HSOC-312: Pop Culture & Queer Rep

Engaging with a range of practices - zines, YouTube posts, online discussion, web comics, music, TV and film - we explore queer representations in pop culture. We look at contested relationships between spectator and text, identity and commodity, realism and fantasy, activism and entertainment, desire and politics. We explore how queer artists and audiences transform traditional genres to queer society. Class topics include: (1) new paradigms of desire; 2) consumption practices of queer texts; 3) validation of queer lifestyles via media portrayal; 4) construction of sexual identities - commodified or authentic - via pop culture inclusion.