Fatima El-Tayeb
“Queer of Color Critique: Queer Activism and Social Justice”
Department of Comparative Literature
Queer theory was born out of the interaction, and tension, between activism and theory, its groundbreaking deconstruction of naturalized understandings of (sexual) identity inspired as much by French poststructuralist and feminist theories as by black power, gay liberation, and women of color feminism. With the academic implementation of queer studies however, these activist roots have moved further and further to the background. In this class, we will retrace the links of queer theory to social justice movements and explore the consequences of the increased distance to these origins as well as attempts to reconnect to them. Subjects will include: queers of color and the gay mainstream, gender and postcolonial theory, feminism, gay marriage, and the war on terror.
Fatima El-Tayeb
“Race, Visual Culture, and the Postmodern West”
Department of Comparative Literature
In this course, we will analyze the multiple ways in which ethnicity and race are both naturalized and potentially deconstructed through visual culture. Among the media we will look at are film, comics, videos, and photography. While visual culture is our topic, we will also do a lot of old-fashioned reading, exploring various theoretical approaches to ethnicity and its interrelations with categories such as gender, nation, class, and sexuality. Readings will include texts by a variety of (visual) culture theorists, such as Stuart Hall, Roland Barthes, and Susan Bordo.