Stanford feminist studies program to offer 'queer-led' electronic music composition class

Stanford University will soon offer a course entitled “Queer Electronic Music Composition,” exploring LGBTQ+ contributions to music through creative projects and “queer-led workshops.”

During the school’s winter quarter, which will begin in January, the university will offer a class entitled “Queer Electronic Music Composition.”

“Queer Electronic Music Composition is a creative course structured around the historical and theoretical contributions of composers from the LBGQT+ community with an emphasis on computer-based electronic music,” the course description explains.

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“Through a series of reading, listening, and media assignments, students will be exposed to the social and historical implications of LGBTQ+ perspectives in music,” the description continues.

According to the department’s course listings, the class will include “queer-led workshops and lectures” that will “provide further insight” into music professionals “who identify as being a part of the LGBTQ+ community.”

“Creative assignments for the course are centered around personal experience and the subversion or ‘queering’ of process and/or perspective,” the course description concludes.

The class will be offered by FEMGEN, which is Stanford’s program for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The instructor listed on the course website is Stephanie Sherriff, who is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts as a graduate student at Stanford.

“In her process she observes, collects, deconstructs, and recomposes plants, light, sound, video, and scents in order to create abstracted, ephemeral forms and sensory experiences,” Sherriff’s biography on Stanford’s website describes.

Other classes offered by Stanford’s FEMGEN program during the winter quarter include “Taylor Swift and Millennial America,” “Comparative Methodologies in Black Sexuality, Queer, and Transgender Studies,” and “Feminist and Sexuality Theories and Methods Across the Disciplines.”

“What does it look, sound, smell, taste, feel like to be sexually liberated?” one course description asks. “How might we find pleasures otherwise forestalled by colonialism and white supremacy in the present-future-past of Black life?”

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FEMGEN will also offer a class on “Gender and Media” which, in its course description, critiques modern media for reinforcing what it sees as a destructive gender binary.

“From childhood, individuals are presented with texts and images about what it means to be female, what it means to be male, but rarely what it means to question that binary,” the class synopsis asserts.

Stanford’s FEMGEN program is not alone. Other examples of similar classes include the University of Maryland offering a class on “Fat Studies,” the University of Colorado-Boulder offering a class exploring feminism by examining Disney characters, and Columbia University offering a course on “Sex, Power, and Performance” in “Chine.”

Campus Reform has contacted Stanford University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.