Postgraduate Course: Queering Health and Social Sciences: LGBTQIA+ Perspectives (CNST11096)
Course Outline
| School | School of Health in Social Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will introduce students to key theoretical, philosophical, and historical perspectives, issues and debates on queerness. At the heart of this programme is the view that emphasises a multiplicity of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and + (LGBTQIA+) experiences that are grounded within specific political and ideological contexts. The course uses a decolonial optic that challenges dominant Western centrism within queer studies. The course engages with topics such as the everyday lives of LGBTQIA+ people; the construction of normal and abnormal genders, sexualities, relationships and bodies; queer futures; intersectionality of queer experience while keeping the focus on the locality and particular socio-historical context of queer lives. The course brings resources on transgender, gender expansive, and queer lives, touching upon struggles, resistances, and possibilities from diverse geographical locations and disciplinary perspectives. The implications and applications of such concepts and perspectives to real-world contexts, communities, and disciplines within health and social sciences will be considered. The course is open to counselling students and practitioners as well as other students and professionals such as healthcare and social workers, mental health practitioners, nurses, educators, and related disciplines. |
| Course description |
Historically, research in counselling, health, and social science has seen Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and other nonconforming (LGBTQIA+) people through a heteronormative lens. Sociological, psychological, medical, and legal disciplines have often investigated these populations from a perspective of sexuality, which has created a limited view of what LGBTQIA+ life is and can be. Queer theorists have engaged with those limited conceptualisations of LGBTQIA+ life by showing there is more to queer life than the politics of sexuality. This course will introduce students to some of the key theoretical, philosophical, and historical perspectives, issues, and debates on queerness 'to confront the default heteronormativity of modern culture' (Warner 1991, 16).
The course will engage with the multiplicity of LGBTQIA+ experiences and discuss to expose the axis of power around which queer life is evaluated. Thus, the course departs from a position that questions hegemonic narratives of social dominance, such as: the closet as a paradigmatic symbol of queerness (Adams, 2010), Western gaze as the predominant way of seeing the gay body (Lemebel 2000), contemporary research focusing on perils and struggles of queer life (Lalor 2018), amongst others. The course seeks to explore the potential of LGBTQIA+ life, what queer life can aspire to, dream of, and how it can be made possible like Muñoz's (2009) work on queer futures and queer worldmaking.
Bringing resources from diverse geographical locations and disciplinary perspectives, the course engages with topics such as the everyday lives of LGBTQIA+ people; the construction of identities, genders, sexualities, relationships, and bodies; intersectionality of queer experience; and queer futurity. The implications of such perspectives to real-world contexts, communities, and disciplines within health and social sciences will be considered. The course is open to a range of students from programmes across schools, including counsellors and psychotherapists, healthcare and social workers, mental health practitioners, nurses, educators, and other related disciplines.
Course content will include:
- Introducing Queer theories and the implications of labels, identities, definitions, and language.
- Exploring the histories of normality and abnormality of queer lives and the parameters society uses to tell them apart.
- Queering ways of working with LGBTQIA+ people in mental health settings and other contexts.
- Mapping queerness to explore how the personal becomes political and how gender, sex and sexuality become politicised.
- Reflecting on the legacy of colonialism and the current ways in which coloniality is alive within queer lives and knowledge of LGBTQIA+ people.
- The everyday life and the ordinary: personal, social and cultural converge.
- Beginning to know the plurality and intersections through discussion of the particular challenges of the LGBTQIA+ communities and the marginalisations within.
- Exploring queer futurity and queer thriving.
In teaching this course that focuses on diverse queer experiences in applied social science settings, we are informed by queer pedagogy in our approach to teaching by deconstructing and disrupting the normalcies (Kumashiro 2002; Alexander 2005; Hickman 2011; Seal 2019; Mayo and Roriquez 2019). We are also drawing on Haraway's (1988) situated knowledge, and decolonial theories (Anzaldu'a 2012; Kulpa and Silva 2016; Johnson 2000; Lugones 2007) to speak to the multiplicity and particularity of localised subjectivities. By drawing on different locales and contexts and histories and moving away from the dominance of 'Anglophone hegemony' and Western-centrism (Kulpa and Silva 2016, 140), we want to present students with materials from across different borders. Hence, within our teaching, we will be consistently engaging with often under-represented queer subjectivities from the global South and East.
