History

“Queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one”
–Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004: 17).

Originally a term for the odd, strange, or peculiar; later, a homophobia slur, the word queer today signals defiant resistance to heterosexism and oppression based on social norms of gender and sexuality. As an interdiscipline, Queer Studies focuses not only on LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) lives and communities, but more broadly on the social production and regulation of sexuality and gender. It seeks intersectional, social-constructionist, and transnational understandings of sexual and sexualized embodiments, desires, identities, communities, and cultures both within the U.S. and beyond. In the words of Michael Warner, Queer Studies “rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal… For both academics and activists, ‘queer’ gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual, and normal includes normal business in the academy” (Fear of a Queer Planet, 1993: xxvi). Decentering static or stable conceptions of sexual identity, Queer Studies asks: How does sexual normativity structure and shape diverse social and political institutions? What are the intersections of sexual marginality and other axes of difference (gender, race, ethnicity, disability, class, Indigeneity, nation)? How does the social organization of desire produce forms of oppression and of resistance in varied places and times? 

Watch Margot Weiss’s In Theory lecture, “Introducing Queer Studies” video

Queer Studies at Wesleyan

As a direct result of student activism, Wesleyan made its first faculty hire in Queer Studies in 2002. Students in Wesleyan’s Queer Alliance lobbied the administration, secured faculty support, and staged a kiss-in in front of the admissions office (see Hartford Courant coverage: "Students Press for Queer Studies" [2001] and "Wesleyan to Expand Gay, Lesbian Studies" [2001]). That position, held by Professor Margot Weiss (American Studies and Anthropology) since 2008, led to the creation of a standing concentration in Queer Studies as a track within the American Studies major.

Today, Wesleyan faculty with expertise in African American Studies; American Studies; Anthropology; Art History; Dance; English; Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Music; Sociology; and Theater, among other fields, offer an array of courses in Queer Studies. Particular strengths at Wesleyan include queer theory, intersectional histories of queer embodiment, queer of color critique, performance studies, and transnational queer studies. In recognition of the strength and diversity of course offerings in Queer Studies, Professor Weiss created a Course Cluster in Queer Studies, which was approved in the Fall of 2014.

Regularly-offered courses include:
AFAM242: Intimate Histories: Black Women's Sexuality (Esty)
AMST117: Social Norms / Social Power: Queer Readings of "Difference" in America (Weiss)
AMST201: Queer Theories: Junior Colloquium (Weiss)
AMST233: Global Queer Studies (Weiss)
AMST351: Queer of Color Critique (Grappo)
ANTH203: Sex, Money, and Power: Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange (Weiss)
ANTH398: Queer/Anthropology: Ethnographic Approaches to Queer Studies (Weiss)
DANC366: Queering the Dancing Body (Krishnan)
ENGL349: Historicizing Early Modern Sexualities (Korda)
FGSS200: Sex and Gender in Critical Perspective (varies)
FGSS202: Feminist and Queer Methods Across the Disciplines (Washington)
MUSC291: The Gendering of Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Zheng)
REES235: Queer Russia (Utkin)
SOC244: Feminist and Queer Theories of Social Reproduction (Boggs)
SOC269: Bad Sex (Goldberg)
SOC243: Being Together: Affect, Care and the Politics of Experimental Kinship (Haber)
THEA267: Revolution Girl-Style Now: Queer Performance Strategies (Brewer Ball)
THEA364: Friendship and Collaboration: In Theory, In Practice (Brewer Ball)
THEA235: Writing on and as Performance (Brewer Ball)
WRCT302: All the Feels: Affect Theory and Cultural Studies (Silber)

Please review WesMaps for current course listings.