Queer/Anthropology: Ethnographic Approaches to Queer Studies
ANTH 398
Spring 2013 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
FGSS 398, AMST 398 |
| Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory |
This advanced seminar is organized around one central question: Can there be a queer anthropology?
Cultural anthropology and queer studies are often posed as oppositional fields, with the debate boiling down to methods/people/social science versus theory/abstractions/the humanities. Some anthropologists accuse queer studies scholars of excessive theoretical abstraction, narrow interest in Western forms of knowledge and power, and elitist, nonpopulist critiques of the political goals or modes of sexuality that "everyday" people desire (e.g., same-sex marriage). Meanwhile, while queer studies scholars take a less overtly hostile stance toward anthropology, they instead borrow its hallmark methodology (participant observation and cultural analysis) while ignoring questions of the politics of representation, the relationships between history and change, and the vexed understandings of culture that produce anthropology's most finely-tuned, sensitive ethnographic texts.
This course asks, Is it possible to resist this disciplinary debate and instead see anthropology and queer studies working productively with and against each other? We will pursue this question through a careful reading of a series of newly published queer ethnographies as well as work within queer studies that takes a more or less ethnographic approach. We will ask, Can a field such as anthropology, a foundationally humanistic field, be queer? Can there be an anti-agentic ethnography--an ethnography without people-as-agents? Or, conversely, can queer studies be coupled with ethnographic methodologies? How might one do an ethnography of queerness? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(ANTH)(CSCT)(FGSS) |
Major Readings:
Potential Texts:
Tom Boellstorff, A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia
David Valentine, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category
Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Don Kulick, Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes
Gloria Wekker, The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro- Surinamese Diaspora
Martin Manalansan, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora
Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures
Jose Munoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Miranda Joseph, Against the Romance of Community
Erica Rand, The Ellis Island Snow Globe
Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
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Examinations and Assignments:
class participation; reading reflection papers; long final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This is an advanced, reading-heavy seminar. We will read and discuss one ethnography a week. The last weeks of the course are TBD so that we can read work in which you are particularly interested. Because of the advanced nature of this course, prior preparation in queer studies (AMST or FGSS) and/or cultural anthropology is required. E-mail me if you are unsure about your previous coursework/preparation. |
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