Exciting Online Summer 2023 Courses

Check out these exciting online summer courses!

LGBT 327 LGBT Film and Video a DSHU & DVUP
WGSS 290 Bodies in Contention a DSHS, DVUP, & SCIS
WGSS 298W Monsters and Racism: Black Horror & Speculative Fiction a DSHU
WGSS 379L Online and in the Streets: Protest and Activism in Latin American Feminist Movements a Global Classrooms course

LGBT 327 WB41: LGBTQ Film and Video
James Goodwin
July 10 - July 28
Online
Gen Eds: DSHU, DVUP
Restriction: Junior standing or higher.
Comparative analysis of forms, themes, and the politics of representation in film and video by and/or about LGBT people. This course begins from the premise that movies are designed to give us a variety of meaningful viewing experiences, sometimes pleasurable, sometimes not. The class teaches a range of analytical approaches for understanding how films create meanings and what those meanings may be. In this course, we will trace both the diversity and similarities between global and Western representations of what we call homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identities as represented in film and video.

WGSS 290 WB21: Bodies in Contention: Black Bodies in Visual Culture
Zenzele Isoke
July 10 - August 18
Online
Gen Eds: DSHS, DVUP, SCIS

Explores the contributions of feminist scholarship in framing and resolving contemporary controversies concerning gendered bodies. It includes the ways in which knowledge about the human body has been shaped by cultural ideas of gender, race, sexuality and ability.

To do this the course will explore the nude form in Black visual culture.  We will study how black  artists have created representations and black masculinity and black femininity that both refuse and upend the normative gaze of white supremacy. Centering an ethics of black queer pleasure, we will study how the black nude form can serve as an aesthetic framework for sexual healing and belonging for African descendant people. 

WGSS298W WB11: Topics in WGSS - Monsters and Racism: Black Horror & Speculative Fiction
Sydney Lewis
May 30, 2023 - July 7, 2023
Online
Gen Eds: DSHU

The previous decade has been considered a renaissance for Black Horror. From Get Out to Lovecraft Country, the genre has enjoyed unprecedented mainstream media buzz and accolades. This course looks at contemporary Black horror and speculative fiction as cultural texts which put into question our notions of human(e) and inhuman(e) through critiques of white supremacy and accompanying oppressions. Students will learn a host of critical skills through close reading and analysis of literature and film by Black creators such as Jordan Peele, Misha Green, Toni Morrison, Jewelle Gomez, and Octavia Butler. With the ability to interpret cultural texts using literary criticism, film analysis, history, cultural studies, ethnic studies, feminist theory, and the social sciences, students will connect these texts to continuing historical and contemporary issues of racial and cultural oppression such as medical discrimination, policing and criminalization, misogynoir, and racialized capitalism. If you need assistance registering for this course, please contact wgss@umd.edu

WGSS 379L GC01 Topics in WGSS - Online and In the Streets: Protest and Activism in Latin American Feminist Movements 

Sabrina Gonzalez
July 10, 2023 - July 28, 2023
Class meets online on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5pm-7pm EST
An interdisciplinary approach to Latin American and Caribbean history, culture, and politics, through the lenses of feminist protest and women's activism. The class explores how activists fight for change, both online and in the streets and how feminist agendas changed over time. Taught in collaboration with Universidad Nacional de Tres Febrero, Argentina. Students will share discussions with students from Argentina and learn from scholars and activists from the Global South.