128303 AR Theory (MA) (2018S)

Used as an umbrella term ‘queer’ covers what lies beyond the sexuality envisaged by the heteronormative order, that is lesbian, gay, bi- and trans- and intersexual desire. Queer Studies, as an approach within literary criticism and cultural analysis, uses a definition of ‘queer’ that is a little narrower. For a cultural artefact or practice to be ‘queer’ in this second sense, it has to deconstruct the dichotomy of ‘feminine’ vs. ‘masculine’ (on which gender studies concentrated since the 1990s) and/or it must question or irritate the binary opposition between ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’. If desire and gender are products of how we think, speak and write about them, and of the images we produce to represent them on screen, we need to understand how these processes of production work. Learning how to do a queer reading is one of the aims of this course. In order to practice it, we are going to look at and listen to films from before (and when) Gay/Lesbian identity politics came about; at films which were contemporary to the ‘invention’ of Queer Theory; at classics of New Queer Cinema; at a TV series that plays with the heteronormative notion of what ‘family’ is; at a ‘straight’ film that carries a queer subtext; and at a film which openly reflects on the politics involved in the struggle for equal rights.

This course will combine (film) history and analysis with queer theory. You are going to have the opportunity to hone three skill sets: close reading of visual material, understanding complex argumentative texts; bringing theoretical concepts to bear on a cultural object of analysis.