University of California, Los Angeles

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER STUDIES M114/

WOMEN'S STUDIES M114

INTRODUCTION TO
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER STUDIES

SUMMER 2010: SESSION A

TUESDAY / THURSDAY 10:00 AM-12:20 PM ROYCE 160
THURSDAY 1:00PM-1:50PM ROYCE 160

Instructor:
Yamissette M. Westerband, M.A., M.S.W. Email: yamiwest@ucla.edu Office: Rolfe 2214
Office Hours: Tuesday, 1:30PM-2:30PM and by appointment

Course Overview:
This course serves as an introduction to the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender histories,
representations and cultures in the United States. We will read and discuss historical, cultural, sociological,
and theoretical accounts of queer lives (within and beyond the U.S.), supplementing our survey of the
academic literature with legal and medical documents, personal essays, visual media, and activist mission
statements from the last century.

Course Objectives:
Provide an introduction to understanding a history of the development of LGBT identities within a
U.S. context.
Engage with interventions that explore and problematize how gender, race, ethnicity, class, and
other categories influence understandings and experiences of LGBT communities and identities.
Develop an understanding of LGBT Studies as an academic discipline and field of scholarship.
Explore LGBT activist and community formations, including contemporary forms of organizing
and communications.
Identify homophobia and heterosexism and recognize the importance of each concept, as well as the
difference between them.
Begin a discussion of understandings of sexuality and identity within a transnational context.
Develop critical media literacy and the tools to become active consumers of advertising and popular
media

Course Requirements:
Class Participation (lecture + discussion): 20%
Discussion Presentations: 15%
Quizzes: 15%
Blog/Internet Search Part I: 10%
Blog/Internet Assignment Part II: 15%
OutFest Write-up: Extra-Credit, 5 points
Final Exam: 25%
COURSE WEBSITE Access through E-Campus: http://ecampusce.humnet.ucla.edu/ or my.ucla.edu

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COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING

Attendance and Participation Active participation in this course is very important. Therefore, you are
expected to attend all lectures and all discussion sections and come to class prepared to engage with the
material. Attendance and participation will count for 20% of the final grade. Please be on time to class.
Students that are more than 10 minutes late, as well as students that leave class early without a written
excuse will be counted as absent for the day. The use of ipods, texting, laptops, etc, or the reading of
newspapers are prohibited in class. If you engage in any of these activities during class time, you will be
counted as absent for the day.

Group Presentations In each class meeting, a group of students will be responsible for presenting the
readings for that week to the other members of the course. Students will be assigned to groups during the
first week. Students will meet together, decide on the sort of presentation they think will be most effective,
and then make their presentation jointly. The 10 minute group presentations will count 15% of the grade.
Please note that if your group goes way beyond 10 minutes, you will be cut off, so please plan
accordingly.

Quizzes In this course there will be 2 short quizzes at the beginning of the lecture on the material
covered, in the readings and in class, since the last quiz, including readings for the day of the quiz. There
will be no make-ups. The quizzes will count towards 15% of the final grade. If you have done the readings
and attended class regularly, these quizzes will be very manageable.

Final Exam There will be a cumulative in-class final exam on the last day of class. The final exam will
count towards 25% of the total grade for the course.

Papers/Projects
Media/Internet LGBT Search, Part I: The first paper assignment in this course will be a three page write-up
involving an internet search of a blog or website relating to LGBT issues, community organizing and
activism. The blogs or websites may be within or outside of a U.S. context. The paper will consist of a
description of the website, as well as a discussion of how this site connects to themes and issues
discussed in the course. Further information will be provided on the course website. This paper will
count for 10% of the final grade.

Media/Internet LGBT Search, Part II: As a continuation of the blog/internet search, you will be asked to
conceptualize a blog, facebook or myspace page, or website that represents an identity, political issue,
debate, or discourse discussed in the course. For this assignment, you will be asked to bring to class a
description of the website, as visual representation of what it would look like (like a storyboard or collage),
as well as a 2 page write-up of how this site connects to themes and issues discussed in class. This
assignment will count towards 15% of the final grade. Students will present their storyboards in class
on the day it is due.

