The objectives of this course include: to give students a
scholarly framework within which to assess the development of
modern gay, lesbian and bisexual identities; to provide students
with historical and cross-cultural perspectives to allow them to
understand the changing and constructed nature of human
sexuality; to provide an intellectual understanding of the
debates surrounding the regulation of sexuality in past and
contemporary societies. At the end of this course all students
have a more comprehensive knowledge of the diverse and changing
meanings attached to sexual identities and should be able to
contextualize modern concern with heterosexual and homosexual
distinctions and divisions.
               
Students will be evaluated on in-class presentations, exams, and
written essays, derived from intensive readings and seminar-style
class discussion, and based on the themes around which the course
is organized.

1.Sexual Politics: How do we make sense of (hetero)sexuality?
What is so troubling about homosexuality?

2. Identity and Experience: What's homosexuality? What's
heterosexuality? Does history matter? Do categories matter?

3. What's "Natural"? What's "Queer"? Cross Cultural and
Historical Perspectives on Sexual Identities and Practices: The
examples of past and present Native American and Asian American
Communities

4. Queer Narratives: Telling our stories differently? Issues of
rejection, community, identification and family

5. Finding "Family": Loss and (Be)Longing: Making new lives and
re/defining social space

6. Regulating Bodies: Homophobia, Law and Politics: What are we
up against? Who are "we"?--citizens or outlaws? What strategies
are necessary and appropriate for "resistance"?

7. Representation of Queer Otherness: Structures of domination
and repression: opportunities for contestation?

8. Articulating Desire/s: How significant are sexual pleasures
(and dangers)? How do we know our desires? What has feminism got
to do with it?

9. Politics, Activism, Strategies: Out for ourselves? Does theory
matter? What is gay and lesbian studies? What are "we"/"they"
learning?