Queer Studies Gets Okay for Brochure

Students and faculty lobbying for a standing committee on queer studies recently received University approval to advertise courses relevant to the discipline in a brochure starting next fall.

Twenty students met yesterday afternoon with Lecturer in Literature Heather K. Love ’91 and Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Bradley S. Epps to plan the format of the brochure and continue their push for an official committee—dubbed “gender and sexuality”— in charge of coordinating undergraduate education in queer studies.

At the meeting, Love said the group had received “tentative encouragement” from the administration for a standing committee.

Epps, Love and the students at the meeting said that even with a brochure compiling relevant course offerings, a standing committee remains necessary to keep queer studies in the curriculum.

“Institutional structures like committees guarantee that classes happen and that people know about them,” Love said.

Current standing committees, permanent groups which do not grant degrees, include medieval studies and mind, brain and behavior.

This fall, Epps, Love and 16 other faculty members proposed the brochure—similar to ones offered in cultural studies and film studies—to Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz.

The deans approved the brochure and agreed to provide funding for the 2003-04 school year, Epps said.

But the formation of a standing committee is a more complicated prospect, Epps said, which would have to go to a vote before the Faculty Council followed by a full Faculty vote.

Epps and Love said yesterday they hope the brochure will pave the way for an eventual standing committee.

“We want to consider how the brochure might fold into the committee idea, and how the committee might fold into the curriculum and life of the University,” Epps said.

Students at the meeting, including several officers of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered and Supporters Alliance, BOND and GirlSpot, proposed ways to make the brochure more comprehensive than a simple list of courses.

They suggested an introduction explaining the nature of queer studies, full-paragraph course descriptions and a list of relevant past theses and advisors.

Students said the brochure, as well as being a helpful resource, will highlight the deficiencies that currently exist in queer studies—what they describe as the disconnected nature of the current offerings, which span several departments.

Epps said he hopes so-called “signifiers”—or words such as “gay, “lesbian” and “queer,” which were omitted from the title of the proposed committee—can appear in the brochure and thereby become a more regular part of the University’s academic discussions.

The group plans to reconvene next semester to edit the brochure and plan future lobbying efforts.

—Staff writer Sarah M. Seltzer can be reached at sseltzer@fas.harvard.edu.