Roderick Ferguson's concept of "Queer of Color Critique" is a method grounded in intersectional feminism which allows us to consider the interplay of race, gender, class, and sexuality and how economic and political systems are linked to queer identity. We will use Ferguson's methods to examine Black LGBTQ+ representation across various media including documentaries, television, social media, and literature. And we will consider what queer theory has to say about identity formation, spirituality, space making, resistance, and definitions of freedom.

This seminar investigates the historical experiences of women in the Caribbean from the era of European conquest to the late twentieth century. We will examine how shifting conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, class, and the body have shaped understandings of womanhood and women's rights. We will engage a variety of sources - including archival documents, films, newspaper accounts, feminist blogs, music, and literary works - in addition to historical scholarship and theoretical texts. The course will include readings on the Spanish-, English-, and French-speaking Caribbean as well as the Caribbean diaspora.

This course explores the history of intellectual appropriation of Blackness through an intersectional lens. We will first focus on intellectual appropriation within the entertainment industry and social media. Students will then analyze the historical connection between intellectual erasures, racialized enslavement, and colonialism. This course will also closely examine Blackfishing, the memeification of Black celebrities, and the intellectual appropriation of Black emotionality and struggles.

Students will examine histories of and historiographical debates over sex and gender within Black communities. The following questions will orient the course: How have issues of sex and gender been articulated, used, or represented within the context of Black life? To what extent has the study of racialized gender/sexuality changed over time? Which methods have researchers taken up to pursue this line of research? And, what uses, limitations and ethical dilemmas do different modes of historical inquiry pose when deployed in the study of racialized gender/sexuality? Three subjects anchor the course: AIDS, the "closet," and gender mutability.

This course we will undertake the deceptively simple question: how do we read Toni Morrison? In taking up this task, we will devote our attention to various scenes and sites of reading across Morrison's oeuvre, asking how Morrison is encouraging us to read history, slavery, violence, geography, time, space, gender, and friendship. We will also engage with Morrison's own status as a reader by considering her work as an editor and literary critic. Through regular engagement with the Toni Morrison Papers housed at Firestone we will consider what it means to be able to read Morrison in such close proximity to these archival materials.

This course explores the relationship between, sex, sexuality, and religion in the United States over the last two centuries. We employ historical methodologies to trace how sex and sexuality have been contested and contentious issues within certain American religious contexts and focus on how religiously informed notions of sex and sexuality have touched every area of American life, including popular culture, politics, and the law. Sex not only "sells" as the old adage states, but the control and/or prohibition of sex and sexuality have set the terms for most aspects of American society.

The fat body operates at the conjuncture of political economy, beauty standards, and health. This seminar asks, How does this "f-word" discipline and regulate bodies in /as public? What is the "ideal" American public body and who gets to occupy that position? How are complex personhood, expressivity, health, and citizenship contested cultural and political economic projects? We will examine the changing history, aesthetics, politics, and meanings of fatness using dance, performance, memoirs, and media texts as case studies. Intersectional dimensions of the fat body are central to the course. No previous performance experience necessary.

What does the anthropology of religion teach us about construction of identity or the ethics and politics of difference? This course introduces students to the anthropology of religion and a key debate of the field on the fetish. Students will learn about the colonial history of the study of religion and the role of fetishism therein. They will gain the tools to critically intervene in ongoing conversations about race, sexuality, cultural difference, and decolonization by becoming familiar with debates on fetishism in anthropology, critical theory, and Black and queer studies.

What does it mean to be a man? Or to act like a man? By calling attention to the gendered identities/practices of men-as-men, scholars of masculinities have given diverse responses to these questions across time and space. We draw on anthropology, history, critical theory, gender studies, and media to explore the processes and relationships by which men craft gendered lives. Rather than defining masculinity as biological trait or fixed object, we examine how men's life stories and prospects are shaped by social scripts, political-economic forces, labor regimes, and ethical norms.

