage and reading it aloud to the class. Maybe you found a passage from the reading particularly interesting or confusing. Flag it and read it aloud, then ask the rest of the class what they think about the passage. Try to write down relevant page numbers as you read, so that you will have the page numbers handy during our discussion.
- Making connections between class discussion and current events or your lived experience. Figuring out how course materials come to bear on the world we live in and vice versa is an important part of unpacking theories and assessing their viability.
- Get creative with it! Do the above suggestions feel impossible for you?
Online Learning Expectations
Since we will be meeting online this quarter, you may encounter some challenges that are unique to virtual learning. As someone with experience teaching virtual courses, I have found some guidelines that help to make the virtual classroom a dynamic and engaging place:
- Students are expected to keep up with the following pages on our course Canvas page: Announcements, Syllabus, Modules, Discussions, and Files. The pages you will likely use the most are the Syllabus and Modules pages.
- Students are expected to check their UW email and Canvas messages daily. These are my only means of contacting you, so please be sure to check them regularly.
- Students are expected to have a working webcam and microphone, and to keep the webcam on during class time unless instructed otherwise. I know that being on camera is not always comfortable, but I have found that most students find it more agreeable than the alternative: staring at a collection of blank boxes for the entirety of class. If this policy is an undue burden on you, please reach out to me to discuss.
- Students are encouraged, but not required, to display their pronouns in their Zoom window, in addition to whatever name they would like to use in this class. Change your display name in an active meeting by right clicking on your name in the window, and selecting “Rename.” When not in an active meeting, follow these directions to change your name in your Zoom account.
- Students are expected to “Zoom in” from an environment with minimal distractions. If your roommate won’t stop talking to you during class, your dorm room may not be the best place for you to attend class from. Please do not engage in outside conversations during class–it’s distracting to your peers and me.
- This rule isn’t specific to virtual learning, but students are expected to respect the pronouns of their peers and instructor. Accidents happen; if you mispronoun someone accidentally, simply apologize quickly and use the correct pronouns for them going forward. One way to avoid this mishap, is to refrain from using pronouns for people whose pronouns you don’t know. In other words, don’t guess! If you’re unsure of someone’s pronouns, you are encouraged to ask them.
Late Work Policy
If you get sick or have a family or personal emergency that interferes with your ability to meet an assignment deadline in the course please email me at your earliest convenience. If your situation is an emergency I will grant you an extension on the assignment. Please keep in mind that the quarter system is unforgiving; it leaves little room to catch up once one falls behind. The important thing is that if you are struggling to keep up for whatever reason, that you are proactive about contacting me, and responding to emails or Canvas messages from me. Whenever possible, please ask for extensions no later than 24 hours before the due date. Additionally, please email me after you submit an assignment late, so I know that it is submitted and is waiting to be graded. I do not accept late assignments via email–everything needs to be submitted to Canvas so that nothing gets lost.
A Note on Trigger Warnings
Many of our course texts contain potentially disturbing material that relates to systemic and interpersonal violence of different kinds. Depending on your own proximity to systemic violence and whatever other factors, you will likely find some of this material difficult to cover. By and large, I take the approach to Content Warnings that Eli Clare provides in Brilliant Imperfections: I will remind you repeatedly throughout the quarter to do what you need to take care of your needs as they arise. This might mean leaving class in the middle of a difficult discussion, closing the book you’re reading and turning your attention to something that brings you pleasure--generally using whatever coping and self care mechanisms you find useful. This may mean you will opt not to come to class on a given day. I trust you all to be in touch with your needs the best you can, and be compassionate to yourselves as we work through the difficulties of these texts and social problems together, as well as the richly generative alternatives to existing social structures they provide. If you find it too difficult to work with one of our course texts, please let me know so I can arrange an alternative assignment for you.
Contacting Me
The best way to contact me is via email at derob@uw.edu, or in virtual office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 pm-2:00 pm (my Zoom info is posted at the top of the syllabus under "Course Information." I check my email several times a day, and I will respond to emails within 24 hours of receiving them. If I have not responded to you in that time frame, please email me again—it is likely I missed your email.
Accessibility Clause
If you need accommodation of any sort please let me know so that I can work with the UW Disability Resources for Students Office (DRS) to provide what you require. The syllabus is available in large print, and as a pdf, as are other course materials. Students who may benefit from documented accommodations are encouraged to work with DRS. More information about accommodation may be found at http://www.washington.edu/students/drs
Outside of documented needs for accommodation, I expect that we can and do all think, communicate, and process information differently. For this reason, I recognize that any class activity or course structure will accommodate each student differently. For example, you might best learn when you are given visual aids like powerpoints, graphs and/or handouts, and you might find class discussion tedious and difficult to focus on. Please begin thinking about your individual learning needs and communicate with me as soon as possible about how best this course can accommodate them.
