Colleges Offer Courses on ‘Queering’ Children, the Bible
- Colleges Offer Courses on ‘Queering’ Children, the Bible
by Celine Ryan, https://www.campusreform.org/
* This school year, colleges and universities across the country will be offering courses on “queering” children, the Bible, and theology in general.
* Pomona College, for instance, will offer a course arguing that “the figure of the Child” is used to “justify continued cultural investment in reproductive heteronormativity and productive ablebodiedness.”
* Courses on “queer theologies,” meanwhile, will be taught at Harvard Divinity School, Swarthmore College, the University of San Francisco, Eugene Lang College, and the University of Pennsylvania.
–
This school year, students across the country will attend courses on “Queering the Bible,” “Queering Childhood,” “Queering Theology,” and similar topics.
–
Students at Pomona College in Claremont, California, for instance, will have the opportunity to enroll in a brand new course titled “Queering Childhood,” which will examine “the figure of the Child and how this figuration is used by politics, law, and medicine to justify continued cultural investment in reproductive heteronormativity and productive ablebodiedness.”
–
The course description explains that students will examine the childhoods of “queer and crip children,” as well as “childhoods against which the figure of the Child is articulated,” with reference to work related to “gender studies, childhood studies, disability studies, and queer theory.”
–
Colleges are not only attempting to “queer” childhood, they are teaching students to “queer” Christianity and religion in general, as well.
–
This fall, Eugene Lang College will offer a course titled “Queering and Decolonizing Theology,” where students will explore topics such as “the sexual ethics and ritualization found in the S&M community,” and “transgender Christs.”
–
“Christian theology is often depicted as a violent colonial force standing in particular opposition to LGBTQI lives. However, over the last 30 years people of faith, activists, and theorists alike have rediscovered what is queer within Christianity, uncovered what is religious within secular queer communities, and used postcolonial theory to decolonize lived religious practices and theologies,” the course description asserts.
–
According to the college, the course “explores secular philosophies of queer and postcolonial theory as well as their critical and constructive application to religion,” focusing on topics like “the sexual ethics and ritualization found in the S&M community, transgender Christs, and the mestiza (or mixed) cultures of Latin America.”
–
Similarly, students at Harvard Divinity School will be able to attend a course on “Queer Theologies, Queer Religions” this fall, which will explore the “project of ‘queer theology’” and how it relates to “larger aspirations of queer religion or spirituality in America.”
–
read more.
end