This course explores a select archive of queer performance work, focusing on contemporary queer aesthetic strategies within a historical lineage of cultural production that is informed by LGBTQI grassroots activism and political formations. We will learn the fundamental terms and theories in the field of performance studies, engage seminal and contemporary artworks, and explore the politics of queer performance by drawing connections to mass media, legislative advancements, and radical liberation struggles. Our readings will draw from intersectional feminist and queer theory, Black studies, disability studies, media studies, and abolitionist thought. We will discuss the works of Lorenza Böttner, Nao Bustamante, Vaginal Davis, Gran Fury, My Barbarian, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, Marlon Riggs, Julie Tolentino, Ultra-red, among others. Additionally, we will stage performance experiments in class as an embodied investigation of the course themes, while also privileging group discussion and peer feedback. This course centers performance as a mode of inquiry to engage the themes of identity, desire, memory, belonging, and systems of power. Our group’s intent will be to examine the historical, aesthetic, and political aspects of queer performance, and to ask the following questions: How is performance art distinct from other creative modes of expression? How can performance create, trace, and share new forms of embodiment, sociality, and resistance? How do artists employ performance to foster queer collectivity and to rehearse alternative visions of a more liberatory world?