This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

We have arrived at a unique historical moment for LGBTQ rights, visibility and inclusion in U.S. society and beyond. What led to such (still evolving) empowerment and activism? Who were some of the bold change makers of the past, and in what ways did different communities negotiate and confront homophobia? How and when did language shift from sodomite to invert to pansy to homosexual, and then to today’s queer or nonbinary? This survey course in American history offers an exciting overview of how, when and where LGBTQ history was made. Beginning with an introduction on origins from the ancient world, the course will focus on religious, cultural, social and political responses to LGBTQ love and desire from early America to the present, with emphasis on the history of identity and activism. We will also examine the rise of psychology, the medicalization of the body, and shifting gender roles in the workplace, the arts, and in wartime. The founding of modern political activism and affinity groups and mainstream media censorship will also receive scrutiny, leading to comparisons of separatist movements and more recent media representation. This class affirms the “L” in LGBTQ as a focus of historical inquiry, asking how women’s relationships, communities of affinity, and criminalization as lesbians differed from the sociopolitical experiences of gay men. How might we “read” women of the past as lesbians? How might women’s roles within the broader LGBT movement now be studied as historical context, after the dramatic twentieth century of increasing visibility and backlash? How have misogyny and the economic limitations placed on women affected perceptions or stereotypes of gay men, transmen and transwomen, and nonbinary queers? How has racism shaped the commercial presentation of who is LGBTQ in America? All students will prepare three different papers: one on religion’s view of female sexuality, another on politics and culture, and a final paper on media and representation. Readings include Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For; Michael Bronski, A Queer History of America; Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A.; Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments; The Stonewall Reader, ed. New York Public Library; and Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York. Instructor bio: Bonnie J. Morris is the author of 19 books and has taught women's sports history for twenty-five years, first at George Washington University and Georgetown, and recently on Semester at Sea, as well as at Cal. She is also a women's history consultant to Disney Animation, the Smithsonian and the State Department.

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Requirements class fulfills