“Imagining Queer Communities” investigates the evolution of the idea of a queer community historically, as it developed in art, literature, music, medicine, media, and politics. What makes a queer community? Is there such a thing as a unified community? Or does the term register a utopian desire for a collectivity not yet achieved? Can a queer community span generations, continents, and identities? What forms of sociality does it propose, and what ideas of identity are built into the idea of a queer community? In this course we will study visual arts (Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Féliz González-Torres, Catherine Opie); fiction and poetry (Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Samuel Delany, Essex Hemphill, Sarah Schulman, Danez Smith); film (The Watermelon Woman, Paris is Burning) as well as dive into representations of queer communities in media, medicine, and politics to trace the evolution of an idea across time. Assessment will be based on informal writing, a collaborative presentation, and a major creative-critical project.