Queer Theories of Experience & Art

This seminar applies phenomenology to writing and thinking about art. Beginning with primary debates concerning how things present themselves to perception (Husserl, Heidegger, Shapiro, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Sartre), the course then considers poetic extrapolations (Fanon, Focillon, Bachelard), culminating in contemporary accounts (Nesbit, Salamon, Wainwright, and Ahmed) that interrogate phenomenology's basic precepts while employing its methods to address art in relation to bodily experience, identity, sexual orientation, and social context. Short exercises and a final paper provide students with the opportunity to work through these ideas in light of their own interests and research.