While most members of the LGBTQA community just want to be treated like everyone else, Penn State is offering a course that specifically focuses on the rhetoric of the LGBTQA community.
CAS 475: LGBTQA Rhetoric will focus is on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Ally (LGBTQA) rhetorics and movements within the United States, according tot he course’s website.
The course explores two main questions:
-How may we use concepts and ideas from public address theory to understand the complex role of LGBTQA rhetorics in shaping civic life?
-How might our analyses of LGBTQA rhetorics contribute to the field of public address studies writ large?
Students will analyze discourse from LGBTQA organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis, National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, ACT UP, and Queer Nation, along with figures including Lucy Lobdell, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alfred Kinsey, Harvey Milk, Audre Lorde, Bayard Rustin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Lani Ka’ahumanu.
The class is somewhat tailorable.
“I want this course to serve your own interests, you will have the opportunity to select which instances of LGBTQA public address you want to analyze in these assignments as well as your midterm and final projects,” writes assistant professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Pamela VanHaitsma.
Required reading includes “Queering Public Address” by Morris, “Speak Up! I Can’t Queer You” by Brookey, “The First Lady’s Privates: Queering Eleanor Roosevelt for Public Address Studies” by Cloud, and “Queer Harlem: Exploring the Rhetorical Limits of Black Gay ‘Utopia’” by Watts.
While all “intellectually rich courses are inherently challenging,” the professor maintains that the LGBTQA rhetoric studied throughout the course “deliberately seeks to challenge ideas that many of us take for granted.”
