Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is an interdisciplinary field of study that was first introduced in U.S. colleges and universities in the early 1970s. At the time, most people regarded women’s studies—as the field was then called—as the “academic arm” of a grassroots movement for women’s liberation. Fifty years later, social movements— past and present—continue to shape the field’s intellectual and political commitments. Thus, in order to introduce key concepts in WGSS, this iteration of “Perspectives in Gender and Sexuality” looks back at the history of feminist and LGBTQ social movements in the late twentieth century. This course specifically delves into the history of gay liberation in the late 1960s, women’s liberation in the 1970s and 1980s, and HIV/AIDS activism in the late 1980s and 1990s, with careful attention to the history of race, gender, sexuality, and disability in these movements. Although we will move chronologically through the late twentieth century, this course does not engage with the past as a static object. Rather, students are invited to explore archival evidence, question how historical interpretations change over time, and analyze resonances of the past in the present.

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021

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This iteration of “Perspectives in Gender and Sexuality” focuses on the topic of LGBTQ activism in the United States in order to introduce key concepts within the interdisciplinary field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Specifically, this course considers the consolidation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identity categories and the formation of LGBTQ social movements over the course of roughly one century, from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. We conclude our study in the 1990s, at the moment when marriage rights emerged as the most visible LGBTQ issue in popular consciousness. In looking back at earlier historical moments, this course challenges the popular assumption that LGBTQ organizing is a new phenomenon, while also considering a multiplicity of activist visions that are occluded in a progress narrative towards LGBTQ acceptance and inclusion. In doing so, this course aims on one level to familiarize students with concepts— such as intersectionality and social construction theory—that are foundational to the field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Furthermore, through our extended investigation of the history of LGBTQ activism, this course offers students the opportunity to engage with a range of canonical and cutting-edge scholarly work, primary sources, and cultural productions like novels, memoirs, and films.

Taught: Fall 2019, Spring 2020

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On June 28, 1969, the NYPD conducted a routine raid of the Stonewall Inn, a mafia owned gay bar in Greenwich Village. When patrons fought back, the violent protest that ensued was quickly dubbed the Stonewall Riots, an event that is often credited for launching the modern gay rights movement. In this course, we will examine how Stonewall has been written about and remembered over the past fifty years, from the initial press coverage of the event to Stonewall 50, a celebration of the anniversary of Stonewall. Why is Stonewall so often understood as the genesis of a broader mass movement? How have some historians challenged this narrative? What historical interpretations gain traction at particular moments and what historical facts are omitted in competing accounts of Stonewall? Why, for example, are trans women of color sometimes centered in historical accounts of Stonewall, and other times left out? And how do evolving and culturally specific frameworks for understanding gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ identities reshape histories of Stonewall over time? In centering Stonewall as a contested historical event, this course more broadly considers the process through which historical meanings are produced and disseminated through the mass media as well as academic and public history.

Taught: Winter 2019 ONLINE

Student evaluation score: 5/5. Read student comments.

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In recent decades, digital technologies have transformed the way in which history is written. Consider for a moment the range of tools at your disposal when you write papers, from google to a plethora of keyword searchable academic databases. This class will interrogate the relationship between digital technology and the writing of history. Specifically, this class will center on late twentieth century U.S. queer, lesbian, feminist, and trans* histories. We will use this historical topic as our common base from which to explore a range of popular digital tools. For example, we will read queer historian A. Finn Enke’s chapter on the local geography of Midwestern lesbian bars and, then, undertake our own queer mapping project, using google maps. Overall, this course will introduce cutting edge historical scholarship, while offering students the opportunity to do digital history.

Taught: Summer 2018 ONLINE

Student evaluation score: 5/5. Read student comments.

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This course invites Stony Brook students to think critically about the history and future of New York’s public colleges and universities. Using Stony Brook as our focal point, we will trace this history from the mid-twentieth century to the current moment. In particular, this course is interested in the interrelated histories of student activism; the emergence of interdisciplinary fields like black studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and Chicano studies; and the shift towards the privatization of public colleges and universities, which is often referred to as the corporatization or neoliberalization of the university. Course readings will include a wide range of archival documents, foundational texts, and exciting new scholarship at the intersection of feminist, queer, critical race, and critical university studies. What was life like for students, faculty, and staff at New York’s public colleges and universities over the past seventy years? What alternative visions have been put forth during this time? And finally, what should be different and how do we change it?

Taught: Spring 2017

Student evaluation score: 4.3/5. Read student comments.

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This course traces the intellectual and movement histories of U.S. feminism in the late twentieth century, while also considering how this history is remembered today. To do so, we will examine a wide range of material, including archival documents, historical analyses, theoretical texts, memoirs, and films. In the first part of the course, we consider the contexts and intellectual traditions that helped incite the emergence of the women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The second part of the course, then, turns its attention to this movement itself. In this section of the course, we look at position papers and other documents that were published in four U.S. cities in or around the year of 1970, thinking critically about the production and dissemination of these texts. Next, the third section of the course moves thematically and roughly chronologically through the 1970s and 1980s, considering a genealogy of feminist thinking in relation to key concepts and debates in U.S. feminism. Finally, in the last section of the course, we read cutting-edge feminist and queer scholarship that revisits this moment in the history of U.S. feminism to raise theoretical questions about memory, affect, temporality, space, and feminist historiography. Overall, students in this course will develop the critical tools to engage with historical documents, while sharpening their understanding of the contexts out of which these texts emerged.

Taught: Fall 2016

Student evaluation score: 4.83/5. Read student comments.

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