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SYLLABUS  
  Prepared by the Lesbian and Gay / Queer Studies Working Group 
of the Intercultural Studies Group
Graduate Center, City University of New York

Introduction to Lesbian and Gay/Queer Studies

February 1999

This course will introduce to students the field of Lesbian and Gay/Queer Studies from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. This multitheoretical and interdisciplinary approach will enable students to understand the ways in which different disciplines inform each other and construct a larger body of knowledge. The course will present a historical and cross-cultural trajectory of the formation of various sexual identities, and will examine the contested relationships between desire and social/cultural power. Readings will consist of seminal texts that present the major theoretical debates in the field and of texts that will acquaint students with possible areas for further inquiry. An extensive bibliography will be provided in order to facilitate such further exploration.

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2: Methodology--Overview:

  • Mary McIntosh, "The Homosexual Role";

  • Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence";

  • Barbara Smith, "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism";

  • Martin Duberman, "'Writhing Bedfellows' in Antebellum South Carolina: Historical Interpretation and the Politics of Evidence";

  • Richard Troiden, "Formation of Homosexual Identities";

  • John Boswell, "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories"

Week 3: Methodology--Destabilizing Sexuality:

  • Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1;

  • selections from Stephen O. Murray, ed., Oceanic Homosexualities;

  • selections from Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, eds., Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities

Week 4: Methodology--Performing Sexuality and Gender:

  • Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination";

  • Esther Newton, Mother Camp;

  • Diana Fuss, "Freud's Fallen Women: Identification, Desire, and 'A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman'";

  • Sue-Ellen Case, "Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic"

Week 5: Methodology--Intersections of Race, Class, Sexuality and Gender:

  • Selections from: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color;

  • selections from Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza;

  • selections from Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider;

  • selections from Susan Raffo, ed., Queerly Classed

Week 6: Heteronormativity:

  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Introduction and Chapter 1);

  • Michael Warner, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet (Introduction)

Week 7: Pre- and Early Modern Sexualities:

  • Selections from: Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr., eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past esp. Judith C. Brown, "Lesbian Sexuality in Medieval and Early Modern Europe"; Randolph Trumbach, "The Birth of the Queen: Sodomy and the Emergence of Gender Equality in Modern Culture, 1660-1750"); 

  • Jonathan Goldberg, ed., Queering the Renaissance (Introduction)

Week 8: Romantic Friendship and Its Limits:

  • Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men;

  • Robert K. Martin, "Knights-Errant and Gothic Seducers: The Representation of Male Friendship in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America";

  • trial of Oscar Wilde;

  • George Chauncey, Jr., "From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female 'Deviance'"

Week 9: The Emergence of the Modern Euro-American Homosexual:

  • Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness;

  • Trial of Radclyffe Hall;

  • Eric Garber, "A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem";

  • John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity"

Week 10: Communities/Discourses/Acts:

  • Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Kennedy, Boots of Leather;

  • selections from Will Roscoe, ed., Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology;

  • Rosalind C. Morris, "Educating Desire: Thailand, Transnationalism and Transgression"

Week 11: The "Stability" of Heterosexuality and Gender:

  • selections from Karla Jay and Allen Young, eds., Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation;

  • selections from Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays;

  • Sandy Stone, "The Empire Strikes Back"

Week 12: Social Science and Public Policy:

  • Occasional Papers from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute;

  • John Gonsiorek, "Mental Health Issues of Gay and Lesbian Adolescents";

  • selections from John Gonsiorek and James Weinrich, eds., Homosexuality: The Research Implications for Public Policy

Week 13: AIDS:

  • Cindy Patton, "From Nation to Family: Containing 'African AIDS'";

  • Paula Triechler, "Epidemic of Signification";

  • selections from John Cleland and Benoît Ferry, eds., Sexual Behavior and AIDS in the Developing World;

  • selections from Steven Epstein, ed., Impure Science: AIDS, Activism and the Politics of Knowledge;

  • Paul Monette, Love Alone

Week 14: Contemporary Issues--Rights vs. Liberation:

  • Andrew Sullivan article from New Republic;

  • selections from: Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan, eds., We Are Everywhere: Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics;

  • selections from Stephen Likosky, Coming Out: An International Gay Anthology

Comprehensive Bibliography
Almageur, Tomas. "Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior." In Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. 255-273.

Altman, Dennis. Power and Community: Organization and Cultural Responses to AIDS. London: Francis & Taylor, 1994.

Bad Object Choices, eds. How Do I Look? Queer Films and Video. Seattle: Bay Press, 1991.

Badgett, M.V. Lee. "Beyond Biased Samples: Challenging Myths on the Economic Status of Lesbians and Gay Men." In Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed, eds. Homoeconomics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life. Routledge: New York: 1997. 65-72.

Berube, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two. New York: Free Press, 1990.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Beck, Evelyn Torton, ed. Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1992.

Bersani, Leo. "Is the Rectum a Grave?" In Douglas Crimp, ed. AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.

Blasius, Mark and Shane Phelan, eds. We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook in Gay and Lesbian Politics. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Vintage, 1994.

Bray, Alan. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. 1982. London: Gay Men's Press, 1988.

Butler, Judith. "Imitation and Gender Insubordination." Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Ed. Diana Fuss. New York: Routledge, 1991. 13-31.

Califia, Pat. Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex. Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1994.

