Queering Geopolitics

Orfalea Center Thematic Research Cluster

Global Genders and Sexualities

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) rights have emerged in the past few decades as a vital area for human rights and transnational activism. Within disciplinary feminist and queer studies, scholarship from Central Europe, Asia, and African nations has challenged the Anglo-American centrism of Queer and Transgender studies. This course will examine the foundational tenets of queer and transgender studies as it emerges in US and UK universities, while challenging a “west to the rest” teleology of these fields. We will read scholarship from and about Asia in order to understand how human rights, queer and transgender scholarship can contribute toward questions about borders, geopolitics, digital culture/ humanities, supra-national institutions and their role in promoting/importing SOGIESC/LGBTQ/ human rights frameworks.
Themes addressed will include:

Queer and Transgender of Color Critique
Queering migration, detention, and border politics
Provincializing Queer Studies
Digital cultures, digital spaces and queer/trans politics
Sexuality, international relations and human rights
Queer/Trans methods and methodologies

Syllabus Forthcoming

Page Editor

riordan

Graduate Assistant (Global Studies). Eugene (he/him/his) is a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After receiving his B.A. from Colgate University with a double major in Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations, he was awarded a Fulbright to work as an English Teaching Assistant in Thailand with TUSEF. Before joining UCSB, Eugene studied, taught, and competed professionally in Ballroom and Latin dance in New York City. Eugene's research focuses on international incarceration, the securitization of sexuality and gender, and security technologies used by authoritarian governments. His work focuses on the Middle East and Southeast Asia.