Queer Cinema

Catalog description

The word “queer” implies that the vast range of stigmatized sexualities and gender identifications, far from being marginal, are central to the construction of modern subjectivity. One premise of this course is that cinema does not merely “reflect” but actually produces disparate-normative and queer-constructions of sexuality and gender through specific cinematic structures and conventions. Therefore, a key concern of the class will be to explore issues important to both queer theory and the study of film, including questions of desire, identification, representation, spectatorship, cultural appropriation, and performativity. A second premise is that identity categories do not function in isolation. Therefore, another central concern of the course will be to explore to what extent the project of queer theory engages in dialogue with other politically motivated inquiries such as the African American rhetorical tradition of Signifying (g) or post-colonial mimicry.