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. •Fall 2011 Syllabus and Course Schedule



Course Texts:

  1. 1.Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (NYU Press, 1999).

  2. 2.Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, Vintage Books edition (Vintage Books, 1990).

  3. 3.Janet R. Jakobsen & Ann Pellegrini, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (Beacon Press, 2004).

  4. 4.Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years, Second edition (South End Press, 2000).

  5. 5.Additional course readings available through D2L course site.



Course Website:

  1. Queer Theories is administered through D2L.  Access to the D2L Course Site is granted one week prior to the semester; after that time, access is granted approximately 24 hours after your course registration is processed.