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Queer Archives: Queer Archives, Aesthetics, and Performance

ENGL 0785.401
also offered as: THAR 0785
Wednesday 1:45-4:44pm

 

This course focuses on questions of how to represent the queer past, which it approaches from several angles: through training in archival methods and in scholarly debates about historiographical ethics; through engagement with the work of artists who make archives central to their practice; and through lab-based training that aims to represent encounters with queer history through embodied performance. The course will address both practical and theoretical issues raised by research in LGBT archives. We will take advantage of local resources in Philadelphia, including the John J. Wilcox Archives at the William Way Center (http://www.waygay.org/archives/) and material housed in the Penn Libraries. We will also engage archives such as the Lesbian Herstory Archives (http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/) and The Downtown Collection at the Fales Library at NYU (https://guides.nyu.edu/downtown-collection) and the Franklin Furnace Performance Archives (http://www.franklinfurnace.org), all in New York City. We will also bring artists to class to work directly with students.

 

English Major Requirements
  • Sector 2 Difference and Diaspora (AEDD)
  • Sector 6 20th & 21st Centuries (AE20)
English Concentration Attributes
  • 20th-21st Century Concentration (AE21)
  • Drama Concentration (AEDR)
  • Gender/Sexuality Concentration (AEGS)
College Attributes