A controversial new course held at the esteemed Princeton University will teach students how to “read queerly.” The program will aim to educate students on the “theory, narrative, and aesthetics” of “queer literatures.”
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According to the official description of the syllabus, the course will involve reading “from various trajectories of queer literature and engage what it means to read queerly” as part of the “Queer Literatures: Theory, Narrative, and Aesthetics” course.
“We will consider the historical etymology of the term queer and think through its affiliate terms and acronyms: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans,” the description continues. “We will investigate how discourses of power and institutions of normativity have come up against queer bodies, narratives, and politic—and how such encounters are historically situated.”
As students go through the taught material, they will be urged to “pay close attention to the ways in which desire, gender, and sexuality are queerly told.” Campus Reform reported that the program is run in conjunction with the Department of English, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Program in American Studies.
The course is to include readings from various poets and authors, some of whom are known to be highly controversial. One of these is Eli Claire, who is author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation,
This work is described as an anthology on “disability politics,” is described as an “intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance,” as well as an “exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, [and] gender and the body politic” that calls for “social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone.”
Students will also study Mean, the memoir of “queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, writer,” and schoolteacher Myriam Gurba, which will supposedly provide students with an opportunity to learn about the author’s experience growing up “as a queer, mixed-race Chicana.”
Through the viewpoint of “radical formal fluidity,” Gurba “takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race” in a “confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.”
“Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty,” Gurba penned in a section of the book’s description. “Being rude to men who deserve it is a holy mission.”
Comments of concern regarding the newly introduced curriculum came in thick and fast on Facebook. “Sure, because that’ll get you a really good job someday *facepalm*” one person wrote. “When I went to college I was forced to view everything as feminist, and now this,” another added.
“This item must be from The Onion.”