Religious Accommodations
“Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at the Registrar’s website: https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/
Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form found here: https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/
Academic Integrity
The University of Washington Student Conduct Code (WAC 478-121) defines prohibited academic and behavioral conduct and describes how the University holds students accountable as they pursue their academic goals. Allegations of misconduct by students may be referred to the appropriate campus office for investigation and resolution. More information can be found online at https://www.washington.edu/studentconduct/.
Here's what you can do to cover yourself against plagiarism or collusion:
- At any stage of your writing, keep your drafts, notes, papers, and research materials. If a question of plagiarism arises, you'll have a paper trail ( paper trails protect you in a variety of academic, public, and work-related contexts)
- Don't use editing services. Don't ask anyone, even family or friends, to edit your paper or help you write it. You need to do that work yourself.
- If you need additional help with your writing, contact the Odegaard Writing and Research Center (the OWRC) or the CLUE Writing Center, where trained staff are there to help you without colluding in plagiarism.
- Last but not least, ask me if you have any questions about honesty.
Departmental Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Justice
The UW English Department aims to help students become more incisive thinkers, effective communicators, and imaginative writers by acknowledging that language and its use are powerful and hold the potential to empower individuals and communities; to provide the means to engage in meaningful conversation and collaboration across differences and with those with whom we disagree; and to offer methods for exploring, understanding, problem solving, and responding to the many pressing collective issues we face in our world--skills that align with and support the University of Washington’s mission to educate “a diverse student body to become responsible global citizens and future leaders through a challenging learning environment informed by cutting-edge scholarship.”
As a department, we begin with the conviction that language and texts play crucial roles in the constitution of cultures and communities, past, present, and future. Our disciplinary commitments to the study of English (its history, multiplicity, and development; its literary and artistic uses; and its global role in shaping and changing cultures) require of us a willingness to engage openly and critically with questions of power and difference. As such, in our teaching, service, and scholarship we frequently initiate and encourage conversations about topics such as race and racism, immigration, gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, and colonialisms. These topics are fundamental to the inquiry we pursue. We are proud of this fact, and we are committed to creating an environment in which our faculty and students can do so confidently and securely, knowing that they have the backing of the department.
Towards that aim, we value the inherent dignity and uniqueness of individuals and communities. We acknowledge that our university is located on the shared lands and waters of the Coast Salish peoples. We aspire to be a place where human rights are respected and where any of us can seek support. This includes people of all ethnicities, faiths, gender identities, national and indigenous origins, political views, and citizenship status; nontheists; LGBQTIA+; those with disabilities; veterans; and anyone who has been targeted, abused, or disenfranchised.
Statement on Non-Verbalization of Racial Slurs and the N-Word: Cultivating Antiracist and Anticolonial Classroom Communities
Over the past few months, students have written to the department chair, program directors, and more publicly about several incidents in which a white or non-Black English department instructor has verbalized the N-word as part of reading from or quoting a course text. BIPOC students in particular have shared their experience hearing the N-word read aloud in class and the alienation, harm, and lasting pain this has caused. As a department committed to antiracism and anticolonialism, we strive to cultivate supportive and productive classroom environments, and the verbalization of the N-word by white and non-Black faculty and students is harmful and pedagogically damaging.
This is not a question of censorship or academic freedom. While our work requires at times that we engage with texts that use this language, either for historical, aesthetic, or political reasons, it also requires that we do so in a manner that does not harm our students. Thus, how we engage with such texts raises a question of power and what is given life and voice to, by whom, and when. It also raises a question of the kinds of emotional, intellectual, and welcoming spaces we create in our courses, and whether these spaces enable all of our students to learn. In the context of race and power, the verbalizing of the N-word and other racialized terms becomes experienced as slurs that not only harms students, especially students who disproportionately bear the weight and violence of the N-word's and other racist language’s history; it also significantly interrupts learning. BIPOC students repeatedly report that the verbalizing of racial slurs by white faculty and students harms them and their ability to learn in our classes. As importantly, the verbalizing of racial slurs keeps requiring of our students the exhausting need to speak up about and to explain to a predominantly white institution racist language’s harm, violence, and continued trauma. We cannot keep forcing our students to have to do this.
