ETHS 380: Coloring Queer/Queering Color
Th 4:10 pm - 6:55 pm
Professor Catrióna Rueda Esquibel
Office: Ethnic Studies Ethnic Studies & Psychology 411
Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:00 - 4:30 and by appointment
email: ktrion@sfsu.edu
Course Website: ilearn.sfsu.edu
ilearn is a new course
management system for online course support (readings, grading,
discussion lists, etc). Go to the ilearn homepage
<http://ilearn.sfsu.edu> and login using your university id and
password. This should show you the ilearn component for all classes in
which you're enrolled. Click on our course number and that will
take
you to the class website. You can download readings from the file
section, post comments on the discussion lists, coordinate group work,
etc. I'll be recording assignments, grades, et cetera on the
website,
so that you can get feedback in a timely fashion.
I. Course Description:
Interdisciplinary examination of queers of color framing theory,
history and discourse, and the expressions and intersections of
difference based on sexual orientation, race, class, gender, and
nationality. Specific focuses may include on racism, interracial
dating, transracial
adoption, fetishes, and other coloring queer phenomena.
II. Course Goals
- To introduce students to literature by and about People of Color
in the
US
- To familiarize students with issues of representation of
People of Color in both mainstream and independent cultural production.
III. Course Objectives
Students will
- read a variety of different authors and
literatures by writers of diverse racial and ethnic groups in the US
- learn important themes in the literature
- participate in class discussions
- conduct library research on history and literature
- write critically about the literature
- write creatively about the literature
IV. Required texts:
- David Henry Hwang. M.Butterfly
- Sheila Ortiz Taylor. Coachella
Additional readings will be available online through ilearn or
Online Reserves
- Richard Fung "Looking for my Penis"
- Gayatri Gopinath, “Funny Boys and Girls: Notes on a Queer South
Asian Planet.”
- Gayatri Gopinath, “Homo-Economics: Queer Sexualities in a
Transnational Frame.”
- Martin F. Manalansan, “Diasporic Deviants/Divas: How Filipino Gay
Transmigrants ‘Play with the World. ’”
- Kobena Mercer, "Reading Racial Fetishism" (1986, 1989)
- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, "Was Mom Chung a 'Sister Lesbian'?: Asian
American Gender Experimentation and Interracial Homoeroticism" (2001)
- Lionel Cantú, "De
Ambiente: Queer Tourism and the Shifting Boundaries of Mexican
Male Sexualities." (2002)
- Tomás Almaguér, "Chicano Men: A Cartography of
Homosexual Identity and Behavior"
- Jackie Goldsby, "What it Means to Be Colored Me" (1990)
- Langston Hughes, selected poems
- Melvin Dixon, "Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt"
- Selections from Within the
Margins by Truong Tran
- Selected poems by Wei Ming Dariotis
Films
We will also be viewing several films which engage in the history and
representation of people of color
- Watermelon Woman (dir. Cheryl Dunye)
- BD Woman (dir. Inge Blackman)
- Looking for Langston (dir. Isaac Julien)
- Saving Face
- Brincando El Charco (dir. Frances Negrón-Muntaner)
- Tongues Untied (dir. Marlon Riggs)
- Boi Hair (dir. Alma Lopez)
Optional Films:
- Saving Face
- Fire (dir. Deepa Mehta)
- Chutney Popcorn
- Litany for Survival: The Life of Audre Lorde
- Two Spirit
- A Place of Rage (dir. Pratibha Parmar)
V. Course Requirements:
Attendance & Participation: 25 points
Weekly assignments (including journals, blogging, quizzes): 25 points
Midterm: 25 points
Final Exam: 25 points
Attendance and Participation in
class discussions is an important element of this
class. If you're not here, you can't participate. Missing three
or more classes will adversely affect your grade.
Appropriate behavior in the classroom includes:
- Showing respect for all participants
- Respecting the work we do in the classroom (no disruptive
behaviors, cell phones, sleeping, skipping out on films, showing up
late)
- Completing all assigned readings in advance of class
- Supporting and encouraging the writing and expression of fellow
students, pushing them to go further
Weekly assignments: We will be
doing creative, interpretive and analytical exercises in relation to
the
readings. For the first few class sessions, I have assigned
specific writing prompts. You may follow the prompts or chart
your own path. You should strive for writing about 500
words (equivalent of two typewritten pages) every week.
The Midterm and Final Exams will
include identification of characters
and elements from the readings and films, short-answer questions, and
essays. These are closed-book exams.
Note: You must bring a blue examination book for each exam.
Extra credit
You may earn additional points as listed below. All extra credit work
is due no later than the last day of class. Minimum length for
prose: 750 words (three full typed pages)
- Attend a film, performance, or public reading by relevant to our
course and write a response. Please help announce these events to the
class.
- Conduct an oral history of an elder whose experience is relevant
to the readings or course themes
- Write short fiction representing people and experiences relevant
to the course themes.
- Read one of the other optional novels for the class and write a
report
- Write poetry related to the class
VI. General Education Requirements
This class fulfills a Segument II Humanities and Creative Arts Area
requirement, (HCA), Category B: Disciplines and Interdisciplines.
In the humanities and arts curriculum, students are urged to explore
fundamental questions regarding human values, aesthetics, and
expression. It is dedicated to stimulating reflecdtive thinking,
imagination, and creatifity; to increaseing civic and global
responsibility; to cultivating moral action; and to building the
communication skills needed to express the best of what it means to be
human. (SFSU Bulletin 2005-06, 96).
VII. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Accommodation:
The University is committed to providing reasonable academic
accommodation to students with disabilities. The Disability
Programs and Resources Center provides university academic support
services and specialized assistance to students with disabilities.
