HIST 3942 - Queer American History

Credit Hours: (3)

Description: This course will examine the changing meanings of same-sex behavior, gender transgression, and the emergence of modern LGBTQ identities and communities throughout American history. Students will learn about the shifting factors in American society that led to the formation of queer subcultures and modern gay identities, as well as the divergent experiences of same-sex loving and gender-transgressing people across race, gender, and class differences. Beginning with examinations of queer desire in early America, race and sexuality under slavery, and romantic friendships, the first part of the class will pay close attention to the varied ways that same-sex desire and sexuality were envisioned in the years before the heterosexual/homosexual binary solidified in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. We will then turn to the rise of modern gay and lesbian identities and the rise of sexology; black queer urban enclaves in the Jazz Age; the role of World War II in solidifying queer communities; the Homophile movement of the 1950s and 60s, the rise of transgender identities; Gay Liberation and the Stonewall uprising; lesbian feminism; the AIDS epidemic; and emergence of queer and non-binary identities. Students will complete written work that demonstrates their breadth of topics and themes within early and modern Queer American History.