Challenging some of the entrenched meanings and assumptions can be difficult and unsettling for students (and educators). In facing those uneasy conversations, feelings, and experiences, we do not aspire to create a 'safe space'. Instead, within the class, we want to encourage students to enter uncomfortable, 'brave places' (Arao and Clemens, 2013). As pointed out by Patti Lather (1998), educators (and following them, students) often try to avoid crises, closing off places of stuckness and discomfort in an attempt to maintain some form of control over what students learn. However, such attempts of control can often hinder anti-oppressive change and problematic dynamics within education settings (Kumashiro 2002; Allen 2015). We believe that along with the 'friendly', 'safe' and 'enjoyable' potential of learning environment, 'risky' and 'uncomfortable' are in fact pedagogically productive and, therefore, we want to embrace and cultivate the whole spectrum of spaces and experiences.
Another aspect of 'queering' and 'decolonising' that we will be practicing in delivering this course, is moving away from deductive teaching methods to include more experiential, multimodal and relational teaching practices throughout our course. This incorporates moving away from pure reliance on peer-reviewed academic publications and including art, poetry, films, podcasts, activist sources and other materials that are produced by LGBTQI+ identifying people from around the world (whilst prioritising 'voices' from non-Western locales).
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Part I: 10-minute group presentation (25% of the course mark; takes place in weeks 6-7)
Choose a recent LGBTQIA+-related event, situation, or an aspect of the environment from your context(s) that attracts attention. As a group, you will need to select and focus on one and analyse it from decolonial queer perspective(s).
Part II: A reflective essay (3000 words; 75% of the course mark)
Choose an example of text, imagery, media, or a document that might be relevant to your work, a field of practice or a voluntary role and analyse it using Queer theor(ies) and LGBTQIA+ concepts covered in the course.
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| Feedback |
Students will receive verbal feedback from the tutors during seminar time when engaging in practical and experiential activities. In week 4 or 5, students will be given the opportunity to circulate a reflective piece of writing (up to 700 words) to the rest of their group to inform discussion and generate feedback from peers and tutors within the seminar setting. The formative reflective writing exercise will speak directly to LO3 and could form some of the thinking and generate discussions that they can use for their summative essay submission, but students are able to choose a different topic for formative and summative exercises if they wish. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of key ideas, debates and current approaches in the field of Queer and LGBTQIA+ studies.
- Implement concepts from the course into applied disciplines such as counselling, psychotherapy, health, social sciences, education, social work, medicine, and policy
- Reflect on the implications of the knowledge gained in the course for their own lives, personal, socio-political and professional.
- Applying a Queer lens to critically analyse cases from a range of disciplines and sources, such as contemporary history, literature, media, film, health, legal, and first-person scholarship from different geopolitical locales.
- Evaluate current scholarly approaches and public portrayals of real-world LGBTQIA+ issues.
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Reading List
Anzaldua, Gloria. 2012. Borderlands: La Frontera: the New Mestiza. 25th anniversary edition. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
Beketova, Masha. 2022. 'Methodology of Surzhyk.' Lambda Nordica 27(2), 93-103. https://doi.org/10.34041/ln.v27.790
Glass, Guy Fredrick. 2018. 'Doctor Anonymous: Creating Contexts for Homosexuality as Mental Illness.' Journal of Medical Humanities 39: 101-109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-017-9495-8
Halberstam, Jack. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.' Feminist Studies 14: 575¿99.
Hilderbrand, Lucas. 2013. 'A Suitcase Full of Vaseline, or Travels in the 1970s Gay World.' Journal of the History of Sexuality 22(3): 373-402.
Kulpa, Roberto, and Joseli M. Silva. 2016. 'Decolonizing Queer Epistemologies.', in The Ashgate Research Companion to Geographies of Sex and Sexualities, edited by Gavin Brown and Kath Browne, 139-142. Farnham: Ashgate.
Muñoz, José, Esteban. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. 1st ed. New York: NYU Press.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Critical awareness of LGBTQIA+ issues.
- Application of queer theories to professional settings and practices in the health-related professions.
- Capacity to work with LGBTQIA+ clients, service users and community members.
- Awareness of issues around difference, diversity and power operating within applied health-care settings.
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| Keywords | LGBTQIA+,Queer,Decolonial,Sexuality,Gender,Applied Social Sciences |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Mariya Levitanus
Tel:
Email: Mariya.Levitanus@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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