Junior Colloquium: The All-American Family
AMST 202
Spring 2009 not offered
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This interdisciplinary colloquium will explore the urgency of queer studies to American studies by focusing on a dominant form of American cultural power: the family. American culture is obsessed with the sanctity of the family and of life. At the same time, this focus on the family produces dark, sexually dangerous, and sometimes inhuman others as what must be excluded from the family if it is to remain American. Queer studies exposes these contradictory American cultural trends. The methodologies of queer studies will introduce us to how to read for American culture's dependence on the queers it excludes. We will explore how recent debates, popular representations, and queer groups have used the notion of nontraditional families either to attack or to "adopt" the family norm. By using questions central to queer studies (What constitutes a family? Who is included within or excluded from the family? Who decides the terms of membership? Who controls and defines reproduction? Whose bodies get (ab)used in the process?), we will help each other think about how queer studies is central to the study of American cultural politics, law, literature, and popular culture. |
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Essential Capabilities:
None |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AMST |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Various critical and theoretical essays. Films include: Basic Instinct, Silence of the Lambs, My Own Private Idaho, Philadelphia, Boys Don't Cry, The Brandon Teena Story, Monster, and others.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Six short papers and a final 8-10 page paper. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Film viewings are mandatory. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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