GNDR A105: Introduction to Queer and Sexuality Studies

Course Outline of Record
Item	Value
Eff Term	Fall 2026
Curriculum Committee Approval Date	11/12/2025
Top Code	220110 - Women's Studies
Units	3 Total Units (Lecture Units 3)
Hours	54 Total Hours (Lecture Hours 54)
Total Outside of Class Hours	108
Total Student Learning Hours	162
Course Credit Status	Credit: Degree Applicable (D)
Material Fee	No
Basic Skills	Not Basic Skills (N)
Repeatable	No
Open Entry/Open Exit	No
Grading Policy	Standard Letter (S)
Associate Arts Local General Education (GE)	Area 4 Social and Behavioral Sciences 4B Social and Economic Institutions (OD2) Area 4 Social and Behavioral Sciences 4C Behavioral Science (OD3)
Associate Science Local General Education (GE)	Area 4 Social and Behavioral Sciences (OSD)

Course Description

Celebrates queer communities in the U.S. and worldwide. Explores interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the historical, cultural, and ideological forces that shape LGBTQ+ identities. Considers how queer and trans groups organize and present themselves through activism, resistance, cultural organizations, media, etc. Highlights ongoing struggles for decolonization, equity, and social justice with an emphasis on how queerness intersects with race, class, immigration status, dis/ability, and other categories. Students will leave empowered to make contributions to their own communities. Transfer Credit: CSU; UC.

Course Level Student Learning Outcome(s)

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to Identify and analyze intersecting identities and the challenges of inclusivity in LGBTQIA+ communities.
Assess queer resistance to social investment in maintaining binaries and cisheteropatriarchy.
Explain the history of queer activism and connect it to other social justice movements.

Course Objectives

Identify theoretical models and research methodologies in queer studies, such as queering and transing.
Describe gender, sex, and sexual practices before sexuality become an identity, during that transition, and after it was solidified.
Explain how the early gay rights movement developed into today’s queer rights movements. Connect these to other social justice movements.
Analyze historic and contemporary discrimination against people of alternate genders, sexes, and sexualities. Highlight queer resistance to stereotypes, bullying, and hate crimes.
Examine queer art, culture, music, film, television, social media, literature, and poetry.
Consider the rise of new queer identities and how they both add to and challenge existing communities.
Explore the connections between policing queers, immigrants, and other marginalized communities. Consider how this ties in to the rise of the carceral state.
Interpret local queer culture and communities in Orange County and Southern California and assess how queer people engage in politics, and how politicians (mainstream and otherwise) deal with LGBTQIA+ constituents and issues.
Celebrate queer joy, encouraging students to consider how they can make contributions to their own communities.

