Transnational Queer Film Studies Returns Fall 2015

GW Students (and students in the consortium!): English 3980W, which is co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Short-Term Study Abroad Office, will be offered again in Fall 2015.  Interested students will need to register through an application process that can be accessed using this link to  GW Study Abroad.

This unique course has run every Fall Semester (except Fall 2014) since 2008.  It is run in collaboration with Charles University in Prague and includes one week in attendance at the Mezipatra International Queer Film Festival.  This course fulfills a WID requirement and can count towards the LGBT/Sexuality Studies Minor.  Students who are alums of the class often identify it as transformative and as one of the best courses they take while at GW.  It has been featured several times in this blog and in the GW Hatchet; the first Hatchet story is accessible here.

This is an upper-level undergraduate course, but some graduate students have taken the course for graduate credit with special permission (and extra assigments).

Here is the full course description:

Queer Filmmaker Todd Haynes addresses
Mezipatra (and GW students)

The interdisciplinary field that has come to be called "queer" studies over the past two decades has always concerned itself with questions of representation: how are, for instance, lesbians and gay men, or transgendered people, represented in film, in novels, and in other forms of media?  As the field has developed, these question of representation have increasingly been linked to other, complex questions involving political economy, globalization, and transnationalism: in what ways have LGBTQ people been incorporated into contemporary nation-states? What identities and desires threaten "the nation" as it is currently (and variously) materialized in our world?  How have identities such as "gay" and "lesbian" circulated globally?  How have those recognizable minority identities come into contact and conflict with other ways of identifying around non-normative desires?  Have those identities at times functioned imperialistically, especially as "gay tourism" has become a recognizable part of global capitalism?

Conversely, what kinds of unexpected alliances have been shaped across borders as queer movements have globalized?  How have these movements theorized race, gender, class, and ability; what connections have been made with other movements organized around identity?  This course will thus consider how questions of queer representation, particularly in film, converge with questions of queer globalization(s). The majority of the course takes place on GW campus, but includes an international component in November that requires students to travel to Prague, Czech Republic. While abroad, students will attend the Mezipatra Prague International LGBTQ Film Festival and attend class sessions co-taught by Professor Katerina Kolarova from Charles University's department of Gender Studies. Students will also be able to engage in discussions with Charles University students who will also be participating in these overseas class lectures.

Please direct any questions to Professor Robert McRuer: rmcruer@gwu.edu

Professors Mitchell and McRuer Receive Award for Outstanding Journal Reviewers

The Journal of Literary and Cultural
Disability Studies

Have you ever wondered how those scholarly articles that you use in your research papers make it into print?  Perhaps you’ve even wondered what would happen to one of your own projects if you pursued it beyond the end of the semester and attempted to place it in an academic journal?

Most journals in literary and cultural studies utilize a process called “peer review.”  This means that when you send your work to a journal, the editor-in-chief or a board of editors send your piece, in turn, to experts in the field.  The process is usually anonymous; your name and identifying characteristics (such as your university) are removed as the piece is sent out to these experts.  The article is then read and commented upon.  The peer reviewers also make recommendations: accept, revise and resubmit, etc.  The process, at its best, is a generative one for the scholar whose work is being considered for publication.  Even if the journal ultimately decides not to accept your piece, you receive thick feedback that might include ways to improve the piece, other scholarly work to consider as you continue working on it, or other venues that might be amenable to its publication.

GW English is happy to announce that Professors David Mitchell and Robert McRuer have received an award for their work as peer reviewers.  Both professors are on the board of the prestigious Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (JLCDS), published by Liverpool University Press.  The press announced last week that Professors Mitchell and McRuer had received an inaugural Award for Outstanding Journal Reviewers from JLCDS.  You can read the announcement from Liverpool University Press here.

GW English and American Studies students and alums have, over the years, published important pieces in JLCDS.  In issue 5.3, Kathleen Brian published “The Reclamation of Anna Agnew: Violence, Victimhood, and the Uses of Cure” and Reed Cooley published “Disabling Spectacles: Representations of Trig Palin and Cognitive Disability.”  A year later, in issue 6.2, Julie Passanante Elman published “‘Nothing Feels as Real’: Teen Sick-Lit, Sadness, and the Conditions of Adolescence.”  Most recently, Naomi Lesley’s “Disability, Giftedness, and Race in Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman Novels” appeared in issue 8.1.