Highlighted: Queer Planet

With the interdisciplinary course 'Queer Planet', lecturer and coordinator Michiel Baas moves away from a specific western focus and instead discusses cases from around the world. How do trans identities find expression in countries as diverse as Brazil, India and Tonga? What does it mean to be gay in South-Africa? How do women negotiate being lesbian in different regional contexts? Michiel Baas explains his motivation for developing the course Queer Planet : "Considering how prominent questions of sexual identity are to society, it is surprising that there is still a lack of courses that focus on LGBTQIA+ related topics. This course investigates how societies and cultures across the globe have engaged with categories of gender and sexuality that appear to deviate from the norm." In addition, the potential of queer theory to understand diversity and inequality elsewhere in society is examined. What can we learn about societies in general by studying gender and sexual diversity? What alliances are possible between queer activists and other marginalised communities? - Interdisciplinary conversations . In addition to the lectures, students from a wider range of disciplinary backgrounds come together weekly to read and discuss texts from the social sciences and cultural studies on LGBTQIA+ related topics. This allows students to contemplate their own backgrounds and how questions of gender and sexuality are discussed in their main coursework.