Lecture Content

Introducing Sexuality, Sex and Gender
1. Essentialism vs. social constructionism
2. Problematizing binaristic and identitarian paradigms
3. Transgender, intersex, and non-binary identities
4. Gender performativity and queer identity
5. Defining, undefining, and redefining lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer identities, and the “plus” in LGBTQ+
6. Intersectionality and social locations: sexual orientation and race, class, gender, age, disability, documentation status
Before Identity: The Ancient World through the 19th Century
1. Topics such as:
  1. Greek sexuality
  2. Gender variance in pre-Columbian America, India, Samoa, etc.
  3. Same-sex relationships/desires in Judeo-Christian cultures
  4. Gender identity in Colonial America
  5. “Passing”
2. Sexuality in the Victorian Era
  1. Homosociality and Romantic Friendships
  2. Boston marriages
  3. Gender Frontiers and the Queer West
Creating Identity: the 19th and early 20th centuries
1. Scientific racism and the “homosexual” body
2. Establishing heteronormativity and the “deviant homosexual”
3. Sexology, psychology, and homosexuality
  1. The Kinsey Study
4. Criminalizing homosexuality
5. The rise of queer communities and subcultures, urban life, pansy clubs, and sexuality in the jazz age
6. Homophile societies such as Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society
7. World War II: McCarthyism and the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany
8. Feminism and the visibility of lesbian identity
Gay Rights to Queer Rights
1. Before and after Stonewall
  1. Freedom of speech in publication
  2. De-criminalization of sexual acts
  3. Employment protection
2. Gay Rights: civil rights, free love, in-group racism, and the gay liberation front
3. Intersectional identities and the critique of privilege and homonormativity: radical lesbians, black feminism, and the bisexual debate
4. The Reagan Era: reactionary homophobia and antigay backlash
5. Religious intolerance and acceptance
6. The invisibility and visibility of AIDS and AIDS activism
7. Queer-inflected, disruptive activism in Act Up and Queer Nation practices
Stereotypes, Bullying, and Hate Crimes
1. LGBTQ+ stereotypes and bullying
  1. Families of origin and upbringing
  2. Appearance and expression
  3. Intersecting identities in LGBTQ+ communities
2. The impact of hate crimes on the LGBTQ+ community
  1. The history of violence
  2. Characteristics of hate crimes
  3. The evolution of hate crime laws
LGBTQ+ “Pride”
1. The evolution of pride in the United States
2. The “Politics of Pride”
3. Pride in other countries
4. Gay Shame
5. Dyke March
6. Trans March
The coming out process
1. Overcoming shame and accepting an identity
2. Challenges in coming out to family and generational differences
3. Challenges in coming out at school
4. LGBTQ+ youth, bullying, and suicide
5. LGBTQ+ youth homelessness
Queer Theory, Studies, and Art
1. Developing queer politics, communities, and aesthetics
2. Queer performativity and critiques of identity politics
3. Queer and “embracing ‘strange’” in art and activism
4. New Queer Cinema
The AIDS epidemic
1. Identifying the “gay cancer”
2. Impact on families: a generation disappears
3. Evolution of the disease and public education
4. Prevention and treatment
5. ACT-UP
6. Safe sex campaigns
Major Debates: Freedom, Heteronormativity, and Assimilation
1. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
2. Marriage Equality: DOMA
3. Proposition 8
4. Obergefell v. Hodges – Gay Marriage Revisited
5. Adoption
6. The search for a gay gene
7. Dis/ability advocacy in the queer community
8. Queering sex as resistance
Mainstreaming of Gay Life in the 1990s
1. Prime-time network television centralizing gay and lesbian narratives
2. Gay and lesbian-targeted advertising
3. Political/activist agenda opts for normalcy, elides “embracing strange”
4. Growing acceptance of middle and upper middle class white queerness
5. Mainstreaming and re-asserting the binary, marginalization of race/ethnicity, and non-normative sexualities and identities
6. Commodification, interpellation, neoliberalism
Transgender Studies, Identities, Activism, and Culture
1. Disentangling gender identity and sexual orientation
2. Trans identities and history
3. Gender affirmation, gender euphoria
4. Trans activism and allyship
5. Cisnormativity, cissexism and transphobia
6. Trans*feminisms
7. Resistant trans activism, art, and culture
8. Trans media representation
Border Wars, Sanctioned Violence, and the Carceral State
1. Policing sex and gender through the criminal justice system and the Prison-Industrial Complex
2. Hate crime legislation
3. Violence against transgender and nonbinary people of color
4. Safe Spaces
Popular Culture
1. Historicizing queer pop culture: lesbian pulp fiction, riot grrrl, zines, performativity, parody, drag, camp, fanfiction
2. Representations of LGBTQ+ in television and film
3. LGBTQ+ and the sports media complex
4. Queer visibility through commodity culture
5. Identities, the internet, fanfiction, and new media
LGBTQ+ culture in Orange County and Southern California
1. Suburbia, heteronormativity, and challenges to it
2. Melodyland’s gay conversion therapy
3. 1978 Briggs Initiative
4. Gay/Lesbian/Queer bars before and after the pandemic
  1. Velvet in Santa Ana
  2. Strut in Costa Mesa
  3. Studio K at Knott’s Berry Farm
  4. Boom Boom Room in Laguna Beach
5. Hook-up culture and dating apps
6. OCC Pride Scholars
7. Organizations listed under the “Representative Textbooks and Other Instructional Materials” section below
Contemporary Politics
1. The nation, citizenship, and heteronormativity
2. LGBTQ+ access to insurance, housing, and employment
3. Creating and reproducing families
4. Contemporary violent homophobia and the Pulse mass shooting in Orlando
5. BLM and trans inclusion
6. Female masculinity, butch/stud, and the scapegoating of femininity
7. Disrupting a politics of respectability
8. Trans rights activism
9. Sex worker rights
LGBTQ+ Contemporary Issues and Futures
1. LGBTQ and contemporary diasporic communities
2. Queer hashtag activism
3. Social media, community, and sexual orientation/gender identity
4. Cancel culture
5. Other contemporary issues

