Queer Immigration and Diaspora

Catalog description

This course will explore immigration, exile, and diaspora from the perspective of sexuality and queerness, with a focus on Latin American and Asian subjects. We will study basic theory of immigration, globalization, and queerness, and strive to understand problems of citizenship, politics of (not) belonging, affect of exclusion, and narratives of searching home. In order to develop skills of intellectual and critical analysis on the border issues and queer theory, this class will deploy the methods of transnational feminism, ethnic studies, and critical border studies. The course materials include: ethnography, political theory, documentaries and cutting edge works from the field of “immigration and sexuality.” Needless to say, this class takes an interdisciplinary approach and postcolonial perspective: course topics cover many different cultural and counter-cultural productions, articulation of power and resistance, theory of belonging and displacement. Furthermore, we will examine important key concepts to study immigration and sexuality, such as affect, intimacy, double identity, loss of citizenship, homonormativity, and inquire how various borders are being crossed while sexual (dis)identification becomes an opening for encounters. Through these works, we will question what it means today to be sexual, ethnic, and national minority simultaneously and how contemporary globalization and transnational economic activities affects ways we live and love. Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.