Program: Minor in Queer Studies
Overview
The Queer Studies Program is an interdisciplinary minor that questions normative constructions of sexuality and gender. The minor focuses on histories, contemporary experiences and community-based knowledge of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, inter-sexed, queer and others who occupy non-heterosexual and gender non-normative positionalities. The program explores how these subjects intersect and collide with national, ethnic, racial, gender, class and other identifications. It provides an academic home for those who wish to study the intellectual, cultural and material conditions that have shaped our current understandings of sexuality and gender variation, as well as for those who wish to generate new, resistant theories and practices.
Program Requirements
Minor students must take QS 301, 302 and three elective courses for a letter grade. QS 490 can be taken for a letter grade or for credit/no credit for all students.
1. Upper Division Required Courses (9 units)
QS 301 Perspectives in Queer Studies (3)
QS 302 L.A. in Transit: Communities, Organizations and Politics (3)
QS 490 Queer Studies Senior Capstone (3)
2. Upper Division Electives (9 units)
AAS 455 Asian American Sexuality (3)
GWS 410 Sex, Lies and Media (3)
GWS 430 Global Sexualities (3)
ENGL 368 Gay Male Writers (3)
ENGL 369 Lesbian Writers (3)
PHIL 406 Philosophy of Sex, Gender, Sexuality (3)
QS 401A-Z Advanced Topics in Queer Studies (3)
QS 499 Queer Studies Independent Study (3)
SOC 452 Sociology of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Communities (3)
Or other elective courses as approved by the program coordinator.
Total Units in the Minor: 18
Contact
Director: Greg Knotts
Staff: Katherine Draper, Reyna Campos Kennedy
Sierra Tower (ST) 807
(818) 677-6762
www.csun.edu/humanities/queer-studies
Student Learning Outcomes
- Explore and value the diversities of cultures, thought, perspectives and literatures of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed and queer people and communities, and explore and value the ways in which ethnicity/race, gender (understood here in terms of the different contrasts between women and men, and between non-normatively gendered and normatively gendered people), and socioeconomic class shape the diversities of cultures, thought, perspectives and literatures of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed and queer people and communities.
- Critically reflect on and analyze multiple dimensions of human identity and experience that are shaped by sexuality and gender (understood here in terms of a contrast not between women and men but between non-normatively gendered people and normatively gendered people).
- Contribute to scholarship and creative production and innovation in the interdisciplinary field of queer studies and closely related fields such as transgender studies.
- Act as responsible global citizens committed to principles of freedom, equality, justice and participatory democracy in ways that value fully lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, and queer people and communities.