Queer Technology - Gender and Sexuality

Content:

This course explores the ways that gender and sexuality are shaped by interactions between culture, science and technology. We look at how these interactions produce and limit our ideas about “normal” gender and sexuality. But we also examine how gender and sexuality have been transformed or subverted by science and technology in ways that have created greater human freedom.

The course is organised around three questions:

1. How has the development of modern science shaped thinking about gender and sexuality? Do we today know the scientific “truth” of what gender and sexuality really are?
2. How have science and technology shaped gender and sexuality? This will include asking questions like: How has technology facilitated dating and the search for love and sex over the last 150 years? What problems and possibilities has this history entailed for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people? How has technology shaped the production and dissemination of pornography – and with what effects?
3. In a technological age of social media and streaming platforms, who controls narratives around gender and sexuality today? Specifically: who tells the stories of LGBT and queer people? Does access to social media allow LGBT and queer people to tell their own stories? Do popular shows like Heartstopper or RuPaul's Drag Race allow for “authentic” representations?