OutFest Paper : Students who are interested may attend one film screening from the OutFest Film Festival
and write a 2-3 page response to the film in connection to the course materials and readings. This will be an
opportunity to earn extra credit points for the course.

A Note on Late Papers/Assignments:

Unless you are able to provide a written excuse for tardiness supported by a doctors note, grades on late
papers will be reduced one notch for each day late. For example, if you write
an A+ paper but hand it in one day late, it will receive an A; two days late, an A-.

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 COURSE SCHEDULE

WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTIONS

Tuesday, June 22: Course Introduction

Introductory Discussion
SCREEN: Before Stonewall (1984), dirs. John Scagliotti, Greta Schiller, and Robert Rosenberg

Thursday, June 24: Communities and Identities

Readings:
Leila Rupp, Worlds of Men, Worlds of Women
George Chauncey, Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion? Homosexual Identities and the
Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War I Era

WEEK TWO: LIBERATION

Tuesday, June 29: Communities and Identities Continued

Readings:
Leila Rupp, from Coming Together: Contested Identities and the Emergence of Communities
John D'Emilio, Capitalism and Gay Identity
Gloria Anzaldua, La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness

IN-CLASS QUIZ 1

Thursday, July 1: Histories/Formations

Readings:
Martin Duberman, The Night They Raided Stonewall
Radicalesbians, The Woman-Identified Woman
Thorpe, Rochella. "A House Where Queers Go: African-American Lesbian Nightlife in Detroit,
1940-1975.".

WEEK THREE: UNDERSTANDINGS OF IDENTITIES AND CHALLENGES

Tuesday, July 6: Literature/ Challenges

Readings:
Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

SCREEN: A portion of A Litany for Survival

Media/Internet LGBT Search, Part I Due In Class on Tuesday
Thursday, July 8: Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Fluid, Allied
Readings:
Pat Califa, Gay Men, Lesbians, and Sex: Doing it Together
Litwoman, Bisexuality
Jacqui Alexander, Not Just AnyBody Can Be a Citizen
Young, Rapping With a Street Transvestite

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 WEEK FOUR: GENDER AND REPRESENTATIONS OF SEXUALITY

Tuesday, July 13: Transgender, Intersex, GenderQueer

Readings:
Susan Stryker, Transgender Liberation
Jay Prosser, Transgender
Dean Spade, Compliance Is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile
Economy
Martin Manalansan, Global Divas

SCREEN: A CLIP FROM TRANSform Me or CLIP FROM PAPER DOLLS

Thursday, July 15: Drag, Camp, Butch, Femme: Presentation of Gender & Sexuality
Readings:
Mignon Moore, Lipstick and Timberlands
Jewelle Gomez
Julia Serano, Chapter from Whipping Girl
Richard Dyer, Its Being So Camp as Keeps Us Going
Chapter from Nobody Passes

SCREEN: From RUPAULS DRAG RACE, SEASON 2 or CLIP IF THESE WALLS COULD
TALK 2

IN-CLASS QUIZ 2 ON THURSDAY

WEEK FIVE: QUEER THEORY AND ACTIVISMS

Tuesday, July 20: Queer Theory

Readings:
Jose Esteban Munoz, Performing Disidentifications
Judith Butler, Chapter Is Paris Burning? from Bodies That Matter

SCREEN A PORTION OF PARIS IS BURNING/ THE AGRESSIVES

Media/Internet LGBT Search, Part II Due In Class on Tuesday
Thursday, July 22: Organizing/Activism
Readings:
Rafael Miguel Diaz, Latino Gay Men and Psycho-Cultural Barriers to AIDS Prevention
Excerpt from Combahee River Collective: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties
John DEmilio, Organizational Tales: Interpreting the NGLTF Story
Roque Ramirez, Thats My Place

WEEK SIX: FILM AND TV

Tuesday, July 27: Media Representations, Contemporary Mediums

Readings:
Candace Moore and Kristen Schilt, "Is She Man Enough? Female Masculinities on the L Word"
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 Lorna Wheeler and Lara Raven Wheeler, "Straight-Up Sex in the L-Word"
McCarthy, Ellen

SCREEN FROM THE L-WORD

EXTRA CREDIT FILM REVIEWS DUE IN CLASS ON TUESDAY

Thursday, July 29: Final Exam