This seminar investigates how feminism and gender theory (from eco-feminism and intersectional feminism to queer and trans theory) can spearhead new methods of research, objects of study, and ways of seeing and analyzing spaces, buildings, and cities, as well as the human alliances within them. We study forms of organizing around women's and LGBTQ+ rights in cities, from the efforts of informal activist groups to those of institution building, and highlight these efforts as main sites for creative, architectural, and urban intervention in challenging heteronormative forms of living and instead providing spaces of care and kinship making.

Using the 1920s as its starting point, this course explores how women photographers have variously responded to the political upheavals of their times. How have female practitioners challenged and/or contributed to the rise of fascist regimes in their respective contexts? What can examining and reevaluating their work teach us about the aesthetic force of complacency, complicity, and resistance? Alongside key texts on race, gender, colonialism, and exile we will consider a diverse range of work by women and attempt to think critically about the unique roles they played in crafting and critiquing fascist visual culture in Europe and abroad.

If the future is, or was, female, whither feminist art history? Taking its name from the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern's 1974 book, this seminar revisits major approaches to feminist art history from the 19th century to the present while considering how queer, trans, masculinity, and decolonial studies have transformed the landscape of art historical analysis. What does it mean, now, to write art history under the sign of gender? How is gender assigned to works of art? How have art historians applied contemporary thinking about gender to the art of the past, and how might historical works and archives inform art history in the present?

Asian Americans have experienced a long history of contestation regarding gender and sexuality. To examine this saga, we will begin with Black and Asian feminist critiques of normative gender and sexuality. We will then turn to sociocultural history, analyzing legal cases policing intimacy, and the construction of the gendered and sexualized Asian woman in late 19th C. San Francisco. We will then examine histories of normative forms of sexuality, politics and social worlds of queer and trans communities, gendered labor, representation and the post-911 era.

"Identity politics" has become a derogatory term across the political left and right to name divergent ills shaping contemporary US political culture. Yet present usages stem far from those of the Black queer feminists/socialists who coined the term in 1977. Why have "identity politics" become such a malleable anti-hero? How do Asian Americans figure in these debates? Through the work of Black feminists, postcolonial theorists, and activists, we will explore the liberatory and fraught nature of identity-based movement, tracing how negotiations of difference across gender, racialization, immigration status, and ability shape political culture.

Poet Patricia Smith, Poet and Executive Director of JustMedia Mahogany Browne, and choreographer Davalois Fearon will collaborate through the course to craft a multimedia theatrical production that shines an unflinching light on the problem of missing black women and girls. In 2020, 268,884 women were reported missing, and nearly 100,000 were Black women and girls but there is a huge disparity in how the cases of Black missing girls and women are treated by media and law enforcement. The artists will work with students interested in music, theater, and dance to assemble the production, which will then be performed for the Princeton community.

Who was Sappho? And what do we make of her today? In this course, students will consider in detail what remains of Sappho's work (including the latest discoveries, published in 2014), and also how her example informs later literatures, arts, identities, and sexualities. Students with no knowledge of ancient Greek and students who already know it well are equally welcome! One session per week will focus on reading and translating original texts with one group, while a parallel session will focus on translations and adaptations through time. One joint session per week will draw perspectives together.

This course aims to explore different forms that the question of liberation has taken in writings by women philosophers and poets whose work helped to create cultural and political movements in the U.S. and Latin America. Starting in the 1960s, it studies different philosophical concepts and poetic figures that have shaped the language of feminist struggles (intersectionality, care and the commons, reproductive justice, "feminicidal" violence, social reproduction). Readings include Gloria Anzaldúa, Angela Davis, Silvia Federici, Verónica Gago, Raquel Gutiérrez, Audre Lorde, Bety Ruth Lozano, Cristina Rivera Garza, among others.

