Introducing Queer Cinema
Class Number: 231-0-20 | Professor: Nicholas Davis
Designed generally as an introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies, this course also provides a more specific overview of the aesthetic hallmarks of queer cinema, its political impulses, and key critical responses to that cinema. Early in the term, we will consider four crucial elements in how and why "New Queer Cinema" arose in the late 1980s and early 1990s: 1) the postmodern turn in film style; 2) new, evolving theories about identity, gender, the body, and sexuality; 3) wider and cheaper access to filmmaking technologies; and 4) the resurgent visibility and political activism of queer communities, spurred by the AIDS crisis. Working from those premises, subsequent weeks offer further challenges about what "counts" as a queer film, who and what these films should "represent," from whose point of view, with what level of formal complexity, and with what range of intended audiences and goals.
Queer cinema is tightly bound to specific concerns of queer theory, politics, and life. Indeed, the films have often produced theory and popularized new ways in which gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and other queer-identified people can imagine, embody, communicate, and debate their own ways of "being themselves." At the same time, like any other film trend or movement, queer cinema raises wider questions about the artistic and cultural status of film, the many ways of "reading" a movie, the precise language for analyzing a shot or a sequence, and all of the cultural problems around images, corporate industry, gender, nationality, race, and representation.
This course presumes no prior experience in either queer studies or film studies; all perspectives are warmly welcomed. Respectful engagement and a willingness to confront challenging movies, articles, and ideas are the only prerequisites.