Department of French and Italian Studies

This course is an invitation to do exactly that. Feminist Queer Zones offers an immersive journey through more than a century of feminist and queer thought in French and francophone cultures worldwide — from nineteenth-century revolutionaries storming the barricades to mid-twentieth century theorists dismantling the very foundations of gender, sexuality, and identity, to contemporary thinkers mapping the explosive intersections of race, capitalism, colonialism, and liberation.

You won't skim the surface here. FQZ is built around a radical act of academic resistance: slow reading. Rather than racing through fragments, you'll spend extended time — sometimes weeks — living inside a single, full-length text. Louise Michel. Simone de Beauvoir. Monique Wittig. Anne Garréta. Françoise Vergès. These are writers who demand and reward your full attention, and who will change how you think long after the course ends.

But thinking here is never purely abstract. This course insists on bridging theory and action, reading and writing, art and life. A series of alternating creative and critical assignments builds toward a final hybrid multimedia project — part personal essay, part creative work, part critical intervention — that is entirely your own.

This is a course about porous zones: open, fluid, restless spaces where categories dissolve and new ways of seeing become possible. It is for anyone ready to dwell, question, and imagine differently.

No prerequisites. No prior knowledge required. All readings and discussions in English. Open to all.