Recontextualizing the `Rise of the Novel': We revisit dominant Anglocentric accounts of the novel's origins in a wider European context, reading 17th-18th century fiction & criticism; reconsider "the novel" as a narrative epistemology of character competing with other genres (history, romance, drama); trace its development from a hybrid of earlier popular forms to an established literary genre, now the predominant one, in response to profound shifts in conceptions of gender, identity, literature, probability, sensibility, epistemology, the rise of the middle class, the nuclear family, industrialism, individualism, and colonialism.

Disability is front and center in a global social justice revolution. But who are the disabled artists and ideas behind this movement? How can we embrace Radical Accessibility and Care in our daily artistic practices? This course invites all artists, from choreographers to theater makers, film makers, visual artists, writers and composers to immerse in a highly collaborative, improvisational, experimental and inclusive community to explore Disability Justice as a framework for creative, dramaturgical and curatorial practices.

This course focuses on the images of women in Korean cultural production, spanning from contemporary to pre-twentieth-century periods. Analyzing the historical variations in the notions of femininity that appear in literary and filmic texts, we will use these feminine images as access points to the aesthetic conundrums produced at crucial historical junctures. These feminine images, produced locally and globally, will allow us to examine the experiences of immigrant diaspora, Korea's neo-colonial relationship with the United States, the Korean War, colonial modernity, and Confucian patriarchal kinship.

This course examines "dangerous bodies" - bodies that transgress existing gender and racial norms in Chinese and Sinophone cultures. Situated at the intersection of literary, film, performance, gender and ethnic studies, this course provides an introduction to the shifting social meanings of the body in relation to historical masculinity, femininity, and Chineseness. We examine different cross-dressed figures, ranging from Mulan, cross-dressed male opera singer, WWII Japanese/Chinese spy, to experimental queer cinema, in a study that unpacks whether these transgressive bodies represent social change or a tool for restoring traditional norms.

This course examines the development of surrealism from its birth in Dada-infused Paris to its life after the Second World War. Materials considered include literary and theoretical texts, visual works, magazines, and exhibitions. The course treats the topic at a variety of inter-related levels, exploring surrealism as a part of the broad historical phenomenon of the avant-garde, examining its specific ways of (re)conceiving literature and art, and investigating the epistemological ramifications of surrealism's aesthetic, political, and moral positions. Gender representation and sexual politics are the focus of the course this year.

The mythological heroines Antigone, Medea and Electra rejected family, society and state. Their resistance was expressed in their refusal to fulfill the traditional roles of daughter, sister, wife, and mother: Antigone loves her dead brother, Medea murders her children, and Electra is inconsolable over the death of her father. These characters go on to have multimedia careers in tragic plays, visual art, opera, films, and even comics. Their images are projected onto ever new screens where our culture works itself out, because their radical female resistance challenges the limits of our understanding even as it provokes and fascinates us.

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of gender and sexuality studies. How do gender and sexuality emerge from networks of power and social relations? And how are they entangled and co-constituted with other axes of identity such as class, race, and ability? As we survey a wide variety of writers, texts, issues, and methods - historical and contemporary, theoretical and practical, artistic and scholarly - we will engage the diversity of thought and approach contained under the rubrics of feminist, gender, sexuality, and queer studies as foundation for further work in the field.

This course explores the recent intellectual history of media, sex, and the racialized body. We will analyze the representation of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in film, advertisements, the fashion industry, reality TV, animation, and music videos. This course will also closely examine the predominance of White heteronormativity in film, the representation of gender in K-pop and K-dramas, and the hypersexualization of Blackness and Latinidad in Blaxploitation films and telenovelas.

Human reproduction is often taken for granted as a merely biological phenomenon, yet reproduction is laden with cultural meaning and import for individuals and for society as a whole. Despite its significance, reproduction is rarely addressed in the Princeton curriculum. This lecture course explores human reproduction from a sociological perspective. It also seeks to introduce students to some of the basic modes of thinking in both sociology and gender and sexuality studies.

