Emerging from the new social movements of the U.S. 1970s and '80s, “queer of color” as a category recognizes that LGBTQ+ people exist in communities of color, just as people of color have participated in and led queer liberation struggles. However, queer of color analysis does more than just affirm lost historical presence. This seminar will begin with the term’s formalization in 2004 to provide an intellectual history of queer of color critique in the U.S. from the Combahee River Collective’s “A Black Feminist Statement” through 1990s ethnic studies and the proliferation of the term in 2000s and 2010s scholarship, while questioning what seems to be queer theory’s coinciding retreat to the academy. At the same time, we will read a sample of the novels, poetry, and films by and about LGBTQ+ people of color that have expanded the field’s theoretical imagination – authors may include James Baldwin, Gloria Anzaldua, Tommy Pico, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Ocean Vuong. This seminar will analyze how constructions of race operate through sexuality, as well as how our collective understandings of sex and sexuality carry racialized meanings. But further, it will ask: how can queer of color critique reveal and deconstruct the imbrications of racial capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy, and what is the role of culture toward those ends?
Key issues will include race and empire, migration and displacement, history and memory, intimacies and segregation, and love and kinship. Assessments will be designed toward professionalization, and the quarter will culminate with the submission of an original conference presentation-length research paper. Reading requirement will average one novel and three scholarly chapters or articles per week, and as a whole will provide a brief field introduction to queer of color critique as it pertains to cultural studies and U.S. American literature.
Keywords: U.S. multiethnic literary studies, American studies, queer theory, critical ethnic studies.