Gender and Sexuality Commons^™

The Perils Of Queering The Curriculum, David William Foster

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

A student came into my office the other day who provided a direct challenge to my efforts to queer the curriculum. Let me say first that, although I respect the value of teaching courses on topics that are presented as queer-marked — indeed, I teach graduate courses in English on Queer Theory and Queer Filmmaking - my ideological preference in the courses I teach in both Spanish and Portuguese is to engage in queer readings across the canon, toward demonstrating that 1) sexual/gender identity is problematic in all texts, and any facile or obvious attribution is likely to be the …