This course explores the intellectual history of the racialization of beauty. We will begin by analyzing how the history of Atlantic slavery and scientific racism set precedents for the contemporary dominant conceptualization of beauty in the body, art, and nature. Students will then concentrate on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in beauty pageants, advertising, and the plastic surgery industry. This course will also closely examine racialized fat phobia, the racial politics of hair, transnational colorism, and racialized exploitation in beauty service work.

This course explores the recent history of ideas about contemporary unfreedom, focusing on the influence of discourses about race, gender, and sexuality. We will study how scientific racism and racial capitalism fuel contemporary slavery. Students will analyze how the silencing of the pervasiveness of contemporary slavery is tied to the narrative of "abolition" and the globalization of economic dynamics based on the exploitation of predominantly people of color. This course will also examine the racialization of child exploitation, survivor criminalization, and representation of unfreedom in anti-trafficking campaigns.

This seminar examines how gender and sexuality shape processes of migration. It mainly focuses on the experiences of women. It addresses the constitution of gender and sexuality in the process of migration, analyzes the ways that society disciplines migrants via the control of their gender and sexuality, examines how race factors in these processes, and lastly identifies the ways that migrants utilize gender and sexuality to negotiate the various structural inequalities they confront in the process of migration. This course situates our discussion of gender and sexuality in the state, labor market, and family.

One is not born, but becomes, woman. So writes Simone deBeauvoir in The Second Sex, her landmark work of feminist philosophy. But how do we become women, anyway? And what if we don't? In this course we will read The Second Sex in its entirety, exploring Beauvoir's ideas - and our own - about childhood, family, sexuality, abortion, relationships, work, and aging. We will read Beauvoir alongside the work of her primary interlocutors (Hegel, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) as well as contemporary feminist and trans theory, memoir, and fiction (Claudia Rankine, Carmen Maria Machado, Katharina Volckmer) considering gender and its discontents.

This course examines the history of gender and sexuality across the 20th century, with emphasis on both regulation and resistance. Topics include early homosexual subcultures; the commercialization of sex; reproduction and its limitation; sex, gender, and war; cold war sexual containment; the feminist movement; conservative backlash; AIDS politics; same-sex marriage; Hillary; and many others.

How have Black healers and communities conceived of health and healing throughout history? Notions of health and healing and healing practices in the "Black Atlantic" (inclusive of Africa and the Americas) from the era of slavery to the present are the focus of this course. Students will engage with primary sources, historical and sociological scholarship, and historical documentaries concerning healing and Black life.

As the economy shifts, who wins and who loses? This class, taught by a top NPR editor, will dive deep into how to find and tell compelling stories about real people affected by changes in the economy, depending on their race, gender or class. We will use sophisticated journalism techniques to identify and unlock patterns in data about money and spending, and write captivating tales that put a human face on inequality. We will learn how to find stories and characters, how to interview, and storytelling techniques used by top journalists and popular podcasters. Curious minds will discover how an economy works. Economics knowledge not required.

This course explores how feminist thought & activism circulates globally by examining a variety of feminist movements in the Middle East & North Africa. Beginning with modern feminist thought and activism in mid-19th century Syria & Egypt, we'll trace feminist movements in various contemporary contexts, from Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon & Egypt in the 20th century, to women's participation in the Arab Spring and transnational Islamic movements in the 21st century. We'll map the local and geopolitical discourses that have shaped regional feminisms, and ask how local feminisms are transnational or global.

This course explores ethnographic approaches to the study of gender, Islam, and inequality. It surveys the theoretical approaches used to study the intersection of religious practices, gender, and sexuality. Topics include religious women's agency; queer and transgender agency; self and subjectivity; religious law, ethics and politics; governance and the state; and progress, secularism, imperialism and modernity.

This course will examine where and why women and men are not treated equally, how gender inequality impacts human welfare and development, and what works to minimize gender inequality in the Global South. This course will introduce students to cutting-edge research on gender inequality in countries as diverse as India, China, South Korea, Brazil, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Mali, as well as the reasons why some government efforts to reduce gender inequality are successful while others fail or even backfire. The course will emphasize the importance of culture and norms.

