Muñoz: Queer Worldmaking

Muñoz: The Theory and Practice of Queer
Worldmaking

This class will be devoted to an in-depth
exploration of the work and lasting impact of a
single author: writer, scholar, and critical
theorist José Esteban Muñoz. Through this central
focus on Muñoz, students will undertake an
advanced study of queer of color critique, queer
performance studies, and queer Latinx studies,
while moving through Muñoz' three major works
together in full-each of them groundbreaking in
their time: Disidentification: Queers of Color and
the Performance of Politics (1998), Cruising
Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
(2009), and the posthumously published The Sense
of Brown (2020). A wildly interdisciplinary
thinker, well versed in philosophy and critical
theory, known for his lively writing and the
blending of his scholarly and personal life
through the cultivation of a close knit queer
academic artist/academic family, a study of Muñoz
is a study of some of the best and most generative
thinking in queer theory and politics of the last
thirty years, with special focus on the fields of
affect theory, performance studies, public sphere
theory, cultural studies, critical race and Latinx
studies. We will supplement our primary reading
with readings, screenings, and visits with Muñoz'
familia of artist and academics, such as Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jennifer Doyle, Karen Tongson,
Nao Bustamente, Lauren Berlant, Malik Gaines, Jibz
Cameron (aka Dynasty Handbag) and many others.
Across all of his works, Muñoz spoke of the
"worldmaking" potential of queer of color art and
collective space, and this concept will provide a
central topic not just for our reading but for the
broader investigations, practices and collective
work of the class.

While you need not be familiar with Muñoz's work
to take this class, it is highly recommended that
you have completed at least one course in queer
studies, performance studies, or critical theory
and feel prepared to participate in a graduate
level academic seminar with 50+ pages of reading
per week and the expectation of independent
research and analysis.