LGBTQ Studies: An Open Introduction

Below is a current outline/table of contents for this project.

1. Introducing LGBTQ Studies

   Narrative: An overview of LGBTQ Studies, and the textbook, emphasizing the learning outcomes listed above.
2. Modern/20th Century LGBTQ History

   Abstract: The chapter briefly traces the development of LGBTQ as concepts, identity, and movements in the United States from white settle colonialism through the nineteenth century before concentrating on the twentieth century. Colonial Europeans established marital reproduction and a sexual double standard within gender roles as norms. The imposition of European norms queered and punished indigenous gender and sexual variation while policing white colonists and furthering inherited enslaved status for most people of African descent (Allen, Jacobs & Thomas, Roscoe). The dominant universalizing view that sexuality was behavior rather than identity formed the basis of church and state rules against sodomy and cross-dressing as sins and crimes (Sedgwick). The chapter briefly considers the inclusion of same-gender romantic friendships in normative concepts of gender relations for the late 1700s through mid-1800s when society sought to define women as passionless (Hansen, Lystra, Smith-Rosenberg). during the late nineteenth century communities based on same-sex desire were forming in cities like New York and Miami. Like same-sex relationships that occurred in areas with extreme gender imbalances, these early communities had their own self-understanding of identities (Atkins, Boyd, Capó, Chauncey, S. Johnson). Simultaneously, European sexologists’ repackaging of marital reproduction and widespread views on sin and criminality with medical science language articulated the concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality (Katz). Sexology introduced the idea that same-sex attraction was a pathological identity born of mental illness that correlated with gender transgression (Chauncey, Duggan, Newton, Somerville). World War II spread the normalization of heterosexuality and negative construction of the “homosexual” as military officials and psychologists tried to bar gay men from military service. Gay and lesbian communities proliferated with the war, especially in cities with a military presence (Bérubé, D’Emilio, Kennedy & Davis). In the context of the postwar Cold War, federal, state, and local authorities tried to regulate for a “straight state,” but LGBTQ communities further institutionalized and began organizing for civil rights (Canaday, D. Johnson). This chapter considers political strategies, including using the African American Civil Rights movement as a model, radical left influences, and cross-pollination from 1960s and 1970s student organizing and feminism (D’Emilio, Hobson, Pomerleau). In response to the AIDS epidemic, LGBTQ Americans organized new institutions and created new methods to get needed resources, which furthered debate over tactics with the rise of queer politics revising the terms of liberal assimilation and rights compared to liberation and radical transformation of society (Duggan, McKay, Roth, Shiltz, Warner).
3. LGBTQ Legal History in the United States

   This chapter on LGBTQ legal history in the United States begins with an overview of the U.S. Constitution. Such an approach allows a broader examination of the system of rights under which the US lgbtq communities have been situated. The goal of beginning in such manner is twofold: on the one hand it offers critical analysis of the ways in which legal understanding of the rights have evolved and, to figure out moving forward, other possibilities . Secondly, as articulated in Bowers, this history is where the Supreme Court began its analysis when first considering the violation of the right to privacy. The chapter will begin with brief overview of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments of the constitution, in which common understandings of universal rights were enumerated. It is well known that such universality was not, indeed, universal as our constitution allowed for the specific exclusion of African humans who became defined as property through slavery. Women, too, were broadly denied access to any number of rights from enfranchisement to the ability to own property as married women. The chapter will look at the post-civil war era amendments in particular the 14th amendment which includes the “equal protection clause” and the “due process clause.” During this period morality laws, often under the guise of “public health,” were enacted nationwide. States during this time assumed an increasing role in regulating people’s lives. This context provides the basis for developing a fuller understanding of the Supreme Court decisions that finally recognized criminal sodomy laws were unconstitutional and, most recently, the right of same-sex couples to marry.

   1. Research Profile: “Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crimes in the United States: Histories and Debates”
4. Understanding Prejudices against LGBTQ people

