Queer Crimininals

Categorized mostly as sickness and sin, male homosexual acts have also been occasionally criminalized, placing male homosexuality against the order of the law. A number of literary and visual texts have addressed this intermingling of male homosexual desire with crime. In this course, we will look at some of these texts and try to explore the implication of homosexuality in criminality with the following question: How can we interpret criminal queers without recourse to a narrative of victimization? The answer to this question is implied in the title of the course, with an allusion to “Beautiful Boyz,” a Cocorosie song, that approvingly aestheticizes the link between homosexuality and criminality, glorifying the “pimps and queens and criminal queers.” Following this celebratory attitude, we will attend to the anti-social turn in queer theory to consider the ways in which criminal queers might occasion a critique of heteronormativity. We will also move beyond the anti-social in an effort to imagine different desires, pleasures, bodies, and relationships that cut across the social fabric.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP)