RIT offers 'Queer and Transgender Studies Immersion' with courses on 'Queer Looks' and 'Sex for Sale'
The Rochester Institute of Technology is offering students an opportunity to immerse themselves in 'Queer and Transgender Studies.'
Immersion requirements can be met with completion of courses like 'Queer Looks,' 'Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Sex Work, and Sex Trade,' and 'Queering Gender.'
The Rochester Institute of Technology is offering students an opportunity to immerse themselves in “Queer and Transgender Studies.”
The upstate New York school requires those who want to complete the immersion to take one required course and two additional classes of their choice.
“The queer and transgender studies immersion is an interdisciplinary set of courses whose primary concern is the critical study of cultures, creative expressions, histories, economic structures, and socio-political and legal institutions as they impact the formation of queer and transgender identities and the lives and experiences of people in the LGBTQ+ community,” a program description says.
The required course is called “Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies,” which “examines a broad range of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues within the historical, psychological, racial, theological, cultural, and legal contexts in which we live.”
Students must further take two more courses from a list of twelve options, which may include “Queer Looks,” “Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Sex Work, and Sex Trade,” “Queering Gender,” and “Gender and Sexuality in Hispanic Studies.”
The “Queering Gender” course affirms that “sexuality, gender and gender identity is neither fixed nor innate.” Class enrollees will be able to learn about various topics, such as “queer theory.”
“Students will explore the unique political, legal, and interpersonal challenges faced by those embracing queer identity as well as the diversity of gender identities and expressions,” the description continues.
Another course, “Performing Identity in Popular Media,” combines LGBT identity with media.
“This class is a critical, theoretical, and practical examination of the constitution and performance of personal identity within popular media as it relates to identity politics in everyday life,” the description notes.
Many colleges and universities around the nation offer students with LGBT-themed courses from a multitude of angles.
Students at Cornell University can take a course this fall called “Ecological Justice,” which offers “an in-depth study of ecological justice from feminist, queer, and trans perspectives.”
Similarly, the Five College Consortium in Massachusetts has a full list of courses that fulfill requirements to earn a “Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies” certificate.
Some LGBT courses study the experience of queerness in a particular location. For example, Barnard College, a private school in New York City, offers undergraduate students with a course on “Queer Caribbean Critique” in order to study “same-sex desire in the Caribbean region.”
Campus Reform has contacted the Rochester Institute of Technology for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
