Crucial differences in the 21st century

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Crucial Differences in the 21st Century examines the complex interactions between gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, age, and species difference in the contemporary world. Through a critical inquiry into various topical cases as well as major theoretical texts within contemporary gender and diversity studies, the course traces the multiple ways in which identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality are produced and reproduced in ongoing flows of negotiation and transformation. The course is rooted in intersectional approaches as developed primarily by Black and of colour feminists, and combines critical race theory, queer and trans studies, decolonial theory, and other critical frameworks that link together academic scholarship and grassroots activism. It thus aims to help students develop the twenty-first century skills and competencies necessary for understanding, navigating, and resisting current forms of sexism, racism, homo- and transphobia, speciesism, and other systems of domination.

The emergence of various social movements during the 1960s and 1970s – including the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, and LGBT+ activism – serves as a historical and conceptual starting point of the course. Special attention is directed to how intersectional feminisms and queer activisms have challenged the identity politics of mainstream social justice movements, and to the implications of these interventions for academic knowledge production. Subsequently, the course looks into the entangled workings of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and other “crucial differences” through a variety of current case studies. From anti-gender and anti-trans attacks in the context of the ongoing rise of the far right worldwide to decolonial resistance to the stigmatization of intersexuality, from the rise of Dutch homonationalism to queer environmental activism in the ecosexual movement, the course critically examines the manifold dynamics of difference, power, and inequality in the twenty-first century. Simultaneously, the course traces a future landscape of possibility for minoritarian subjects – including women, queer and trans people, persons of colour and Indigenous people, as well as a range of nonhuman “others” – by mapping critical strategies of resistance, resilience, and social justice.