-       You will develop a personal and critical approach towards genderrepresentation, both culturally and visually.       -       You will develop nuanced and intersectional analysis regarding genderexpressions and sexual identities.     -       You will delve into the concept of situated knowledge, by framing and positioning their own personal and lived experiences within a broader transnational context.         -       You will be aware of societal power relations and norms and how they determine specific aesthetics, discourses, gazes.         -       You will reflect on strategies and communicative practices that question heteronormativity and gender norms through different media.          

Together, we aim to create a collective learning space that involves respect, care and awareness of each other’s needs, mistakes and livedexperiences.

Is it possible to go beyond the gender binary? How do we negotiate historically specific and hegemonic images, ideas and imaginations regarding gender, sexual identities, femininities and masculinities with the will to queer binarized power dynamics within our Western societies? How do we define our gender experiences within and against heteronormativity, homonormativity and homonationalism? Is gender binary always already racialized? Which are the limits of representational politics?In this course, we want to critically engage with multiple questions regarding gender constructions and representations, looking at different and often contradictory perspectives on the topic. Engaging with queer and trans cultural and visual production, we interrogate the power relations within representation and identity politics, pointing out the limits and the potentiality of the politics of visibility. This course aims to problematise the popular understanding of the West as ‘progressive’, ‘feminist’ and ‘queer friendly’, by looking at the violences and the exclusions that such designations entail.In the era of data collection and AI modes of production, where our own bodies and their representation are commodified and are made disposable communication tools of modern capitalism, the course will look at collective and individual endeavours of radical imagination to queer and question the hegemonic paradigm of gender, class, race, ableism, etc. There will be a focus on intersectional communicative practices that aim to reframe our bodily experiences. Thus, we will think through the political potentiality of adopting a more expansive approach to 'queerness' and 'queering' beyond the realms of gender and sexuality.Finally, we want to investigate what entails to be seen in the age of hypervisibility and capitalist surveillance and how it affects different gendered and lived experiences. Looking at queer and decolonial cultural production, we linger on the possibility of building a politics of anonymity through collective social actions and practices.

- Formative assignment. After each week of lessons together, you will have the option to turn in a response related to the corresponding topics of the week and in-class discussion. You can choose the topic by yourself and freely use the medium you prefer: it can be a short written paper (not exceeding 1000 words), a poem or short story, a video clip, drawing or a collection of reflections. This assignment will not be marked, but will give everyone the opportunity both to engage with the material, the themes and theories of the program and to receive feedback on your work in preparation for the final project. Your response can be turned in from the end of each week of lesson to 1 week later at the latest and should draw 1-2 core materials of the program. This is not compulsory and will not influence your final grading.- Final project. For the final assessment you can engage with a topic related to the course in more depth. You can choose your topic yourself. You can draw on your formative assignment and develop it or you can start from scratch. But please talk to me or send me a short email about what you plan to do before you start working on your final project so I can give you some feedback if necessary.

Topics of the course

Regarding the format, you can either write a traditional academic essay (2.500-3.000 words) or you can freely choose the medium of your project and experiment with different approaches and skills. For example, you could write a poem or a short story, knit something, draw or paint something, create a scrapbook, take photographs, produce a video, develop a proposal for a workshop series, etc. If your project is not self-explanatory (e.g., a scarf), please include a piece of writing (1–2 pages) to explain your concept. Additionally, please don’t forget to include the reference list. Referencing is important, regardless of whether your project takes a more conventionally academic form or not. Please supply a list of at least 5 sources that you consulted in the process of creating.It’s important to me that you take a critical, evaluative stance towards the topic of your project. This means that you should not simply reproduce others’ ideas, but actively engage with them.