Individuals with physical, perceptual, or learning disabilities as
addressed by the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact
Services for Students with Disabilities for information regarding
accommodations. Please notify your instructor so that reasonable
efforts can be made to accommodate you. If you expect
Accommodation through the Act, you must make a formal request through
Disability Programs & Resource Center in SSB110, Telephone
338-2472.
VIII. Statement on Cheating and Plagiarism
Cheating is the actual or attempted practice of fraudulent or deceptive
acts for the prupose of improving one's grade or obtaining course
credit; such acts also include assisting another student to do so.
Typically, such acts occur in relation to examinations. However,
it is the intent of this definition that the term "cheating" not be
limited to examination situation only, but that it include any and all
actions by a student that are intended to gain an unearned academic
advantage by fraudulent or deceptive means.
Plagiarism is a specific form of cheating which consists of the misuse
of the published and/or unpublished works of others by misrepresenting
the material (intellectual property) so used as one's own work.
Penalties for cheating and plagiarism range from 0 or F on a particular
assignment, through F for the course, to expulsion from the
university. for more information on the University's policy
regarding cheating and plagiarism, refer to the University Catalog
("Policies and Regulations").
IX. Changes and supplements
This syllabus subject to change as necessary. Any policies not
mentioned in this document are covered in the SFSU
catalog.
X. Schedule
Week One - Introductions, Racialized Sexualities
Thursday, August 25: Introduction of Course Themes, Syllabus, Student
Introductions.
Sign up for class blogs
Strategies of/and Representation
Film: Tongues Untied.
Dir. Marlon Riggs
Articulating Black Gay Male Identity
Interrupting a racist regime of representation
How does white gay male culture shape black gay men's interactions with
one another?
How is love between black gay men politicized?
Online: Edit your profile on
ilearn, including a picture of yourself
blogging:Write a short essay
on "Homophobia: Fear of Going Home"
Week Two - A Desired History
Thursday, September 1:
Film: Looking for Langston
(dir. Isaac Julien)
Discussion of Readings:
Kobena Mercer, "Reading Racial Fetishism" (1986,
1989)
Blogging: Write a short essay
on the desire in/for history. How is history always-already
heterosexual (heterosexualized)? What does it mean to queer
history? How is history always-already white? How do queers
challenge "community of origin" models"
Week Three - Contesting Racialized Sexualities
Thursday, September 8: Film: Madama
Butterfly (1974)
Discussion: M. Butterfly
and its relation to Madama Butterfly
Discussion of Readings:
David Henry
Hwang. M. Butterfly
Richard
Fung "Looking for my Penis"
Week Four - Crossings I
Thursday, September 15:
Film: Brincando El Charco
Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. "When I Was a Puerto Rican Lesbian."
GLQ 5.4 (1999): 511-27.
Week Five - Native Peoples, Gender, Sexuality, and Appropriation
Thursday, September
22:
Discussion of Readings:
Paula Gunn Allen “Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in American
Indian Cultures,”
Ramon Gutierrez, "Must We De-Racinate Indians to Find Gay Roots?"
Paula Gunn Allen “Some Like Indians Endure” 298-301
Film: Sweating Indian Style
Week Six
Thursday, September 29:
Discussion of Readings:
Becky Birtha “In Response To Reading Children’s Book Announcements in
Publishers Weekly, February 12, 1982”
Pat Parker, "Gay Parenting, or Look Out, Anita"
Lesbian Mothers, a Conversation with Cenen, Margarita, and Carmen
Beth Brant, "A Long Story"
Week Seven
Thursday, October 6: Coachella
Week Eight
Thursday, October 13: Midterm Exam
Week Nine
Thursday, October 20:
Becky Birtha, "Johnnieruth"
Ekua Omosupe, "Black/Lesbian/Bulldagger"
Sdiane A. Bogus, "The Myth and Tradition of the Black Bulldagger"
Gloria Anzaldúa, "la historia de una marimacha"
"the bulldagger's tale"
Jo Carrillo, "Maria Littlebear"
Week Ten
Thursday, October 27:
Film: Watermelon Woman
Discussion of Readings:
Jackie Goldsby, "What it Means to be Colored Me"
Alice Hom, "In the Mind of An/Other"
Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall "Eating Salt"
Pat Parker “For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend”
297
Week Eleven
Thursday, November 3:
Judy Tzu-Chun
Wu, "Was Mom Chung a 'Sister Lesbian'?: Asian
American Gender Experimentation and Interracial Homoeroticism" (2001)
Makeda Silvera “Man-Royals And Sodomites: Some Thoughts On The
Invisibility Of Afro-Caribbean Lesbians”
Week Twelve
Thursday, November 10:
Lani Ka’ahumanu “hapa haole wahine”
Kamini Chaudhary “Some Thoughts On Bisexuality”
Margaret Mihee Choe “Ourselves Growing Whole”
June Jordan “A New Politics of Sexuality”
Week Thirteen
Thursday, November 17:
- Lionel Cantú, "De
Ambiente: Queer Tourism and the Shifting Boundaries of Mexican
Male Sexualities." (2002)
- Tomás Almaguér, "Chicano Men: A Cartography of
Homosexual Identity and Behavior"
Week Fourteen
Thursday, November 24, NO CLASSES
Week Fifteen
Thursday, December 1:
- Gayatri Gopinath, “Homo-Economics: Queer Sexualities in a
Transnational Frame.”
- Martin F. Manalansan, “Diasporic Deviants/Divas: How Filipino Gay
Transmigrants ‘Play with the World. ’”
Week Sixteen
Thursday, December 8:
Gloria Anzaldúa, "Too Queer the Writer,"
Pat Parker, "Where Will You Be"
Melvin Dixon, "Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt"
Final Exam Period
Saturday December 10, 1:30-4:00 pm