When choosing courses for this semester, I came across an unexpected shortcoming of Brown academics: a dearth of queer-related courses. For such a liberal school, Brown's offerings are surprisingly paltry when it comes to such studies. Where is the "Intro to Queer Theory," never mind advanced courses? This semester, only three courses at all related to LGBTQ issues were offered, and that appears to be a fairly high number - last semester, there was only one, and one the entire year previous to that. These few courses are scattered among disparate disciplines and tend to broach the topic only peripherally in pursuit of other topics: queer theory as it relates to French feminism, queer theory as it relates to art criticism, etc. Why is there this lack?
The old Sexuality and Society concentration - which did focus specifically on queer issues - foundered due to a combination of student disinterest and Brown's hiring policies, which only allow full-fledged departments to hire faculty. This restriction meant that the Sexuality and Society program (like many other interdisciplinary concentrations) lacked the requisite number of researchers and educators to flourish. Furthermore, according to Michael DeLucia '07, the founder of the Undergraduate Working Group for Queer Studies, a division of the Queer Alliance devoted to advocating for more queer-related academic offerings, "sexuality studies was never given office space, administrative support, and most classes were taught by faculty on 'overload' - a.k.a., out of their own pockets."
Queer studies courses and a legitimate related concentration are desirable for several reasons. While the campus LGBTQ community's reasons for wanting this are fairly self-evident, there are other, perhaps less obvious ones as well. The failure to provide these options to students has been a failure to keep pace with the school's image and social reality as a queer-friendly environment. Furthermore, instituting these changes would not only allow queer students to feel that they are represented in Brown academics, but also offer straight students the knowledge base and insight to be able to enter the dialogue on queer issues.
The lack of academic offerings in LGBTQ issues is particularly bizarre and disappointing when juxtaposed with Brown's queer-friendly image. Our reputation as the "gayest Ivy" is attested to in Facebook groups and proudly touted by many students. The zeitgeist on campus is certainly one consistent with our image as a bastion of sexual freedom, experimentation and acceptance. We are students who casually throw around terms like "heteronormative" and "gender binary" and never say "sex" when we mean "gender." Our biologically male freshmen - excuse me, first-years - agitate outside the Ratty in drag for more gender-neutral restrooms. The bathroom on my floor, incidentally, is clearly marked as such - the original sign said "Women," and to this a Post-It was stuck, perkily adding, "And men!" Below this, another Post-It in another hand further clarified, "And all other genders too!" This is Brown, where boys attend Sex Power God in nothing but fishnets and heels. This is Brown, where a Greek fraternity hosts a tranny queercore band. This is Brown, where - both seriously and in jest - we are comfortable messing around with the gender binary. It is a strange and rather embarrassing phenomenon that the academics here have not caught up with the school's reputation and with the sensibilities of its student body.
However, while all this may seem excitingly progressive compared to the stereotypical American suburban sensibilities, and it is a certainly a cause for pride, there remains something very superficial about it. We, the majority of the straight Brown population, drape ourselves in the trappings of progressivism but lack substance. There's the tacit assumption that one subscribes to all the mainstream left-wing positions - support for marriage equality, anti-discrimination laws and the like - but there is no real examination of issues. There is no nuance, no room for debate about identity and politics and roles. There is no recognition that the LGBTQ community is as varied and diverse as any other, with all the attendant in-fighting and ideological struggles. All we have is a knee-jerk liberal reaction: Any alternative sexual preference or gender identity is lauded, because hey, we're tolerant around here.
Why is the conversation suspended at this shallow level? Certainly for many of us, the insubstantiality of the dialogue is not due to lack of interest or understanding of myriad complexities. In fact, it is precisely because we - and here again I am speaking of a contingent of largely straight students - are aware of the existence of these complexities and likewise painfully aware of our inadequate knowledge of them. We are outsiders to the community, certainly, but it is more than that - we are ignorant. In the same way that males attend FemSex or white students take Africana studies courses, it seems that the non-queer community would benefit a great deal from the inclusion of more queer-related classes in the curriculum.
The dying Sexuality and Society concentration has recently merged with Gender Studies. However, as DeLucia puts it, "the new combined concentration desperately needs student support to make it clear that students want these courses to stick around." If you would like to demonstrate your interest in queer-related courses (without an academic commitment), please send an email to queer@brown.edu.
Karla Bertrand '09 is a little disappointed that she can't subvert the gender binary by wearing fishnets and heels.
