Below is a listing of graduate courses taught by LGBTS faculty. This listing is not comprehensive; the LGBTS program lists these seminars for informational purposes only. Check with respective departments and individual professors regarding enrollment restrictions or scheduling.
Advanced Interdisciplinary Graduate Seminar
Sexuality, Theory, Culture
Sue-Ellen Case, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Sandra Harding, and James A. Schultz, with distinguished guests George Chauncey, Emma Perez, Peggy Shaw, and Robyn Wiegman.
Last offered Winter 2003
Anthropology & Linguistics M241
Topics in Linguistic Anthropology
Language and Desire
Niko Besnier, Visiting Professor
Last offered Spring 2002
Desire in all its forms is primarily an act of social communication. This seminar explores selected aspects of the social and cultural constitution of desire through interaction, and seeks an understanding of the relevant socio-cultural and communicative dynamics that complements the psychoanalytic tradition. The readings and discussion will focus primarily on sexual and gender-focused identities, experiences, and acts, but will also explore their relationships with other forms of desire. Readings and discussion will be inter-disciplinary, but will be firmly grounded on an ethnographic analysis of lived experience.
Art History 202
Queer Topics in Theory and Criticism in Art History
Donald Preziosi
Last offered Winter 2003
From performance/performativity to poststructuralism and theories of Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, and others will be discussed. A great seminar for those interested in (queer) critical theory, visual studies, and performance studies.
Education 266
Feminist Theory and Research
Sandra Harding
Last offered Fall 2002
Examination of how diverse feminist social theories of last quarter century have both challenged and strengthened conventional social sciences theories and their methodologies. Introduction especially to feminist standpoint theory, a distinctive critical theory methodology now widely used in social sciences. While issues of sexuality and identity are central in this course, much more central is the focus on race, culture, and imperialism. The course looks at the effects of feminist theory on social research: what new (new vis a vis sexist ones) questions are addressed in such research? what are the intra-feminist debates about such issues these days?
English 254
American Literature to 1900
The Sentiment of Sex
Christopher Looby
Last offered Spring 2002
Henry James wrote in his notebooks that when he decided to write a "very American" book - which became The Bostonians - the most conspicuous feature of the American social landscape (and therefore the obvious theme for his contemplated novel) was "the decline of the sentiment of sex." This course will ask a variety of questions suggested by this mysterious phrase: What does sex have to do with sentiment? What is the "sentiment of sex"? Was it in decline? And why is this all particularly American? We will move briskly from the 1790s to the 1880s (arguably the period of the historical emergence of "sexuality"), and concentrate mainly on prose fiction and nonfiction prose. In addition to selections from feminist polemics, anti-masturbation tracts, hydrotherapeutic manuals, urban porno-gothic tales, floricultural theory, and so forth, the major readings are likely to include Judith Sargent Murray, Story of Margaretta (1792-94); Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798) and Alcuin (1798, 1815); Ik Marvel, Reveries of a Bachelor (1850); Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (1852); Elizabeth Stoddard, The Morgesons (1859); Augusta Evans, St. Elmo (1867); Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868-69) and selections from her pseudonymous sensation fiction; and Henry James, The Bostonians (1886). Among our methodological aims will be to think about the use of literature for doing the history of sexuality (and the historical role of literature in producing "sexuality"), and to inquire into the relationship of narrative art to adjacent forms and discourses.
Law 318
Sexual Orientation and The Law
William Rubenstein
Restricted to graduate students
Last offered Fall 2004
This course explores the relationship between sexual orientation and the law. The first few sessions consider the concept of sexual orientation: What are we talking about when we talk about sexual orientation? What is meant by that conversation? What are the relationships between sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender? After initial consideration of these questions, the course is then organized according to the life experiences of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. We will consider how the legal system regulates: sexuality; expressions of identity (the "coming out" process); the workplace; same-sex relationships; and queer parenting. Much of the legal doctrine considered in the course is constitutional in nature, including in-depth studies of the right to privacy, the First Amendment, and the equal protection clause; the course also encompasses basic employment (e.g., Title VII) and family law doctrines. The course’s legal readings are placed within a historical framework and are supplemented by fiction, psychology, sociology, oral history, and journalism, as well as readings from the emerging field of "queer theory."
Law 592
Sexual Orientation Scholarship Seminar
Brad Sears
Restricted to graduate students
Next offered Spring 2005
This seminar is limited to 16 students and students must apply in writing to Professor Sears. Students should have taken the basic sexual orientation law course (see above, Law 318) to be admitted to this seminar. If they have not done so, they need to explain in their application why they did not take that course and why they have the substantive background to participate in the course. Course is on the Law School semester schedule: instruction begins January 5 and goes through May 26.
This course examines and accesses recent scholarship in the field of sexual orientation law. Each week, students will read and discuss several recent law review articles in the field. In reading these articles, students will gain in-depth knowledge of a wide variety of legal fields subsumed within sexual orientation law, ranging from constitutional law, to antidiscrimination statutes, to family law and to more theoretical frameworks. In analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the articles, students will also learn to think rigorously about scholarship itself, considering whether articles make substantive contributions to the field, whether they are convincing in their arguments, well-supported by their authorities, and well-crafted. Students will be expected to analyze each week's articles through specific written assignments, as the course will fulfill the law school's writing requirements. Ultimately, the seminar will culminate with the selection of the best articles of the year, which will be published in the Williams Project's prize journal, The Dukeminier Awards.
Musicology 262
Contemporary Popular Music Studies
Abjection in Popular Music
Mitchell Morris
Last offered Spring 2003
This course will explore various instantiations/ representations of abjection as they relate to the composition/performance/audition of popular music. Topics include "outsider art"; affects of disgust and shame; mourning and melancholia; the representation of stigmatized identities; kitsch and embourgeoisement; performance v. performativity. Specific musical examples will include songs by Bessie Smith; Cher; Nirvana; Shonen Knife; The Shaggs; Judy Garland; Karen Carpenter; Robert Johnson; Nine Inch Nails; Mrs. Elva Miller; Pansy Division; Tribe 8.
Musicology 596
Queer Ethnomusicology Graduate Seminar/Discussion Group
Mitchell Morris
Last offered Spring 2002
Juniper Hill (doctoral student in Ethnomusicology) and Professor Mitchell Morris (scholar of LGBTQ popular music) will be offering a discussion group/independent study seminar worth two units (a musicology 596). We will meet once a week for one and a half to two hours to discuss readings and ideas. We will explore issues of the performing arts related to alternate gender and sexual behaviors and identities in a cross-cultural perspective around the world. We will draw from recent work in related fields, such as queer theory in anthropology ("Out in the Field") and musicology ("Queer in Pitch"), as well as any manuscripts we can get a hold of on ethnographies of queer performance practices in other cultures, and then we'll see where we go from there. Though the focus is largely theoretical, it is open for input. Some of the issues I might like to explore include how to incorporate queer theory into the field of Ethnomusicology, how oppressed or deviant communities code meaning in music (or dance/drama), how performing artists might have different social norms or be outside of social norms in other cultures, how music (or other arts) support or deny different moral belief systems about sexuality, how to conduct fieldwork in non-dominant or underground communities in other countries, how alternate sexual/gender identities of the ethnographer impact her/his work, etc. One of my hopes for this seminar/discussion group is to create an annotated bibliography as a resource for further exploration and study of these issues. If you're not interested in participating, but know of any good resources (articles, unpublished manuscripts, musical groups), please let us know! For more information or to offer suggestions, email Juniper at jhill@wesleyan.edu
Theater 216c
Theory & Criticism III
Theater and Performance Studies
Sue-Ellen Case
Last offered Spring 2002
This course will attempt to provide an overview of the several critical discourses that have nourished the field of theater and performance studies. It is not designed to provide a history of these theories, but to introduce their basic strategies and interdependencies. Approaches included in the seminar include: The Subject and Psycho-Semiotics; Psychoanalytic; Ethnography/Cultural Studies; Historiography; Performance Theory; Speech Act Theory; Performativity and Performative Writing; Gender/Sexuality; and "Liveness," The Virtual and the Cyber.
Women's Studies 220
Cultural Studies in Gender, Race, and Sexuality
Rachel C. Lee
Last offered Fall 2002
The course will examine how new social relations--both within and beyond the nation-state --are imagined in the literary, theatrical, cyberspatial representations of Third World women, transgenders, and queers. These representations shed light on key critical debates in the fields of feminist, queer, and cultural studies especially in relation to the position of racialized and Third World subjects within these fields. How has feminist theory grappled with "women of color" and, conversely, what new theories and artistic forms are emerging at the intersection of materialist analyses of race, on the one hand, and psychoanalytic and poststructuralist accounts of gender and sexuality, on the other? What would queer theory and culture look like from a "black" and Third World perspective, and how do these categories operate in tension with nationalist frameworks? The course will play close attention to the flows of artistic cultural production across borders and interrogate the way in which diasporas have altered the boundaries of feminist and queer counter-publics. Readings will include critical/theoretical works by Marta Savigliano, Coco Fusco, Ella Shohat, Joseph Roach, Jose Munoz. Performance and cultural "texts" include work by Luis Alfaro, Cherrie Moraga, Anna Deveare Smith, Denise Uyehara, and Cheng-Chieh Yu.
Click here for course webpage.
World Arts & Cultures 204
The Body
David Gere
Last offered Spring 2002
This course provides theoretical support for a view of the body as flesh and bone, but also as a historical construction replete with contingent meanings. By considering a set of historical and contemporary writings alongside a set of allied U.S. performances, we will attempt to build ourselves a platform for fresh theorizing and movement research. The course is applicable to dance theorists, choreographers, and scholars in other fields.
World Arts & Cultures 220
Queer Choreographies
David Gere
Last offered Fall 2002
This course takes the rubric "queer choreographies" as a challenge for scholars to grapple with cultural phenomena ranging from AIDS theater to performance art, body art, memorial events, protest marches, and that dizzying array of practices subsumed under the categories camp and drag. In the process, the terms "queer" and "choreography" will be redefined and reenergized.