   The chapter begins with a overview of the various opinion polls that have attempted to capture current and changing attitudes toward homosexuality and LGBTQ people around the world. The next section will describe the impact negative attitudes and stigma have on the lives of LGBTQ people, including: the effects of internalized prejudice on mental and physical health; the prevelance of anti-LGBTQ violence; discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, education, etc.; and various other forms of structural violence experienced by LGBTQ people. It will then review various research and theories that describe the consequences of being the target of these these attitudes (i.e., minority stress) as well as research and theories describing resilience and coping. The next section will explore the reasons and motivations for anti-homosexual prejudice; the implications different epistemologies and political philosophies have had in shaping our definitions of and explanations for this prejudice; and how all of this has changed over the past half-century and continues to change. The next section will review attempts to measure attitudes toward homosexuality and LGBTQ people over the past 50 years. It will critically review these attempts, highlighting some of the enduring criticisms about things like: sampling; operationalization; reliance on implicit assimilationist theories that reject difference; and privileging benign tolerance over positive or pro-diversity attitudes. The next section highlights several more recent theories and approaches measurement, including: modern, subtle, and implicit bias; use of multidimensional frameworks; and greater focus on pro-LGBTQ attitudes and positive beliefs. The final section will explore how researchers around the world are attempting to conceptualize and measure anti-homosexual and anti-LGBTQ prejudice.

   1. Research Profile: “Social Stigma and Sexual Minorities”
5. Thirty Years of Queer Theory

   This chapter is divided into four sections: 1) the emergence of queer theory and queer theoretical interventions into understandings of gender and sexual identities, 2) key concepts and theorists in queer theory, 3) queer theory at the intersection of gender, race, and ability, and 4) concluding thoughts. The first section identifies early influences on the development of queer theory and explains the difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist theories of identity. It begins a discussion of queer theory’s influence on the study of gender and sexuality across the disciplines. The second section identifies theorists who have played vital roles in the development of queer theory, including Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Tim Dean, Jose Esteban Muñoz, Lee Edelman, Jasbir Puar, Lisa Duggan, Michael Warner, and Lauren Berlant. This section brings theorists into conversation to demonstrate the dynamism of the field and explore tensions within it. The third section considers the work of theorists who produce scholarship at the intersection of queer theory, transgender studies, critical race studies, and/or disability studies. Key theorists and ideas are highlighted. The fourth section will summarize key ideas in queer theory discussed throughout the chapter to provide a clear and concise take away of a field with a short but lively history. This chapter is not meant to be exhaustive, but instead provides a strong overview of scholarship published in the field of queer theory since 1990.
6. Queer New World: Challenging Heteronormativity in Archaeology

   The archaeological study of sex and sexuality has emerged relatively recently out of feminist and gender studies. In this chapter I survey the development and current state of sexuality studies in archaeology with reference to the interests of queer theory including problematic binaries, performance, abjection, normativity, and intersectionality. These interests are explored though examples of non-heteronormative behaviors and identities in ancient Mesoamerica and the Andes. Heteronormativity is ignored by many archaeologists, but we must address alternatives if we are to people the past with something other than versions of ourselves.
7. Global Sexualities: LGBTQ Anthropology past, present and future

   Throughout the world, sexuality has many different functions, meanings, practices, and methods of conceptualization. Across different cultures and societies, as well as throughout various histories, sexuality has come to define an entire spectrum of phenomena. This chapter will explain the varied and often divergent viewpoints on sexuality practices, their cultural contexts, and the ways in which they intersect with gender, race, religion, class, age, and region. It will serve as in introduction to the keywords surrounding sexuality as well as a comparative study between Western and non-Western methods of defining and practicing sexuality, with an emphasis on de-centering historically dominant ideological (white, colonialist, Western, heteronormative, masculinist) sexuality models. Using this frame, the chapter will make connections between sexuality and its various usages – as a practice spanning across the pursuits of reproduction and kinship, community, pleasure, and protest.

   1. Research Profile: LGBTIQ Rights in Kenya: On Artivism and Social Change
8. Given, Expected, Rejected, Chosen: The Challenges and Possibilities of LGBTQ Families, Relationships, and Parenting

   This chapter will provide an overview of research and practice as it relates to LGBTQ families, relationships, and parenting. It will begin by describing the various definitions LGBTQ people have for “family”, and the relationships LGBTQ individuals have with their families of origin. It will then investigate how minority stress, family acceptance, and rejection impact these relationships. The next section will describe the various ways that LGBTQ people form intimate relationships, including how people in these relationships navigate established (often homophobic) social and legal systems, and how recent social and legal changes (e.g., marriage equality) affect these relationships. The next section will describe the nature and prevalence of LGBTQ-headed families with children, and the various ways that LGBTQ people become parents. It will then review the changing legal landscape as it relates to same-sex parenting and family building, and describes some of the challenges they face when interacting with legal systems, health care and human service providers, and educators. The final section will consider what it means to come out as LGBTQ to one’s children. Each section will include a critical exploration of the scientific literatures; challenge existing anti-LGBTQ myths; and identify existing resources and organizations that support LGBTQ families.

