MW, 9:30 AM-10:45 AM, TE F258
Required film screening: Tu, 7:00 PM -10:00 PM, TE F258
Meets with GNDR-G 205
Fulfills COLL S&H Requirement

Instructor: Byron Craig
E-Mail: bycraig@indiana.edu	
Office: Mottier Hall 264
Phone: 330-9338

This course will introduce students to the history of “queer”
representations of sexuality and gender as they are entwined and
encoded in popular cinema and media in the United States. We will
examine how constructs of queer behavior and body type are later
transformed into modern notions of naturalized identity. We will
also interrogate commonly held and frequently unquestioned
assumptions about class, nationality, and ability that are
associated with queer representations. Students will carefully study
the traces of gender, racial, and sexual norms as they have been
constructed in the arch of mainstream U.S. media from the turn of
the 20th century to the present.

Using the lens of critical media and cultural studies approaches,
students will learn to read select examples from this history
towards understanding the broader political economies and cultural
contexts that shaped contemporary understandings of gender, race,
and sexuality. Students will also learn to analyze how past
political and economic inequalities in the culture industries might
structure our current sense of what it means to be a gendered,
raced, and sexual person, especially what it means to be “normal”
and/or “queer.” For instance, we will examine the “queer” formation
of the African American body in television serials such as Amos n’
Andy, The Jeffersons and Everybody Hates Chris and films such as A
Florida Enchantment, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything and Paris Is
Burning while simultaneously questioning the political and economic
inequalities persistent in the culture industries even today.

The required screenings and readings for this course will include
but are not limited to collections, films, television series, and
scholarly essays. Students will be expected to write and present
response papers throughout the semester, attend regular screenings,
participate in classroom and online discussions, and write a final
semester research essay to be presented in class.

• Because this is a 200-level course, it will provide a historical
overview as well as a broad overview of current scholarship in the
field.

• This course is designed to improve students’ abilities to
critically examine notions of “queer” as they pertain to mediated
images in film and television.

• Authors studied will include Bryant Keith Alexander, Siobhan B.
Somerville, Mark Anthony Neal, Alexander Doty, and Harry Benshoff.

• This course will offer lectures, in-class discussion,
film/television serial screenings, and small group discussions. Your
full participation involves listening to lectures and fellow
students’ arguments in small or large groups and giving feedback.
Your attendance and participation is mandatory.