This course explores queer popular culture from music, film, and television to visual art and performance, examining how different representations and understandings of sexuality, gender, sex, and queerness emerge through these cultural productions. We will engage with media from different time periods, cultures, and contexts in order to understand how popular culture and ideas around queerness feed into each other and become constitutive of how we understand our own identities. Topics discussed include race and representation, the “bury your gays” trope, camp, homonormativity, art and HIV/AIDS, queerbaiting, and performances of masculinity. We will explore both the possibilities and limitations of queer representation in media, and uncover what makes some popular culture “queer.” Is it about the subject, the narrative, the politics, or the creators? What is gained by identifying something as queer popular culture specifically?

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 20

Prerequisites: None.

Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis

Typical Periods Offered: Spring

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring