Why queer studies

Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, CA: U of California, Somerville, Siobhan B. Credo Reference. Walters, Suzanna Danuta. It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older.

This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. Queer Theory: Background.

Implications of Queer Theory: Analyzing with a queer perspective has the potential to undermine the base structure on which any identity relies on although it does this without completely destroying or forsaking categories of identity , the theory has been understood to be just about questions of sexuality.

Future of Queer Theory: As a whole, queer theorists disagree about many things, but the one thing they do not disagree on is that if queer theory is to be understood as a way to test the established and stable categories of identity, then it should not be defined too early or at all because of the possibility of it becoming too limited.

The intersection of gender and sexuality with race and ethnicity, social class, language and disability permeates the curriculum; class topics range from film,sports and fashion to discourse, politics and theory.

Combine a minor in queer studies with any major to enhance your understanding of gender and sexuality for a range of careers or graduate studies.

The queer studies minor will provide you with a sense of community, excellent advising and mentoring,and opportunities to apply what you learn through internships at innovative organizations both on and off campus. The queer studies minor offers you a structured yet flexible undergraduate program on cutting-edge subjects, bridging theory and applied studies, and tailored to your academic or professional interests.

The curriculum includes foundational courses and a long list of elective courses across many disciplines, and includes contributions from faculty in a variety of programs.

The queer studies minor provides students with opportunities to research and understand a rapidly growing field whose focus is the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and allied peoples, their histories and cultures. Queer studies is a method of inquiry that explores the role of same-sex desire and constructions of gender across and among cultures and histories. In these classes, students will consider sexualities and genders as identities and social statuses, as categories of knowledge, and as lenses that help to frame how we understand our world.

The minor consists of interdisciplinary coursework in queer studies and is open to all students. As an interdiscipline, Queer Studies focuses not only on LGBT lesbian, gay, bisexual, and 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.

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?

Reflecting on the possible futures of queer theory, there are various important aspects to consider. Progress in LGBT politics is mainly limited to the Global West and North and evokes culture wars about how hetero-normative such advocacy should be.

And, it elicits international homo colonialist contentions about the culturally intrusive manner by which LGBT rights are promoted.

This becomes clear when powerful transnational groups, governments or international organisations propose to make foreign aid disbursement conditional on equality reforms in certain countries. At the same time, they do not sufficiently recognise that their explicit LGBT support increases the marginalisation of minorities in certain states.

It has to be mentioned though, that many LGBT organisations have a better understanding of local contexts and often act with the cooperation of local activists, though typically in a weaker position than the intergovernmental institutions they are allied with.

LGBT politics and queer IR research can inspire and parallel each other as long as sexual advocacy politics does not fall prey to overly liberal, patronising politics. No matter if in the domestic or international arenas a number of problematic issues remain with the alleged progress of LGBT politics: if predominantly gay and lesbian rights such as marriage and adoption equality are aimed for, can one speak of true equality while transgender individuals still lack healthcare access or protection from hate crimes?

And if the normalisation of Western LGBT individuals into consuming, depoliticised populations leads to a weakening of solidarity with foreign LGBT activists and appreciation of their difference, what effects does this have on global LGBT emancipation? Queer theory is an important tool for helping to better appreciate the complexity of these debates.

Globalisation has equipped queer theorists and activists with an expanded terrain for intervention. With reference to LGBT advocacy politics, the emergence of numerous Western-organised non-governmental organisations but also local LGBT movements with the significant publicity they generate — be it positive or negative — expands transnational politics to a previously unknown degree. Both chip away at the centrality of the state in regulating and protecting its citizens.

A key place this can be detected is within debates in the European Union EU , which is an international organisation with supranational law-making powers over its member states. The inclusion of LGBT individuals not as abject minorities but as human rights carriers with inherent dignity and individual rights of expression may transform the relationship between a marginalised citizenry and governmental authority — both at the state and EU level.

But queer theory does not always align comfortably with the predominant political strategies advanced through transnational LGBT rights advocacy in Europe. It disputes many existing socio-political institutions such as neoliberal capitalism or regulatory citizenship that form the bedrocks of European politics. LGBT advocacy is, at times, viewed by queer theory as conforming, heteronormative, stereotyping and even homo nationalistic in its particular value-laden Western overtones.

This is because it assumes that striving for Western standards of equality and inclusion is universally applicable and leads to liberation and inclusion. These become evident in the pressuring of more conservative European states to adopt certain policies, which often produce counter-productive tensions and expose vulnerable minorities.

LGBT advocacy is aimed at inclusion within existing forms of representation rather than the appreciation of difference that queer theory strives at. Tensions between mainstream advocacy and radical queer approaches signify the need to rethink simplistic IR analytical approaches.

In doing so, queer theorists use existing literature or audio-visual material such as movies or even performances to go beyond the apparently obvious to deconstruct and then reconstruct IR events and processes. They often exhibit a critical perspective towards naturally assumed conditions of space and time that tend to conceal and flatten differences among actors and interpretations of international events.