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Have you ever wondered how the streets you walk shape the identities of you and those around you? In Jackson Davidow’s course, Queer Space: Explorations in Art and Architecture, students analyze how city spaces both influence and are influenced by queer identities, thinking about space “in relation to gender and sexuality, and how that has manifested historically and historiographically in the history of art and architecture.”
So what exactly is queer space? For Davidow, the answer varies between people and locale: “My aim is not to define these highly contested terms but to put pressure on the accepted definitions, to think of queer space beyond simply the fight for transgender rights and access to bathrooms—a hyper-visible issue in the media today.” Through course readings and artistic material, students are given the chance to investigate how public spaces can become spheres of resistance and activism, such as public streets, which have been host to many iconic queer movements like the lesbian and gay liberation movements of the 1970s and the pride parades and festivals that occur yearly nationwide.
Internal spaces are also active participants in forming a socialized queer identity. As part of the course, Davidow teaches from a variety of places to emphasize the importance of changing space and identity. For example, one class was held at the Tufts LGBT center, and another conducted online to highlight the shift in personal engagement between different queer networks. Recently, Tisch librarians visited students to address the “need for queering different spaces of learning and knowledge production,” and how librarians can address issues of queer identity within literary practices.
But Davidow also seeks to explore queerness beyond its literary identity: “There is the assumption that art and visual culture do not have the same value as film or literature, since queer theory as a discipline is very based in literary theory and performance studies...The readings that comprise this course are rarely taught at the undergraduate level and I really wanted to put Queer Studies and Art and Architectural History and Theory in dialogue with each other.”
Reflecting this collaboration, students recently attended the 2018 Max Wasserman symposium, a two-day event hosted by MIT and co-organized by Davidow that looked at how “artists and cultural practitioners are thinking critically about gender identity and expression,” drawing upon creators from across the globe, including Canada, Taiwan, and South Africa. Students attended panels such as “Gender in Space: Policies, Pedagogies and Publics,” in which panelists offered different strategies for “examining and rethinking how institutions engage with gender,” and ways to “work within institutional frameworks to cultivate change.” As a PhD candidate in History, Theory and Criticism of Art at MIT, Davidow was especially pleased to have “so many exceptional artists, scholars, and cultural practitioners from around the world” at this “really rich event,” hopefully introducing students to people they aren’t yet familiar with and expanding their understanding of queer identity beyond the confines of the classroom.
From university campuses to the Wasserman forum, Davidow hopes that students will continue to think critically about the relationship between queerness and space: “When people hear about my course, they immediately think that it’s about the need for safe spaces...while of course the class has addressed this, I think that we’ve cultivated a more complex understanding with how queer people have engaged with their environments, and how they have created new worlds that are vital to their existence and survival.”
About the Author
Emma Hodgdon is a senior studying English literature. Apart from reading Gothic fiction, she can be found practicing cello for the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, or dancing with the university’s ballroom dance team. She spends her free time experimenting with calligraphy, learning to speak Chinese, and caring for her succulents, Verotchka and Geraldine.
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