Queer Nation: LGBTQ+ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States

EDU H213 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

In this course, we will explore the political and politicized lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer peoples living in the United States since World War II. Centering an intergenerational, intersectional, and coalitional analysis, as well as an historical critique of “progress,” we will focus our attention on the interrelationship between protest (how LGBTQ+ people have come out and organized themselves), politics (how LGBTQ+ people have confronted and navigated the “culture wars”), and policy (how LGBTQ+ people have challenged and shaped laws and rights) from the Homophile Generation (1940s and 1950s) to the Stonewall Generation (1960s and 1970s) to the AIDS Generation (1980s and 1990s) to the Marriage Generation (2000s to present) and beyond. We will explore significant movement moments, examine a diverse range of change agents, and analyze specific legal and legislative inflection points. Ongoing and targeted discrimination against LGBTQ+ people is a pressing modern phenomenon, yet too often it is treated as an afterthought in discussions and debates about human rights, social justice, law and public policy—despite the fact that such practices of prejudice and abuses of power continue to perpetuate stigma and violence against queer people in myriad ways. The modern LGBTQ+ movement in the United States offers some vital lessons about the long and difficult struggle from repression to rights, marginalization to acceptance, oppression to liberation. We won't cover everything or figure it all out in one semester, but students who are interested in knowing this history and changing our world will be welcomed and valued in this course.