Queer Ethnography

WOMGEN 1400E Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Ethnography is a potent research method for understanding how structures of power function at the level of the everyday. Through participant observation, interview, and co-performance, ethnographers and their interlocutors reveal the capacity for culture to secure, undo, and invent forms of social and political structure. This research method is not fixed in its protocols but flexes and shifts in response to the specificities of the field. Ethnographic studies of gender and sexual dissidents—gay neighborhoods, trans raves, sex work, lesbian parties, BDSM dungeons, AIDS activism—require careful (re)considerations of anonymity, sensationalization, reciprocity, space, identity, and labor. Also, queer ethnographers have reflected on the urgent need to consider the researcher’s own body, comportment, and desire in order to generate more responsible analyses of fieldwork. This class introduces students in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies to ethnographic research methods as they pertain to exploring questions of bodies, pleasure, power, and desire. The curriculum will include experiential opportunities to try on various ethnographic tools, as well as studies of queer ethnographies from a variety of disciplines.