There is a significant and consequential difference between reading slurs in a text and having the slurs verbalized aloud. In a text, they can be read and processed in one’s own voice. When verbalized, the slur is given life and voice, is energized, heard, embodied, and experienced in a public way that creates palpable harm. Especially if the slur is verbalized by a white instructor, its relation to power and violence is re-asserted, no matter how it might be framed. Also, and crucially, when verbalized rather than individually read, the slur is experienced in a public way. We have heard from BIPOC students about the feeling of alienation, exposure, and vulnerability this creates for them in predominantly white classrooms.
A commitment to racial equity, to antiracist and anticolonial pedagogy, and to making our community one in which all students feel safe, welcome, supported, and can thrive starts by being attentive to the experiences of BIPOC students. It also requires attending to issues of power, racism, and whiteness embodied in the language we use and sanction. Attending to these issues should allow us to recognize the differences between our racial constitution through language and the ways that signifying practices can have liberating effects for BIPOC faculty and students, as Professor Vershawn Ashanti Young in “Banning the N-word on Campus Ain’t the Answer: It Censors Black Professors Like Me” explains. We call for an understanding of the complexity of Black language use by Black students and faculty, as Young and other scholars of Black language have articulated. We support Indigenous, Black, and students and faculty of color and will follow their lead in terms of what language they would like to use to speak of themselves, their experiences, and communities.
Additionally and along with Professor Koritha Mitchell in “The N-Word in the Classroom: Just Say NO,” we acknowledge that giving embodied voice and life to the N-word and other racial slurs by white faculty and students directly undermines efforts to create a safe and broadly supportive learning environment. While we’re not advocating for a blanket prohibiting of the N-word as Mitchell suggests, we do oppose white and non-Black faculty and students’ use of the N-word, and agree that finding alternatives to verbalizing racial slurs (for example, saying “N” or “Ns” or simply pausing for students to read silently before reading on) does not diminish our and our students’ ability to engage in literary and cultural analysis of texts that include this language. Nor does it prevent us from addressing the historical contexts of racial and settler colonial violence, acknowledging their past and persistence. By finding alternatives, we affirm the necessity of cultivating supportive and productive classroom environments that are aligned with our antiracist and anticolonialist commitments.
Campus Resources
wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House
Intellectual House is a longhouse-style facility on the UW Seattle campus. It provides a multi-service learning and gathering space for American Indian and Alaska Native students, faculty, and staff, as well as others from various cultures and communities to come together in a welcoming environment to share knowledge. https://www.washington.edu/diversity/tribal-relations/intellectual-house/
D Center
Not to be confused with Disability Services, the D Center is the Disability and d/Deaf Cultural Center at the UW. The D Center is a space where students can study, organize, rest, and attend events and programs focusing on supporting and celebrating disability and D/deaf communities at the UW and beyond! It is located in the Husky Union Building--Room 327. https://depts.washington.edu/dcenter/
Q Center
The University of Washington Q Center builds and facilitates queer (gay, lesbian, bisexual, two-spirit, trans, intersex, questioning, same-gender-loving, asexual, aromantic) academic and social community through education, advocacy, and support services to achieve a socially-just campus in which all people are valued. For more information, visit http://depts.washington.edu/qcenter
Odegaard Writing & Research Center
The Odegaard Writing and Research Center (OWRC) offers free, one-to-one, 45-minute tutoring sessions for undergraduate, graduate, and professional writers in all fields at the UW. We will work with writers on any writing or research project, as well as personal projects such as applications or personal statements. Our tutors and librarians collaborate with writers at any stage of the writing and research process, from brainstorming and identifying sources to drafting and making final revisions. For more information or to schedule an appointment, please see our website (http://depts.washington.edu/owrc), or come visit us in person on the first floor of Odegaard Undergraduate Library.
CLUE Writing Center
The CLUE is a drop-in writing and tutoring center open from 7pm-midnight all days except Friday and Saturday throughout the quarter. For more info, check out their website: http://depts.washington.edu/aspuw/clue/writing-center/
UW Counseling Center
The Counseling Center offers multiple options for students seeking help coping with stress and mental health concerns. Students who are currently enrolled in degree-seeking programs at the Seattle campus are eligible for our counseling services.
https://www.washington.edu/counseling/
Reading and Assignment Schedule
Assigned readings and viewings should be completed by class time the day they are listed under. Please note that this schedule is subject to change, and you should always refer to the most recent version of this schedule.
