| Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Studies Program
Director: Cary Howie
391 Uris Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-7601
p. 607.255.6480
f. 607.255.2195
e. lgbtstudies@cornell.edu
Monday-Friday 8:30-4:30
The field
of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies is devoted to the study of sexuality
and its importance to the organization of social relations more generally.
Primary among its concerns is also the study of lives, the politics, and
the creative work of sexual minorities. LGBT Studies is founded on the
premise that the social organization of sexuality is best studied from
the perspectives offered by those positions that have been excluded from
established social and cultural norms and best approached from an interdisciplinary
perspective. At present, the program includes courses that study sexuality
and sexual minorities from a variety of perspectives: anthropological,
psychological, sociological, biological, political, historical, literary,
and artistic. Although LGBT Studies is housed in Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, only those courses that devote a significant amount
of their time to sexuality and to questioning the historical institution
of exclusive heterosexuality qualify for the LGBT Studies minor.
Central to the curriculum in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies are such overarching principles as the following:
...that the study of sexuality must include
a study of the dynamics of sexual oppression...that definitions
of sexuality, including those that privilege exclusive heterosexuality,
are not immutable, universal, or beyond question, but instead vary across
time and place, serve political ends, and have ideological underpinnings...that
systems of sexual oppression interact with other social inequities, including
those of gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, and physical ability...that
even the most current knowledge derived from the humanities, social sciences,
and natural sciences is not as impartial, objective, or neutral as has
traditionally been thought, but instead emerges out of particular historical
and political contexts. |
