English 3980 Students to Hold Public Symposium Saturday
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| Transnational Queer Film Studies students and Professor Karen Tongson of USC in Prague Photo by Robert McRuer |
Professor Robert McRuer’s annual fall class, “Transnational Queer Film Studies and LGBTQ Cultures,” was held again this fall. This was the seventh instantiation of the class, which is taught at GW every fall, but which is simultaneously taught in Prague to students from the Czech Republic (and across Europe) by Professor Kateřina Kolářová of the Charles University Gender Studies Program. For one week each November, Professor McRuer’s students travel to Prague to meet their counterparts and to attend together the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival (Mezipatra means “mezzanine” in Czech, signifying a place in-between, in the middle). This course is offered in partnership with the Short-Term Study Abroad Program. From November 5-15, 2015, the two classes met daily together for several hours each day to talk about what they had been studying all semester and about the films that they watched during the week’s attendance at the film festival (the festival’s theme this year was The Days That Shook the World). This innovative class is, for many students, one of the highlights of their GW education, and is also (for some students) part of GW’s LGBT Studies Minor (housed in the Women’s Studies Program).
Ro Spice-Kopischke, “What’s So Gay about Giant Robots? Online Fandom and Queer Readings of Mainstream Media”
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| Opening of the 16th Mezipatra Queer Film Festival in Prague (photo here and below by Jonathan Rice) |
