LFU:online

Students should require the competence to understand and reflect basic notions, concepts and political claims within the field of Queer Theory and be acquainted with the context and preconditions of their development. Understanding the way arguments and ideas are built within this framework should be deployed for further studies of approaches that criticize heteronormative patterns and to reflect daily experiences of discrimination as well as of privilege.

In close readings we will extrapolate fundamental notions within Queer Theory and look at their historical context as well as how they are reworked, widened or criticised in contemporary theoretical texts and discussions on ability, masculinity and sexual politics. In reading ‚canonical‘ texts of Queer Theory, we first analyze on what axioms and rhetorical patterns those notions rely on and discuss, how the notion of ‚gender‘ is built and shaped in entanglement with race, class and sexuality as fundamental categorie of difference. In part two we explore recent theories coming from Mad Studies, Transgender Studies and Politics of Sexualities to see how those notions are reused and modified according to the different context they are deployed in in contemporary discussions. We concentrate on the question how queer notions shape, constrict or inspire discussions of the modes and possibilities of collective agency and social participation. We therefore concentrate on the entanglement of theory production and social movements and analyze the importance of trans- and interdisciplinarity for dealing with mulitlayered problem-situations

This is a close reading seminar. Students should read each text carefully, guided by reading questions, prepare one of the theoretical texts for presentation and moderate the text discussion. In the discussions we concentrate on the basic notions, reconstruct their contexts and contextualize their meanings and assumptions for the situation we currently are living in. Additionally there is a reading group led by a student assistant to enable a process of sharing reading experiences, developing questions and critizing modes of arguing presented in the texts.

Nina Degele: Gender, Queer Studies. Paderborn: Fink 2008

Annamarie Jagose: Queer theory: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Querverlag 2001

Judith Butler: Das Unbehagen der Geschlechter. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 2014¹¹

Angela Davis: Women, Race and Class.  N.Y.: Vintage Books 1983

Michel Foucault: Der Wille zum Wissen. Sexualität und Wahrheit 1. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1977

Judith Jack Halberstam: ‘Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum. In : Alison Bailey, Chris Cuomo (Hrsg.): The Feminist Philosophy Reader. N.Y.: McGraw-Hill 2008, S. 144-162.

bel hooks: Reconstructing black masculinities. In: Alison Bailey, Chris Cuomo (Hrsg.): The Feminist Philosophy Reader. N.Y.: McGraw-Hill 2008, S.107-123.

Lann Hornscheidt: Dyke_Trans schreiben lernen. Schreiben als feministische Praxis. In: AK Feministische Sprachpraxis (Hrsg.): Feminismus schreiben lernen. Frankfurt/M. 2011, S. 100-138

Shayda Kafai: The Mad Border Body: A Political In-Betweeness. In: Disability Studies Quarterly. Vol. 33 No. 1 (2013)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: Univ. of Cal. Press 1994

Monique Wittig: The Straight Mind and other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press 2002

Jasbir Puar: Terrorist Assemblages. Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham/London: Duke Univ. Press 2007

Susan Wendell: Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability. In: Alison Bailey, Chris Cuomo (Hrsg.): The Feminist Philosophy Reader. N.Y.: McGraw-Hill 2008, S. 826-840.

Please prepare the texts for each session carefully. We can only have a discussion if you have read the texts.  You should prepare a (group) presentation of one of the theoretical texts and moderate the text discussion. At the end of the semester you should write one additional lecture protocol dealing closely with a second text of the program. It is not obligatory to be acquainted with queer_feminist theory, but you should be interested in the topic.

 For further questions please contact  the StV Gender, Kultur und Sozialer Wandel (stv-gender-oeh@uibk.ac.at) or the Büro für Gleichstellung und Gender Studies (gender-studies@uibk.ac.at).