GLBT4204

In America's cultural imagination, people with disabilities are figured either as childlike and asexual, or improperly hypersexual. For disabled people (or anyone perceived as disabled) this paradox has meant denial of sexual agency and gender expression, histories of forced sterilization and institutionalization, sociopolitical marginalization, and great risk of sexual violence (and even death). In this course, we'll examine this history to better understand our contemporary present. We'll analyze constructions of disability and sexuality as they are interwoven with gender, class, race, and citizenship. We will ask: What might it mean to desire disability? Is there a disability sexual culture? Do disabled people queer sex, or does sexuality queer disability? What is the relationship between GLBTQ and disability rights and liberation movements? Drawing from feminist, queer, and disability studies, we'll answer these questions (and more) by examining how the imagined able-bodymind structures our understanding of gender/sexuality, and how disability sexual cultures resist these norms.

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