By posing seemingly simple questions such as what is love and who has the right to love, this introductory-level lecture course surveys how love has been experienced and expressed from the pre-modern period to the present. Through case studies of familial and conjugal love in Africa, Asia, the US, Europe, and South and Latin America, the course will examine the debates about and enactment's of what constitutes the appropriate way to show love and affection in different cultures and historical contexts. Among the themes we will explore are questions of sexuality, marriage, kinship, and gender rights. A final unit will examine these themes through modern technologies such as the Internet, scientific advances in medicine, and a growing awareness that who and how we love is anything but simple or universal. (ASIAN-GE, HIST-HTR)

Full details for LGBT 1940 - A Global History of Love

This course offers an introduction to central issues, debates, and theories that characterize the field of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies. Starting from the assumption that neither sex nor sexuality is a private experience or category, we will explore some of the ways that these powerfully public and political terms have circulated in social, legal, economic, and cultural spheres. We will also examine how these categories are situated in relation to other formative categories including race, ethnicity, religion, family, marriage, reproduction, the economy, and the state. Using a comparative and intersectional approach, we will read from various disciplines to assess the tools that LGBT studies offers for understanding power and culture in our contemporary world.

Full details for LGBT 2290 - Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

What does it mean to be queer in the Middle East? How do queer Muslims and Arabs navigate their sexuality around contemporary legal barriers to same-sex sexual intercourse and social disapprobation? How do the sexual and emotional lives of contemporary queer Muslims and Arabs differ or resemble the lives of people in the pre-modern period? Taking students from the dawn of Islam to the current day, this course charts the history of sex, sexuality, the family and queerness in the Middle East. Along the way, students will learn about Islamic legal and scriptural approaches to sexuality, the importance of sexuality to the propagation of colonialism and empire, post-colonial approaches to sexuality and sexual difference and beyond. (HIST-HGS)

Full details for LGBT 2727 - The Queer Middle East

Why are boys more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism, and why are women more likely than men to be diagnosed with depression? Are there different gay and straight brains? And how does brain science interact with gender and sexuality in popular debate? Reading and discussing the original scientific papers and related critical texts, we will delve into the neuroscience of gender. In this course, we will delve into the neuroscience of gender difference. Reading the original scientific papers and related critical texts, we will ask whether we can find measurable physical differences in male and female brains, and what these differences might be. Do men and women solve spatial puzzles differently, as measured physiologically? Do nonhuman animals display sex-specific behaviors mediated by brain structure, and can we extrapolate these findings to human behavior? Why are boys three times more likely than girls to be diagnosed as autistic, and is there any connection between the predominantly male phenomenon of autism and other stereotypically male mental traits? Are there physical representations of sexual orientation in the brain, and how are these related to gender identity? And how are scientific studies represented and misrepresented in popular debate?

Full details for LGBT 3210 - Gender and the Brain

?My existence is a scandal,? Oscar Wilde once wrote, summing up in an epigram his carefully cultivated style of perversity and paradox. Through their celebration of ?art for art?s sake? and all that was considered exquisite, ironic, or obscene, the Decadent aesthetes of the late-nineteenth century sought to free the pleasures of language, beauty, spirituality, and sexual desire from their more conventional moral strictures. We will focus on the literature of the period, including works by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, J.-K. Huysmans, and especially Wilde, and we will also consider related developments in aesthetic philosophy, painting, music, theater, architecture, fashion, and design, including music by Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, and Richard Strauss and artworks by James McNeill Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, and Gustave Moreau. (ENGL-PST)

Full details for LGBT 3550 - Decadence

Individual study program intended for juniors and seniors working on special topics with selected reading or research projects not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with an LGBT Studies faculty member who has agreed to supervise independent study.

Full details for LGBT 3990 - Undergraduate Independent Study

In this upper-level undergraduate/graduate seminar, students will analyze the survival strategies employed by people (of color) assigned female at birth as they perform versions of queer masculinities—on stage, on screen, in literature, in visual culture, and in everyday life.

Full details for LGBT 4702 - Performing Queer Masculinities

In this upper-level undergraduate/graduate seminar, students will analyze the survival strategies employed by people (of color) assigned female at birth as they perform versions of queer masculinities—on stage, on screen, in literature, in visual culture, and in everyday life.

Full details for LGBT 6702 - Performing Queer Masculinities