Transnational Queer Film Studies Returns Fall 2015

GW Students (and students in the consortium!): English 3980W, which is co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Short-Term Study Abroad Office, will be offered again in Fall 2015.  Interested students will need to register through an application process that can be accessed using this link to  GW Study Abroad.

This unique course has run every Fall Semester (except Fall 2014) since 2008.  It is run in collaboration with Charles University in Prague and includes one week in attendance at the Mezipatra International Queer Film Festival.  This course fulfills a WID requirement and can count towards the LGBT/Sexuality Studies Minor.  Students who are alums of the class often identify it as transformative and as one of the best courses they take while at GW.  It has been featured several times in this blog and in the GW Hatchet; the first Hatchet story is accessible here.

This is an upper-level undergraduate course, but some graduate students have taken the course for graduate credit with special permission (and extra assigments).

Here is the full course description:

Queer Filmmaker Todd Haynes addresses
Mezipatra (and GW students)

The interdisciplinary field that has come to be called "queer" studies over the past two decades has always concerned itself with questions of representation: how are, for instance, lesbians and gay men, or transgendered people, represented in film, in novels, and in other forms of media?  As the field has developed, these question of representation have increasingly been linked to other, complex questions involving political economy, globalization, and transnationalism: in what ways have LGBTQ people been incorporated into contemporary nation-states? What identities and desires threaten "the nation" as it is currently (and variously) materialized in our world?  How have identities such as "gay" and "lesbian" circulated globally?  How have those recognizable minority identities come into contact and conflict with other ways of identifying around non-normative desires?  Have those identities at times functioned imperialistically, especially as "gay tourism" has become a recognizable part of global capitalism?

Conversely, what kinds of unexpected alliances have been shaped across borders as queer movements have globalized?  How have these movements theorized race, gender, class, and ability; what connections have been made with other movements organized around identity?  This course will thus consider how questions of queer representation, particularly in film, converge with questions of queer globalization(s). The majority of the course takes place on GW campus, but includes an international component in November that requires students to travel to Prague, Czech Republic. While abroad, students will attend the Mezipatra Prague International LGBTQ Film Festival and attend class sessions co-taught by Professor Katerina Kolarova from Charles University's department of Gender Studies. Students will also be able to engage in discussions with Charles University students who will also be participating in these overseas class lectures.

Please direct any questions to Professor Robert McRuer: rmcruer@gwu.edu