Name | Queer and Trans Spaces: Politics, Identities, Movements |
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Course | WGSS 29019/51986 |
Credits | 3 |
Fulfills | Individual & Society Social Sciences (I&S SS), Pluralism & Diversity Group C (P&D C) |
Level | Undergraduate |
Professor | Stephanie Bonvissuto |
Day / Time | Monday, Thursday; 8:30 am - 9:45 am |
Semester | Spring Session 1 2024, Spring Session 2 2024 |
Course Description
In our current age of gender panic, sexual surveillance, and racial/class spatiality, the ability to access social spaces speaks to personal agency and bodily autonomy. This has never been truer for queer and trans communities for whom locales such as all-gender public restrooms, LGBTQIA Centers, and political marches create the discursive room for social struggle, as well as equitable policy and practices. Importantly, these locations provide a critical stage for sociopolitical visibility, that spotlight from which to be seen within, the mic from which to be heard. To be able to claim social space is to have the capacity to demand the right to one’s gender and sexual identity. We are the spaces we can occupy.
Through feminist, sociological, and human geographical analyses, this course takes an interrogative tour through locations that have historically played vital roles in the development of the LGBTQ+ community. We will consider how these queer and trans spaces have made room for nonconforming identities to be constructed in relation to discourses of power and acts of resistance. Just as critically, we will also examine the equally vital role social space has in the maintaining, protecting, and broadcasting of these transformative and transgressive spatialities across Western culture into our current moment of late capitalism.