Gender

Studies 801 Issues in Gender and Sexuality Winter 2013: 206 Ontario Hall, Wednesdays, 2.30-5.30 Katherine McKittrick k.mckittrick@queensu.ca office hours: Wednesdays 1-2 or by appointment The seminar will address feminist theories, focusing specifically on research and ideas that draw attention to identity, place, sexualities, and race. The theoretical shadows of this course are the histories of colonialism and transatlantic slavery that, it is argued, set the stage for contemporary struggles over political claims to identity-place. Texts and discussions will explore how the promises of modernity specifically freedom embodied and articulated as reason, progress, liberal democracy, civilityare underwritten by particular racial-sexual unfreedoms that, paradoxically, bolster facile feminist, queer, and anti-racist emancipatory projects that thrive on accumulation, authenticity and practices of violence and exclusion. Central to and amidst the paradoxes of modernity, exclusion, emancipation, will be texts and discussions that draw attention to the creative, intellectual, and alternative emancipatory strategies of subaltern communities. Minor changes might be made to this course outline prior to the first seminar. The seminar is reading and theory intensive and assumes a strong knowledge of contemporary feminist theory and key debates in anti-racist and queer theories. Please notice that the course runs January 9, 2013-April 10 2013one week after classes officially end as the seminar is canceled February 6, 2013 and there will not be, as usual, a seminar during reading week. Arrangements will be made for the retrieval of texts that are not in book form (Georgis, Wynter, Lil Kim, Julien, M.I.A., A Tribe Called Red). Student expectations are as follows: Attending seminars, thoughtful engagement with readings, colleagues ideas, and presentations (20%) One group presentation on required readings (20%) One ten-page written essay on two required theorists not studied in your group presentation (10%) One conversational presentation (talk-story) on a creative text (10%) One 20-30 page final paper (40%)
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 Required Readings and Schedule January 9: Sylvia Wynter, Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its OverrepresentationAn Argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3:3, (Fall 2003): 257- 337. January 16: Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Boston, MA: South End Press, 2005. January 23: Susan Buck-Morss. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2007. January 30: Siobhan Somerville. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. February 6: no class/course director unavailable February 13: Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990[2006]. February 20: no class/reading week February 27: Gayatri Gopinath. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. March 6: Dina Georgis. Hearing the Better Story: Learning and the Aesthetics of Loss and Expulsion. The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. 28, (2006): 1-14. Dina Georgis. The Perils of Belonging and Cosmopolitan Optimism: An Affective Reading of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. 12 (2007): 242-259. Dina Georgis. Moving Past Ressentiment: War and the State of Feminist Freedom. Topia. 20 (2008): 109- 127. Dina Georgis. What Does the Tree Remember? The Politics of Telling Stories. Topia. 25 (2011) 222-229. Dina Georgis. Thinking Past Pride: Queer Arab Shame in Bareed Mista3jil. International Journal of Middle East Studies (January 2013). March 13: Jasbir Puar. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. March 27: Scott Lauria Morgensen. Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
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 April 3: Christina Sharpe. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. April 3: Sarah Ahmed. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. April 10: Lil Kim, Notorious K.I.M. USA: 2000. A Tribe Called Red. A Tribe Called Red. Canada: 2012. DJ Spooky. Rhythm Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Dionne Brand. Ossuaries. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2011. M.I.A. Kala. UK/US: 2006. Kara Walker, After the Deluge. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. Trish Salah, Wanting in Arabic. Toronto: TSAR Publications, 2002. Isaac Julien, True North. UK: 2004. April 20: all final papers due