Spring 2018 | CUNY Graduate Center | IDS 70100: Introduction to Queer Studies

Assignments, Queer OER

Educational Queer Films to Start Off (Donna Huaman)

Concluding our first class discussion on OER, I started to contemplate how I, as an instructor for an undergrad gender and sexuality course, would want to start off my class. As an undergrad in CUNY John Jay, I never took a gender and sexuality or queer theory course, mostly because I wasn’t even aware these courses were offered (although I am almost certain they started offering and promoting these classes in my junior year). Additionally, because of my major, International Criminal Justice, as were the majority of our student body focus on Criminal Justice, there were specific electives we were advised to take. A gender and sexuality course was not one of them, or so I remember from my experience. However, in the last couple years, I have seen significant progress in LGBTQ-inclusivity within the John Jay community, so I can only assume gender and sexuality courses and queer theory courses are also populated more.

Therefore, as an alumna and seeing the progress the John Jay community is doing, I would want to make my queer course syllabus geared towards this school. As a big fan of educational films and documentaries, I would use the video streaming website Kanopy. Although it is not a complete open website, as long as you have your CUNY library account, you have access to this site. Along, with having an LGBTQ subsection, it is overall a handy site students can rely on for other classes as well. I feel like instead of assigning readings to initiate the course, a designated film, like A Jihad for Love (one of my favorites), to grab their attention and attract the visual learners.

Kanopy- gccuny.kanopystreaming.com

Leave a Reply