Method(s) of Instruction

Lecture (02)
DE Live Online Lecture (02S)
DE Online Lecture (02X)

Instructional Techniques

Lectures, group discussions, research projects, media presentations, field trips, campus engagement and other instructional techniques that are culturally relevant and grounded in DEIA research and teaching materials.

Reading Assignments

Weekly reading on topics such as intersecting identities and LGBTQ+ decolonial cultural contexts found in class textbooks, websites, and journal articles assigned from textbooks, articles, other media sources. Approximately 3 hours per week.

Writing Assignments

Weekly homework questions/reflections on topics such as the gender binary, LGBTQ+ stereotypes, intersectionality, or other topics from assigned readings. Research projects such as writing and/or presenting an original investigation into any queer cultural identity and its meanings to its participants; investigation into public policy and legal status concerning LGBTQ+ people including discrimination in housing or employment, bullying, marriage, education, or media. Project formats can include media presentations such as Prezi or PowerPoint, or a written report. Approximately 1 hour per week.

Out-of-class Assignments

Much of the reading and writing assignments will be required outside of the class as homework and preparation for evaluations. Approximately an additional 2 hours per week, These may include assignments listed under reading or writing such as: Out-of-class assignment: Weekly reading on topics such as intersecting identities and LGBTQ+ decolonial cultural contexts found in class textbooks, websites, and journal articles. Out-of-class assignment: Weekly homework questions/reflections on topics such as the gender binary, LGBTQ+ stereotypes, intersectionality, or other topics from assigned readings. Out-of-class assignment: Research projects such as writing and/or presenting an original investigation into any queer cultural identity and its meanings to its participants; investigation into public policy and legal status concerning LGBTQ+ people including discrimination in housing or employment, bullying, marriage, education, or media. Project formats can include media presentations such as Prezi or PowerPoint, or a written report.

Study Non-Contact Hours Recommended

108

Methods of Student Evaluation

Midterm Exam
Final Exam
Short Quizzes
Written Assignments
Essay Examinations
Objective Examinations
Report
Projects (Individual/Group)
Problem Solving Exercises
Oral Presentations

Demonstration of Critical Thinking

Evaluation Participation: Active participation in class discussions on topics such as challenging cultural binaries, analyzing intersecting identities, and describing the intersections of LGBTQ+ culture and decolonial contexts. Exams/Quizzes/Tests: Midterm exam consisting of expository essay questions on topics such as intersecting identities and identity politics within AIDS activism and Trans activism.

Required Writing, Problem Solving, Skills Demonstration

Written work: Completion of weekly homework questions/reflections as described above covering course outcomes such as comparing social justice movements and LGBTQ+ rights movements. Research project: Research projects evaluated according to instructor rubric demonstrating student's ability to analyze, evaluate, and compare evidence of the development of LGBTQ+ social justice movements, intersecting identities and identity politics, and LGBTQ+ decolonial cultural contexts. Final Assessment: Final exam consisting of expository essay questions that cover course outcomes such as demonstrating an understanding of LGBTQ+ culture as it intersects with decolonial activism.

Resources Subscreen

Textbook: Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Norma Alarcón. . This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women Of Color . SUNY Press (2015).
Textbook: Michael J. Murphy and Brytton Bjorngaard. . Living Out Loud: LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture.. Routledge Press (2019).
Textbook: Tommi Avicolli Mecca. Smash the Church, Smash the State! Early Years of Gay Liberation. . City Lights Publishing (2009).
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Eligible Discipline(s)

Sociology: Master’s degree in sociology OR bachelor’s degree in sociology AND master’s degree in anthropology, any ethnic studies, social work, or psychology OR the equivalent. Master's degree required.

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