Bigger than minor

JMU professors develop new queer studies minor and course to expose students to lesser known queer topics

By SABINE SOLTYS The Breeze

Professors Kristen Kelley, Mary Thompson and Dawn Goode huddle around a table as they plan for a groundbreaking movement at JMU. There have been multiple conversations and several focus groups over the span of seven years leading up to this moment.

All in agreement, the three women make the decision to move forward with the class, excitedly anticipating what will happen next.

Starting in the fall, JMU English associate professor Dawn Goode will be teaching the new Introduction to Queer Studies class. This course centers “upon the contributions and lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual, genderqueer, etc.) in history, culture, and society … and aims to identify and disrupt notions of normative sexuality and gender that serve to marginalize and disempower queer lives,” according to the course description.

The idea for the class started in

2016, when Thompson, Goode and Kelley looked at the classes they were already teaching as part of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program and the potential creation of a queer studies minor, as well as different similar programs across the country.

“We realized there would be a nice segue into the minor if they had already taken the intro to women and gender and sexualities class and then took this intro to queer studies, because it would build a foundation for the minor and give an opportunity to these students to get that more specific queer content that they might be looking for,” Kelley said.

This academic year, however, they were finally able to put together a proposal for the minor, which will go out in the summer. With the help of a consultant, they looked at how the minor would fit in with JMU, the community and the curriculum.It was decided the minor would work in the WGSS program.

“We were thinking through how to actualize the sexuality part of that Women’s, Gender and Sexuality,” Kelley said. “Gender and sexuality come up a lot in queer content, and so being able to create a queer studies minor seemed like a really good fit for what was happening in the parent program, the WGSS, that is becoming a major.”

In addition to this minor and class, Thompson, Goode and Kelley created a Queer Studies Advisory Board this January. On this board, they’ve invited faculty from around campus who are interested in teaching queer content.

The need for this class and minor has been building up over time, Thompson and Kelley said. The talk for a minor actually didn’t start in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, but with Christine Robinson in the Justice Studies Department. Robinson ended up tabling the minor until it was retouched by Thompson, Kelley and Goode.

Culture

“It’s a conversation that has been happening and students have brought it up multiple times,” Thompson said. “But we really felt last fall that it was time to move on it. So, this intro class will be an anchor for this minor. This class can also serve as another elective and establish queer theory as a field that is similar and also different from other feminist studies.”

Goode and Kelley also saw a lot of the classes they were teaching already were pretty rare in that they were specific to just queer content.

“What we were hearing from students in our evaluations were that queer and straight students alike were really excited to have queer-focused content that was not just a one-week unit or a mention here and there,” Kelley said. “So, we talked about these evaluations because students were remarking, consistently saying this was important, asking for more content like this and classes like this in the university.”

Kelley said the biggest issue is while there are some classes out there that address this content, it’s not focused, and faculty aren’t able to properly teach about it, whereas this minor would give this subject better direction. To get a better consensus on how students actually felt about this potential minor and class, these professors held focus groups and surveyed them by asking them if this was something they’d be interested in.

“A lot of students see the value of this class,” Kelley said, “whether they are in math or statistics when they are thinking about how data is interpreted or even gathered and looking through a queer lens. There are students coming to us from communications, teaching and psychology, saying this is vital for working with queer students and the queer world.”

One such student is junior Heather Opie. While she’d not heard about this class, Opie, a communications and media arts and design double major, had heard about other classes like this one being offered in the past. Though Opie didn’t have time as a double major to take many electives, including classes like this, many of her friends have, and Opie said she sees the importance of learning the background of discriminated groups.

“A lot of it could be used to prevent history from repeating itself,” Opie said. “I know that there is a lot of current issues going on at JMU’s campus that a lot of people are really upset with, and I think classes like this would be really beneficial to educate the entirety of JMU’s population.”

Thompson and Kelley echoed this in regard to thinking about employment for future students. Thompson said she believes having this type of knowledge and ability to navigate LGBTQ+ perspectives is an increasingly important skill to bring into the workforce, and now is the perfect time to start expanding on this knowledge.

“Harrisonburg and JMU are well positioned to welcome this type of intellectual inquiry for students because we do have more and more visibility for queer people on campus, in the world and the community,” Kelley said. “So showing that there is a discipline around this and it’s not people sitting around talking shows that JMU is joining that expertise.”

CONTACT Sabine Soltys at soltysms@ dukes.jmu.edu. For more on the culture, arts and lifestyle of the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the culture desk on Twitter and Instagram @Breeze_Culture.