WGSS 4610 - Queer Theory

• Students will be able to describe queer theory approaches to sex and sexuality in a variety of contexts.
• Students will be able to explain and critique dominant assumptions about how academic and popular knowledge are produced and validated.
• Students will be able to apply a critical queer perspective to social and political discourses in mainstream culture.
• Students will be able to explain the relationship of queer theory to LGBTQ movements and other social justice endeavors.
• Students will be able to articulate insights about their own assumptions and biases around sex and gender identities, and their intersections with race, ethnicity, class, and other axes of social hierarchy.
• Students will be able to recognize the complexity of elements important to members of different cultures around the world in relation to sex and gender identities, particularly those of sexual minorities.
• Students will be able to interpret experiences of sex and gender identities different from their own and/or different from the worldview of the majority, and to act in a supportive manner for those other groups.
• Students will be able to ask complex questions about sexual minorities and articulate answers to these questions that reflect perspectives from multiple sexual minority positions.
• Students will be able to initiate and develop interactions with those of different sex and gender identities from themselves, while suspending judgment in how they value their interactions with those different from them.
• Students will be able to identify differences in verbal and non-verbal communication forms among those with different sex and gender identities, and negotiate a shared understanding based on those differences.