This course considers how gender enters and shapes politics, primarily in the US context. It addresses a range of questions that center elections: How did women gain the right to vote? Are women voters really different than men voters? Are women politicians really any different than men politicians? Has women's involvement in electoral and institutional politics changed anything? It also considers how the gendered space of the American electoral system has limited its effectiveness in delivering outcomes desired by some groups of women, what their alternatives might be, and how those alternatives have been and continue to be pursued.

This course explores the theory and practice of slavery in Muslim societies from the 8th century up through the 20th. We use case studies; read primary sources in translation; explore the intersection of sex, gender and slavery; and try to recover the experiences of the enslaved. Who were the Islamic abolitionists? Why did many European colonial authorities actively perpetuate slavery? Why did legal slavery last until 1962 in Saudi Arabia? What is the legacy of slavery in Muslim societies? How are the formerly "invisible" descendants of African slaves in the Middle East advocating for recognition?

How did Islamic law shape social interactions and social categories in Medieval Muslim societies? The `ulama' were part of their own social/economic contexts. They engaged in commerce, owned property, bought, sold, and manumitted slaves, married and divorced and had children by wives and female slaves. How much influence did the elite `ulama', the jurists who shaped Islamic law, have on the social and economic practices of both elites and of ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims? We make use of documents, legal texts, and some narrative sources. Students also work in Rare Books and Special Collections.

This course surveys ideas regarding gender and sexuality at various points in the cultural history of South Asia and how these ideas have shaped women's and men's lives and experiences in the society. We examine how different communities pushed against gender norms and cultural expectations using different ideologies and strategies resulting in a diverse range of feminist projects in South Asia. The course explores ideas about gender, sexuality, and feminism in various domains of South Asian life. Apart from reading scholarship on relevant topics, we analyze primary textual sources, such as religious texts, literary genres, and folklore.

What did it mean to be "wild," "manly" or "white" in Early Modernity, and how do these categories function today? This course explores films made in the last fifty years, featuring "descents into savagery" and the colonial texts that inspired them. Among other topics, we'll discuss: coloniality and its effects; primitivism and progress; media and mediation; race and gender; healing practices; intercultural dialogues; and community-based performances.

The figure of the drag king has been practically absent from Latinx American critical analysis. Taking what we call "spectacular masculinity" as our starting point, a hyperbolic masculinity that without warning usurps the space of privilege granted to the masculinity of men, this course revises the staging of spectacular masculinities as a possibility of generating a crisis in heterosexism. We will highlight notable antecedents of the contemporary DK show, and study the hegemonic masculinity and its exceptional models through a critical technology that turns up the volume on its dramatization and its prosthetic/cosmetic conditions.

We will explore the foundations of black performance theory, drawing from the fields of performance studies, theater, dance, and black studies. Using methods of ethnography, archival studies, and black theatrical and dance paradigms, we will learn how scholars and artists imagine, complicate, and manifest various forms of blackness across time and space. In particular, we will focus on blackness as both lived experience and as a mode of theoretical inquiry.

Creative Intellect is a collaborative workshop course designed to bridge the critical and creative dimensions of performance research. Students will lead the development of performance research projects, compose a written report documenting the development of these projects, and devise and produce a public event that engages observers in the principles and methods guiding the work. This course cultivates a rigorous ethic of practice wherein the theater-maker participates fully and creatively in documenting their own performance work and in commenting critically on that work.

Black Queer BDSM material culture resists contextualization in relationship to biographical narratives because of the underground elements of the community. This course will explore the material culture of this community from three perspectives: Architecture + Location, Visual Artists and Exhibitions, and Black Queer BDSM communities with a significant research focus on finding and presenting new materials. We will consider the fragility of archival engagement with these communities by surveying existing BDSM archives in research libraries, community groups, and individuals and their personal ephemera.