GNDR5761

This course rethinks the field of ethnic studies by centering the work of queer of color theorists. These theorists challenge queer theory’s focus on gender and sexuality as singular and discrete axes of oppression by demonstrating how gender-and-hetero normativity intersect with racial and class oppression. They also theorize race and ethnicity as gendered and sexualized formations. Queer of color theory illuminates how gender and sexual difference has historically marked racial and ethnic minorities as unworthy of U.S. citizenship. Moreover, it unsettles the categories of race and ethnicity by exposing their adherence to a set of norms (gender, sexual, class, aesthetic, bodily, political). Those who do not adhere to these norms are often multiply marginalized. Rather than focus solely on multiply marginalized people (queer and trans people of color), however, queer of color theorists deconstruct the norms of racial and ethnic identity to expose the complicity of minority communities with state-based and capitalist modes of exclusion. Therefore, we will interrogate categories such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation as intersecting sites of power and categories of normativity. We will do so through an examination of critical essays from the emerging fields of black queer studies and queer of color critique. Also, we will analyze literary and visual representations of LGBTQ communities of color.