ENG 409 - Television: Queer Representations (=GSS 401)

With its roots in the gendered domestic suburban household, television has a longstanding investment in questions of gender and sexuality.  Pushing back against the assumption that LGBTQ characters did not appear on our screens in a sustained way until the 1980s, this course will investigate how TV representation of queer life have changed with the evolution of the medium since the 1950s.  Recent work in the field of queer TV studies has unearthed queer characters from previously invisible archives, charged changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity in broadcast programming, and documented the organizational strategies  employed by television narrative that disclose and contain expressions of non-normative sexualities.  We will seek to understand the dynamics of visibility and invisibility that structure representations of televised queerness.

Fulfills the Diversity requirement in the English major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.