This program offers an introduction to queer studies and an avenue to continue the study of literature and visual culture that students may have begun in “It’s About Time.” Through the critical study of film and fiction students will expand their appreciation for how words and images open horizons of understanding sex and gender and the cultural politics of sex and gender.

Style (in literature, film, art, fashion, design) is notoriously easy to recognize and challenging to define. You know an Olympia hipster when you see one, but what makes a hipster “hip”?

Queer writers, critics and media artists have historically deployed styles at once visible and elusive. Why? To what effects? (Think: Ziggy Stardust. Think: Margaret Cho.)

This program will explore style as an aesthetic and political practice. We will focus on queer politics and on ways that gender and sexuality might interrupt narratives that, on their surface, appear quite tranquil. Our visual studies will center on narrative cinema; our textual studies will focus on novels. Expect to devote long hours to reading richly stylized fiction, literary criticism and queer theory. Expect also to write expository essays.

A sense of fashion is not a prerequisite, but a willingness to explore style (in your writing, at least) is.