LGBTQ+ Social Movements in Context

Catalog description

LGBTQ+ Social Movements In Context will examine the rise and development of US-based movements for gender and sexual freedom in the 20th century. It will consider these movements in the context of the mass proletarianization and urbanization of WWII, the post-war Black freedom struggle, the global anti-colonial struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and the broader dynamics of capitalist economic development. The course will begin with an outline of the logic of capitalist development, how it shapes social reproduction in the household, and in turn how this constrains and enables forms of sexual expression. We will use this to understand the causes, logic and development of movements that centrally prioritize gender and sexual freedom, including Homophile organizing, Gay Liberation, Lesbian-Feminism, Street Transvestite Action Revolution, Black feminism and ACT-UP. In addition, we will look to the presence of gender and sexual minorities, and debates about gender and sexual freedom, that unfolded in contemporaneous movements of the American Communist Party, the American Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party, and the movement against the US war in Vietnam. Our reading will include Audre Lorde, Susan Stryker, John D'Emilio, Huey Newton, Deborah Gould, and original documents produced by social movements themselves. We will consider these movements as spaces of innovating new theories about the nature of sexuality and gender. Student research papers will select a social movement not focused on in the course, and consider how it articulated or foreclosed forms of gender and sexual freedom.