Wooster launches global queer studies minor meeting student interest in growing field

Beginning fall 2023, The College of Wooster will offer a minor in global queer studies, part of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program (WGSS) and centering queer lives and lived experiences in both its theoretical and practical focus from a global, transnational, and intersectional perspective. Professors Christa Craven and Ahmet Atay developed the minor with students in the course Senior Seminar: Feminist & Queer Pedagogy in Practice in fall 2021.

“As faculty whose research centers on LGBTQ+ communities, we’ve wanted to see this for more than a decade,” Craven said. “In the past few years, student interest has grown substantially, so it was important to have their input on what it will ultimately look like and how it can be most meaningful to them.”

Students in the senior seminar course chose to collaborate on proposing a queer studies minor as their course project. Coming from a range of disciplines and cultural backgrounds, the group elected to center a transnational, global perspective that is presented and promoted in the current the WGSS offerings. The transnational focus of the global queer studies minor sets Wooster apart as one of the only GLCA schools with a queer/LGBTQIA+ studies program and reflects the College’s commitment to global engagement and equity, inclusion, and diversity. With a growing transnational community on campus, the program builds on a diverse range of student experiences.

Courses on Gay & Lesbian Studies began to be offered at colleges and universities in the 1970s and their popularity among students spread in the 1980s and 1990s. Wooster’s first course in this area was offered in what was then Women’s Studies in the mid-1990s, “Hidden Histories: History of Gay/Lesbian Americans,” which eventually became the “Hidden Histories of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Americans,” and then “Queer Americans.” Additional courses were added in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies in the 2000s – “Queer Theory” and “Queer Lives” – as well as a broad range of cross-listed courses in Anthropology, Communication Studies, English, History, Psychology, Sociology, and Theatre, among others.

Another example of the increase in student interest in the growing field of queer studies is a substantial increase in Independent Study projects related to LGBTQ+ studies across a wide array of disciplines such as Africana studies, chemistry, Chinese studies, political science, psychology, religious studies, and urban studies, among others, in recent years. From the effects of sexual orientation on mental health to examining how technology replicates social bias against the LGBTQ+ community, students are engaging with the richness of queer lives and their impact in today’s world.

The new minor meets students’ growing interest in the field, providing an academic space for . Consisting of six courses, students taking the minor will engage with the richness of transnational queer lives, their histories, and their futures. The introductory course will provide the foundation for the minor, including a transnational and intersectional lens through which to think about the current field of queer studies. Students will then be encouraged to take other courses offered that center transnational and intersectional queer lenses such as Transnational Queer Cinema, LGBTQ in 20th Century America, Theatre for Social Change, Global Politics of Reproduction, Intersectionality, and Mediated Gender, Race, and Sexuality. The global queer studies minor embodies queer praxis—putting theory into practice – by incorporating practica, peer mentorship, and student-led tutorials and reading groups. The first Introduction to Global Queer Studies course will be offered this fall and students can declare the minor beginning in the 2023-24 academic year.

Posted in News on June 29, 2023.