Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies is offering a virtual summer course that will analyze art and music using a “queer and trans of color critique.”
Students of the Evanston, Illinois institution can take the course from June 25-Aug. 3.
“This course surveys the fields of gender and sexuality studies through a focus on queer and trans of color critique as it is intertwined with performance studies,” a course description for “Gender, Sexuality, & Performance” says.
“This course follows a genealogy of performance studies that has its origins in a ‘theory in the flesh’, inspired by the legacies of women of color feminisms and queer theory, as well as movement building that brings to the front questions of race, class, religion, nation, citizenship, disability and diaspora,” it continues.
The course is designed to present the opinions of marginalized groups, such as LGBT-identifying people.
“We will examine the work of LGBTIQ theorists, activists and artists of color who challenge the inherent whiteness of mainstream queer and feminist theory, and the persistent cisheterosexism of ethnic studies, utilizing performance as a mode of research, method, theorizing and artistic expression,” the description adds.
Malu Machuca Rose, a Ph.D. student at the Department of Performance Studies, is teaching the course this summer. Her university biography describes her as a “transfeminist scholar/organizer/cultural worker from Perú.”
Rose’s research interests include “queer of color critique, particularly around questions of trans and queer death and survival, desire, nightlife, sex and risk, decoloniality, feminism, critical theory, performance, visual culture and healing justice,” according to the same web page.
In a similar manner, Fordham University offered a fall course called “Visualizing Black Queer Feminisms,” which studied the history of “art criticism” from the perspective of black women who identify as LGBTQ.
“This course explores contemporary visual culture through the lens of queer and Black feminist artists, activists, and scholars,” the description said.
The University of New Mexico offered a course last fall that taught students about “lesbian vampires” by examining movies from the perspective of “queer” identity.
Campus Reform has contacted Northwestern University, the School of Professional Studies, and Malu Machuca Rose for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
