This course explores “queer” as an identity category, theoretical term, and verb as it emerges from, traverses, and transforms across the Americas. This course will focus on literary texts, performance and visual arts. Specifically, we will examine the ways that the artists and authors explored in this class confront legacies of white supremacist and heteropatriarchal social structures to both embrace “deviant” gender and sexual identities and also to confront colonial legacies.

Abya Yala, a term in the Kuna language refers to the continent known today as 'the Americas’. Indigenous women, along with queer, trans, and two-spirit individuals in Abiayala, have played a pivotal role in activism and resistance against settler colonial powers and their allies. The primary emphasis will be on the life experiences and ways of knowing of Indigenous individuals and Native feminist thought. We will examine literary and cultural works created by scholars, artists, activists, and movements within the context of Abya Yala, while also considering the transnational dialogue and exchange that occurs as Indigenous bodies constantly move across borders and territories. The course covers various topics, including environmental care and justice, reproductive justice, gendered violence, cultural reclamation, rematriation, and Indigenous futurisms.