What does country music or the “redneck” have to do with the queer? What can the phrase “I’ll listen to anything but country” tell us about the connections among taste, identity, and social status? In the dominant U.S. middle-class culture, country music is linked to white, rural, working-class, heterosexual, southern, and Midwestern people and is invoked as a symbol of “redneck” bigotry. By contrast, queer identity is associated with multicultural, urban, coastal, and enlightened lifestyles. This seminar brings these clashing categories together to question popular images of each one. Is country and its constituency the face of American bigotry? Are queer and of color opposites to rural and working class? How did such notions originate? And are they useful, or counterproductive, for purposes of progressive social change?

Course Requirements:

Participation, weekly readings, discussion facilitation with the reading report, final PowerPoint presentation (5 min. limit).

Class Format:

This course will include both synchronous and asynchronous elements, but students are generally expected to attend class at its scheduled time.