“With joy, we breach the haze of suffering that denies us creativity and literature. Joy is art is an ethics of resistance.”
-- Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body. 2020
In this class, we will explore the various ways queerness is represented in literary texts. We will contrast these lived realities with the heteronormative portrayals of queerness as tragic, sad, and difficult by exploring texts that present intellectual, sexual, and affective approaches to queer living. To do so, we will look at how queer authors write about self-love, kinship, community, care, and affect in different genres. Together we will reflect on the layers of different forms of violence with an intersectional approach, and form new connections and analyses of queer existences detached from white heteronormativity.
Trigger warning: we will talk about colonial violence, police brutality, sexual violence, physical violence, generational trauma, and queerphobia.
- Enseignant·e: Aybüke Karabiyik