Cameron, Edwin and Mark Gevisser, eds. Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Case, Sue-Ellen. "Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic." In Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. 294-306.

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Cleland, John and Benoit Ferry, eds. Sexual Behaviour and AIDS in the Developing World. London: Taylor & Francis, 1995.

Cook, Blanche Wiesen. "Women Alone Stir My Imagination': Lesbianism and the Cultural Tradition." 4 Signs (1979): 718-39.

de Lauretis, Teresa. The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

D'Emilio, John. "Capitalism and Gay Identity." In Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. 467-476.

--. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Sexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

-- and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Doan, Laura, ed. The Lesbian Postmodern. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Duberman, Martin. About Time: Exploring the Gay Past. Rev. ed. New York: Meridian, 1991.

--, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. eds. Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: Meridian, 1989.

Duggan, Lisa. "Making It Perfectly Queer." 22 Socialist Review (1992): 11-31.

Dyer, Richard, ed. Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Ellis, Havelock and John Addington Symonds. Sexual Inversion. 1897. New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Epstein, Steven. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Morrow, 1981.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol.1.  Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. 1905. New York: Basic Books, 1975.

Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989.

--. "Inside/Out." Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Ed. Diana Fuss. New York: Routledge, 1991. 1-10.

Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Gay American Indians. Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Will Roscoe, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Goldberg, Jonathan. "Introduction." Queering the Renaissance.  Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994. 1-14.

Gonsiorek, John. "Mental Health Issues of Gay and Lesbian Adolescents." In L. Garnets and D. Kimmel, eds. Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Male Experiences. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

-- and James Weinrich, eds. Homosexuality: Research Implications for Public Policy. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1991.

Greenberg, David F. The Construction of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Halberstam, Judith. "F2M: The Making of Female Masculinity." The Lesbian Postmodern. Ed. Laura Doan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 210-228.

Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. 1928. New York: Avon, 1980.

Halley, Janet E. "Misreading Sodomy: A Critique of the Classification of 'Homosexuals' in Federal Equal Protection Law." In Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, eds. Bodyguards. New York: Routledge, 1991.  351-378.

Herman, Didi. The Antigay Agenda. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Hocquenghem, Guy. Homosexual Desire. 1972. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.

Jay, Karla and Allen Young, eds. Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation. 1972. London: Gay Men's Press, 1992.

Kennedy, Elizabeth Lupovsky and Madeline D. Davis. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Penguin, 1993.

Kessler, Suzanne. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Lacqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

LeVay, Simon. Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Lim-Hing, Sharon, ed. The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women. Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1994.

Leong, Russell, ed. Asian-American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Likosky, Stephan. Coming Out: An Anthology of International Gay and Lesbian Writings. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossings Press, 1984.

Macintosh, Mary. "The Homosexual Role." 16 Social Problems (1968): 182-192.

Martin, Biddy. "Sexualities Without Genders and Other Queer Utopias." In Biddy Martin, Femininity Played Straight. New York: Routledge, 1997. 71-96.

Merck, Mandy, Naomi Segal and Elizabeth Wright, eds. Coming Out of Feminism. London: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

Moraga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldua ed. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983.

Morris, Rosalind. "Educating Desire: Thailand, Transnationalism and Transgression."

Murray, Stephen O., ed. Oceanic Homosexualities. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991.

-- and Will Roscoe, eds. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities.

Neal, Odeana R. "The Limits of Legal Discourse: Learning from the Civil Rights Movement in the Quest for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights."  New York Law School Review 40 (1996): 679-718.

Nestle, Joan. The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1992.

--. A Restricted Country. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books, 1987.

Newton, Esther. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

Parker, Andrew, Mary Russo, Doris Summer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds. Nationalisms and Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Patton, Cindy. Inventing AIDS. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. New York: Holt, 1986.

Plummer, Kenneth, ed. The Making of the Modern Homosexual. London: Hutchinson, 1981.

Rich, Adrienne. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." In Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. 227-254.

Roman, David. Acts of Intervention. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Rubin, Gayle. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." In Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. 3-44.

--. "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex." In Rayna Rapp, ed. Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

--. "How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay." In Michael Warner, ed. Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993. 69-81.

--. "Introduction: Axiomatic." Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California, 1990. 1-63.

Seidman, Steven. Difference Troubles: Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martin's, 1987.

Signorile, Michelangelo. Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men, Sex, Drugs, Muscles, and the Passages of Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

Sontag, Susan. AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988.

Smith, Barabara. "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism." In Elaine Showalter, ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon, 1985. 168-198.

Souhami, Diana. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998.

Stein, Arlene, ed. Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation. New York: Plume, 1993.

Stone, Sandy. "The Empire Strikes Back."

Sullivan, Andrew. Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Thomas, Kendall. "Beyond the Privacy Principle." Columbia Law Review 92 (October 1992): 1431-1515.

Treichler, Paula. Epidemic of Signification.

Troiden, R.R. "The Formation of Homosexual Identities." In L. Garnets and D. Kimmel, eds. Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Male Experiences. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Vaid, Urvashi. Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay Liberation. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

Vance, Carol S., ed. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 1984.

Warner, Michael. Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993.

Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. New York: Longman, 1981..

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891. New York: NAL, 1962.

Wittig, Monique. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. 1928. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973.

Zita, Jacquelyn N. Body Talk: Philosophical Reflections on Sex and Gender. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
         
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