   1. Research Profile: “LGBTQ+ Family-Building: Challenges & Opportunity”
9. Education and LGBTQ+ Youth

   Youth spend the majority of their lives involved in schools and associated activities. Concurrent with social and emotional development, LGBTQ youths’ sexual and gender identities are evolving. Some LGBTQ youth face challenges with underrepresentation in school curricula, lack of educational programming, and discrimination, harassment, and oppression by peers, teachers, and parents. However, with the changing cultural narrative towards acceptance, LGBTQ youth are finding more than ever before environments that are accepting, access to LGBTQ tailored-services, and opportunities to connect with other youth through GSAs and other youth programming. This chapter focuses on the current social and educational barriers to healthy LGBTQ youth development, such as inequities and injustice, in addition to LGBTQ youths’ resiliency, and the role of supportive adults in facilitating positive youth development.
10. LGBTQ Health and Wellness

    LGBTQ Health and Wellness will examine six themes: History and culture of medicine and LGBTQ people (examining the medicalization of queer sexuality, resistance to pathologizing queer sexuality, queer communities taking health into their own hands, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic); vulnerabilities across the lifespan and across intersectional identities (derived from the Institute of Medicine's [2011] report and comprehending that race, ethnicity, ability/disability also figure into queer health issues); disease prevention and health promotion (discussing both infectious disease, like STIs, and lifestyle diseases, like type 2 diabetes); mental health (with attention to family and social stigma, depression, and substance use); transgender people’s health (both mental and physical health at various stages in transition processes); and being a smart patient and healthcare consumer (including how to select a primary care provider or specialist, what to ask a health care provider, and what a patient needs to tell a provider).
11. Screening LGBTQ

    Questions of visibility and representation in film have risen to the forefront of cultural discourse in recent years, but they have always surrounded the presence (and absence) of gender and sexual minorities on screens of all sizes. Framing its discussion through debates new and old, this chapter examines the emergence of various forms of LGBTQ film and media from the beginnings of the cinematic form to the contemporary milieu of DIY webseries and handheld smart screens. The chapter takes as axiomatic the notion that cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality are always inflected by cultural conceptions of race, class, ability, and other elements of identity and grounds its analysis and commentary in perspectives informed by postcolonial thought, critical race theory, Marxist critique, and disability studies as well as queer theory and feminism. It addresses milestone films and other visual media along with significant laws, political contexts, technological developments, genres and movements, prominent individuals, and controversies. While it touches briefly on international film, space constraints limit the primary focus to the United States.

    1. Research Profile: “How One Day at a Time Celebrates Calling In as an Alternative to Traumatic LGBTQ Tropes in Television”
12. Religion

    The crossroads where queer and genderqueer identities intersect with religious belief or faith is a vast topic that encompasses a host of interlocking and unique factors. No faith system is a monolith; each is comprised of sections, groups, and denominations that likewise hold internal beliefs and practices that vary across the communities that comprise them. This chapter will provide a broad overview of attitudes held by the major faith systems toward queer and genderqueer expression, with a deeper exploration of selected sample experiences within the larger faith groups. Included will be a discussion of assertively nontraditional, pro-queer theologies and conceptions of holy sexuality. Facets of queer and genderqueer experience within Christianity and Islam will be emphasized, as these dominant faith systems make up more than half the global population (Pew Research Center, 2017). A section of this chapter will explore the expectation of conflict between sexual and religious identities that often presumes a goal of reconciliation or coherence, and will provide arguments both that support and that interrupt this assumption of identity discordance and its impact. Illustrations will be drawn from qualitative studies of LGBT-identified faith communities as well as from artists whose work lies in these overlapping arenas. Consideration will be made of the trajectory of religious freedom, particularly in the United States, and how the first amendment has been deployed by conservatives to impede access to civil rights and liberties by LGBT people.
13. LGBTQ Literature

    1. Research Profile: Children’s Literature
    2. Research Profile: YA Adult Literature
14. A Guide to Online Research in LGBTQ studies

    Students and researchers face challenges in locating and evaluating LGBTQ content for academic purposes. In this chapter, the authors will discuss search strategies to employ in search engines, databases, and social media platforms for LGBTQ content. They will also recommend some widely available online resources that contain LGBTQ content for researchers. Engaging with information literacy concepts, the authors will explore questions related to the creation and preservation of information, ethical research practices, and the evaluation of online LGBTQ content for academic and research purposes.