The Importance Of Queer Studies

Research into Queer Studies is on the rise throughout American Liberal Arts colleges. The struggle of being queer in America is only getting more difficult as the public believes that the rights they have are “good enough.” The ruling that they can marry didn’t signify the success of the queer movement, rather it signified the death of it. It is becoming ever more difficult for them to cross social and legal barriers that need to be destroyed because of this. For example, they might be able to marry, but any store can reject making their wedding cake just because they are queer. The oppression of queers goes beyond this, it is deeply rooted in society. They are viewed as abnormal. They are just Others in our capitalist system, put into a state
of inclusive exclusion and given just enough rights to keep them from disrupting the state.
This form of oppression follows the same pattern for domination over women, where true equality of the sexes will never happen under a capitalist system, which was founded in patriarchy.
Both the feminist movement and the queer movement need to unite under an anti-capitalism paradigm, otherwise they will continue to face massive inequalities from a system that benefits on keeping queers and females from obtaining true freedoms. My research project would involve bringing Queer Studies, Feminist Studies and Creative Writing together to provide narratives about queer and gender oppression. It would be a communal effort, where a group of people from any background come together to write about the struggles they faced, with an emphasis on queer and feminine
aspects.
Creative Writing is unique to providing narratives about inequalities. It can provide harsh satire to show the absurdity of these oppressions, it can provide plays, movies, poems and fictional books that focus on the queer and female struggle in contemporary America. As humans, we get turned off from statistics and tend to view the world through the lens of personal experience, thus providing new perspectives are unique to being able to change minds.
The overall point of this project is to use creativity as a pedagogy, utilizing it to engage a variety of people in stories about oppression.
Storytelling utilizes divergent thinking, opens people’s minds and destroys barriers that previously existed in society. It can go beyond a simple factual basis and draw connections between those facts and experiences. The project will involve a group of people, coming together to create works of art to express how the view oppression, how they have been subjected to it, and how we can work on it as a society. It will focus mainly on Queer and Feminist Studies.
One of the main issues that the queer and feminist movements face is the inability for non-queers and non-females to understand how these two groups are being oppressed. Many people still believe that being gay is a choice, that both the feminist and queer movement have achieved enough, and that they are unnecessary movements because of this. Using creative writing can thus be an extremely useful tool to show people that none of that is
true.
Hampshire is the perfect college for me to utilize this project. Firstly, the creative writing programs at Hampshire have a strong understanding that storytelling can change minds, and has the power to give a voice to those who don’t already have one. The professors here would thus be outstanding to work on this project with. For example, associate Professor Nathalie Arnold has a background in writing about socio-cultural studies through storytelling. This project could greatly benefit from having experience people within it, she has a project focusing on feminine studies and I believe that coupling an experiment about that with queer studies has the possibility to create change in the world. This means Hampshire is the perfect college to enhance this project and make it a reality. Secondly, the strong focus on creating your own path of study makes this dream a true possibility. Hampshire’s program where the individual creates their own path of study over a simple major gives me the possibility to study politics, queer and feminist studies and creative writing at the same time to achieve this goal. There isn’t another college that gives students the opportunity to do this as well as Hampshire.