EDITORS' CORNER
‘Queer people have been essential to American history,’ instructor says
When University of Arkansas students return to Fayetteville this month, they will have the opportunity to take a class on the “Queer U.S. South.”
The gender studies class teaches “queer perspectives on the U.S. South” with a focus on “autobiographical, historical, and critical-qualitative analyses that attest to the innovative or inventive ways LGBTQ+ communities have survived and thrived in southern areas often deemed antithetical to a liberatory gender/sexual political agenda.”
It is taught by Arley Ward, a history instructor. He is also teaching a class this semester on the history of contraception and sex ed.
According to Ward, “queer people have been essential to American history.”
“The biggest misconception about the Queer South is that it doesn’t exist,” Ward told Hill Magazine, a student publication at the public university.
“We try to erase queer people from history, society pretends they’re not there,” he said in May 2024. “But queer people have been essential to American history.”
He also researches the “queer” South.
“Queer Southerners are super proud of their identity and their heritage,” he told the magazine. “For some that comes first, they’re Southerners who just happen to be queer.”
University of Arkansas students have other opportunities to learn about “queer” topics.
A class on “Queer Theories” is also available this fall, taught by Professor Ryan-Calabretta-Sajder.
His prior research works include “Queering Somali Storytelling,” “Dandyism in the Socio-Economic Context of Italian Americana,” and “William Van Watson and the Queering of Italian Studies,” according to his curriculum vitae.
Other gender studies classes available this semester include “Gender, Bodies, and Technologies.” In this course, students learn “theories of power and technologies of self to better understand the relationship between gender, bodies, and technology.”
The department also is offering a small, five-person class on “Frankenstein and Gender.”
The class is taught by Lissette Szwydky. She previously received a $6,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to help her write a book about “Frankenstein’s Bride in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry, “ in reference to a 1935 movie by James Whale.
The book “will survey and analyze sixteen (16) novels and six (6) poems to illustrate how writers have adapted Whale’s 1935 visualization of this character to reimagine the intersections of sublime terror, unfettered desire, history, and feminist rebellion.”
“Discussions of the novels will be divided based on their overall representations of The Bride, specifically whether her characterization aligns more with Mary Shelley’s proto-feminist politics, or with Victor Frankenstein’s paralyzing and destructive fear of female autonomy,” according to the grant description on the NEH website.
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INSIDE IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A screenshot of the ‘Queer U.S. South’ course description; University of Arkansas
MAIN IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: An individual holds an LGBT rainbow flag; Emma Rahmani/Base Image
