Trans programmers using electronic art to resist state surveillance. Rural queers making DIY radio to reach their far-flung comrades. Gender-fluid teens swapping romantic fanfiction online. This class explores how queer and trans people build our own media in order to survive and thrive. It also discusses how queer and trans identities shape the critical study of media today. In this course, we’ll use critical essays, archival documents, audio and film documentary, and video games to explore the relationship between queer and trans identities and media studies. You’ll also meet trans and queer innovators and artists working across various media forms. Assessment will include occasional quizzes and low stakes writing, a midterm research proposal, and either a final media project or a final paper. Students from all identities and disciplinary backgrounds are welcome.

This undergraduate course provides an introduction to queer and trans film. Through critically watching, analyzing and writing about queer and trans cinema, students will learn about queer and trans history, theory, and narrative. Beginning with early queer cinema such as films within the "New Queer Cinema," to more recent mainstream, independent, queer and trans contemporary cinema, students will learn about the theoretical movements that underpin queer and trans filmmaking and recent developments in genre and technology. Specifically this course tracks queer film developments and explores cinematic elements in representative films in weekly screenings with a special emphasis on queer and transgender of color film. These screenings will introduce theoretical and cultural topics and issues relevant to the films shown from the nineties which include The Watermelon Woman directed by Cheryl Dunye (1996) Paris Is Burning directed by Jennie Livingston (1990), Tongues Untied by Marlon Riggs (1989) Silverlake Life directed by Tom Joslin and Peter Friedman (1993), and Go Fish directed by Rose Troche (1994). The course then moves to contemporary narrative films such as Boys Don’t Cry by Kimberly Pierce (1999), Saving Face by Alice Wu 2012), By Hook or by Crook directed by Silas Howard and Harry Dodge then to Moonlight directed by Barry Jenkins (2016), Spa Night by Andrew Ahn (2016), and Portrait of a Lady on Fire directed by Céline Sciamma (2019) and Framing Agnes by Chase Joynt to help students further develop an understanding of queer and trans film narrative, structure, politics, adaptation, gender, and politics. In addition to analysing and discussing film, students will learn and create short original queer and trans screenplays inspired by the films and student interests. In doing so, students will implement cinematic leaning into creative action. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of the history and complexity of queer and trans film, and will be able to critically read, analyze, and write about queer film from a variety of perspectives.