Week 1
Wednesday, January 3
- Introductions
Week 2
Sunday, January 7
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Spade and Willse, Berlant and Warner, and/or Foucault due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
- Get to Know You/Accessibility Survey due to Canvas by 11:59pm
Monday, January 8
- Spade and Willse, “Norms and Normalization”
- Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public”
- Suggested: Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol. 1
Tuesday, January 9
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Rubin due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Wednesday, January 10
- Rubin, “Thinking Sex”
Week 3
Monday, January 15
- Class Canceled for MLK Jr. Day
Tuesday, January 16
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Cohen and/or Halberstam due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Wednesday, January 17
- Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” (pg 437-452 and 457-462)
- Halberstam, selections from In a Queer Time and Place
- “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies” (pg 1-7)
- “The Transgender Look” (pg 76-79 and 92-96)
Week 4
Sunday, January 21
- Q/A Posts and Replies over By Hook or By Crook due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Monday, January 22
- By Hook or By Crook, (dir. by Silas Howard and Harry Dodge)
Tuesday, January 23
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Butler and/or Muñoz due to Canvas by 11:59pm
Wednesday, January 24
- Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory"
- Muñoz, "Intro: Performing Disidentifications" (pg 1-31, with special attention to pg 25-31) from Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
(Class was canceled)
Week 5
Sunday, January 28
Note: Since class was canceled last Wednesday, I am opening up the Q/A thread over Butler and Muñoz. You are welcome to submit another post and reply there, but you should choose a new question to unpack. (In other words, you can submit a total of 2 posts and 2 replies to the Butler and/or Muñoz thread.)
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Butler and/or Muñoz due to Canvas by 11:59pm
Monday, January 29
- Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory"
- Muñoz, "Intro: Performing Disidentifications" (pg 1-31, with special attention to pg 25-31) from Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Tuesday, January 30
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Pose and/or Adsit et al due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Wednesday, January 31
- Pose Season 1: Episodes 1, 2, & 6
- Adsit et al, “Representation and its Limits: Round Table” (pg. 191-200) from Trap Door
Friday, February 2
- Essay One 1st Draft Due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Week 6
Sunday, February 4
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Snorton due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Monday, February 5
NOTE: While I would love for everyone to read both of the required readings assigned below, they are both long. You may choose to read either Ferguson or Snorton. Fabulous if you can read both.
- Ferguson, “Introduction” to Aberrations in Black
- Snorton, Chapter 1: "Anatomically Speaking: Ungendered Flesh and the Science of Sex" from Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
- Suggested: Snorton, Introduction (pg 1-11) to Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
- Suggested: Tongues Untied (directed by Marlon Riggs). Access here
- Suggested: Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body
Tuesday, February 6
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Vaid-Menon due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Wednesday, February 7
- Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary
- Vaid-Menon, Femme in Public
Week 7
Sunday, February 11
- Essay One Final Draft Due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Clare (Foreword through end of “Place”) due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Monday, February 12
- Clare, Exile and Pride (Foreword through end of "Place")
Tuesday, February 13
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Clare (“Bodies” through Afterword) due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Wednesday, February 14
- Class Canceled
Week 8
Monday, February 19
- Class canceled for holiday
Tuesday, February 20
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Clare ("Bodies" through "Afterword") due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
- Note: Since class was canceled on Wednesday, the assignment dropbox for Exile and Pride part ii has been reopened. Each student can submit up to two posts and two replies to this thread for credit.
Wednesday, February 21
- Clare, Exile and Pride ("Bodies" through Afterword)
Week 9
Sunday, February 25
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Piepzna-Samarasinha due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Monday, February 26
- Piepzna-Samarasinha, Tonguebreaker
- Suggested: Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
Tuesday, February 27
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Chen and/or Gossett due to Canvas by 11:59 pm.
Wednesday, February 28
- Chen, “Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections”
- Gossett, "Blackness and the Trouble of Trans Visibility" from Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility
Friday, March 1
- Final Essay/Project 1st Draft Due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Week 10
Sunday, March 3
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Awkward-Rich and/or Malatino due to Canvas by 11:59 pm
Monday, March 4
- Awkward-Rich, Sympathetic Little Monster
- Suggested: Awkward-Rich, The Terrible We: Thinking With Trans Maladjustment
- Suggested: Malatino, Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad
Tuesday, March 5
- Q/A Posts and Replies over Stryker and/or Chen and Luciano due to Canvas by 11:59 pm.
Wednesday, March 6
- Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein”
- Suggested: Stryker: "More Words about My Words to Victor Frankenstein"
- Suggested: Chen and Luciano, “Has the Queer Ever Been Human?
- Suggested: Peruse GLQ's issue on Queer Inhumanisms
Sunday, March 10
- Final Essay/Project Due to Canvas by 11:59 pm