Queer Chinas: Sexuality and Politics in the Sinophone World

Catalog description

This class examines queer phenomena in and around China, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the queer Sinophone world more generally. Beyond seeking to understand sexual subcultures and sites of queer intimacies on their own terms, the course examines their relationship to political economy and geopolitics. In addition to filmic and literary texts, the course includes readings that are theoretical, anthropological, sociological, and comparative. While the focus is largely on modern China, the class also attends to historical reference points both inside and outside the Sinophone world. From a macro perspective, this course examines China’s place in discourses of development, focusing on the role of desire in constituting the sexual and political subject of modernity. The overall goal of this class is to develop alternative frameworks for understanding the relationship between sexuality and politics. The course does not require specialized knowledge of China.