Where/Who is Home? Trans/Queer Approaches to Domestic(ity)

Catalog description

We all have an idea about home. One way or another we all have answers to the questions of: What is the difference between a house and home? What is the relationship between family and home? Is home always cis and straight? What is the everyday routine of a home? Clearly, questions of home are not only about domesticity or the acts of dwelling, but they are about life, how we frame it, how we exist, become, and relate to space and each other. Talking about home is more than talking about the architecture of dwelling, but it is about histories of gender and sexuality, it is about physical, emotional, and affective labor, it is about norms of kin-making and defining what we mean by ‘family’. Having a home and living in a home means organizing time and living in a specific timeline that divides and organizes our days, nights, years, and lives. From Mary Douglas’s The Idea of Home to Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home we will focus on the works of scholars and artists to develop trans and queer approaches to domesticity. We will critically engage with the norms on gender and sexuality that become an interior of many houses across time and space.