2018 - 2019

0607-5420-01
  The Foundations of Queer Thought                                                                     
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
Nir KedemGilman-humanities320Tue1200-1400 Sem  1
 
 
University credit hours:  2.0

Course description

Despite queer theory’s attempts to maintain its theoretical malleability without compromising its critical edge, it has been harshly criticized for its compliant institutionalization and for becoming irrelevant, to the extent that some of its founders even declared it dead. How did queer theory lose the critical potential it once embodied, and is it possible to work with queer theory today? In order to approach a solution, we’ll consider the concept of “queer” as a response to the AIDS crisis in the United States during the 1980s and the 1990s, and queer theory as but one site which constitutes this response. Investigating the queer phenomenon in its historical-political context will enable us to study not only what queer theory actually did, but also what it is capable of doing today beyond the question of sexuality. To this end, this seminar will study the theoretical foundations of queer thought that had consolidated in the 1990s and early 2000s in two principal sites: the academia and the activist struggles

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