Queer Studies: History, Theory & Expression

Summer 2014
Professor Clements

Exam:

Write a detailed explanation of the multiple ways in which one of the below topics can be
understood as an essential through line in Queer Studies. Your response should (1) trace
this through line and its impact / ramifications, (2) evidence familiarity with and draw
from at least three class readings. Your statement should be 4 full pages, approximately
1,000 words. Bring one hard copy to class and submit to the moodle link titled your exam
in Week 8. Due date: Tuesday WK 8, 12:30 pm.

Note on topic: This midterm isnt where the money shot occurs in terms of grading.
Therefore, choose wisely. Dont spend your biggest passion. Save that for the Final
Project or the Group Presentation. Do please avoid overlap with your other assignments
for this class. Ne repetitions of focus, no recycles. Choose a topic thats fresh for you
(and wont be part of your later assignments), demonstrate you have read the pertinent
texts and can now braid together pieces from the readings to expound with insight and
erudition. Avoid personal experience, stay academic. This is not a narrative exercise.


Topics:

Intersectionality of sexuality and race

Patriarchy

White males

Lesbians get less attention than gay men in queer discourse; trans get less

Medical and psychiatric understandings have been wrong much of the time in building an
accurate understanding of queer; current understandings may also be wrong

Paradigms of separation, marginalization, and invidious hierarchies found in mainstream
culture / society perpetuate in the LGBTQ community.

Queer is revolution

Same-sex marriage: reactionary? Progressive?

Though a number of famous women have said theyre bisexual (Drew Barrymore, Anna
Paquin, Megan Fox and Azealia Banks), few big-name men have followed suit.

Genderfuck has at least 2 meanings -- the first, more obvious, is fucking with gender--
distorting, twisting, inverting, playing with, challenging -- but still (potentially) retaining
and honoring the beauty in any expression of gender/sexuality, etc. . .But the other is
Queer Studies: History, Theory & Expression
Summer 2014
Professor Clements
fucking gender: making love to gender . . . it is as much a source of inspiration, joy,
anguish, beauty, & entrapment as any other aspect of human existence & human culture.

A declared sexual identity informs, influences, determines actual sexual practice? Or not?

Either / or is old school.

What is oppressive in our society is the linking of biological sex (female or male) to
gender identity (woman or man).


Queer politics and culture from the mid/late 1980s onwards have often espoused a policy
of non-assimilationism. Gay rights activists tried throughout the 1970s and 1980s to find
or earn a place in mainstream society.In contrast, many self-style queers saw this
struggle as futile, and as apathetic to the nature of homosexuality, thus they asserted their
difference and separateness. As Brian McNair has put it, some queers greeted growing
acceptance of homosexuality by the straight world as a form of betrayal or collaboration,
preferring to maintain a stance of rejectionism and anger.

The body is the site on which individuals construct a reliable sense of self.

Topic of your choice.