Queer Theories

GWS 309




Dr. Adam Geary

Gender & Women’s Studies Department


Course Description:

  1. In this course, we will develop skills and concepts for analyzing the social experience and regulation of sexuality, especially as it intersects with race, gender, class, economy, and nation.  The goal of the course is to “do theory” — rather than “knowing” or “mastering” it — so as to enable you to develop your own, critical relation to contemporary social relations and political movements. Thus, no attempt will be made to survey the entire field of sexuality theory, even were such a survey possible in one semester (which it isn’t!).  Instead, I hope that you will come away from the class with a “tool kit” of concepts, authors, problems, and statements to develop your own theoretical and political analyses.

  2. Readings and films by Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, Michel Foucault, Marlon Riggs, Janet Jakobsen, Ann Pellegrini, Gayle Rubin, Lisa Duggan, Cathy Cohen, Samuel R. Delany, and more.


  4. Previous Syllabus and Course Schedule