Professor Watchlist

Published – December 13, 2024

The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) launched a new LGBTQ course in Fall 2024. “Introduction to LGBT Studies,” taught by Professor Ipek Sahinler, features assigned reading that promotes the sexualization of minors. The course description states:

“This course offers students an intersectional perspective on LGBTQ+ studies, encompassing key theoretical, historical, and methodological approaches. Students will gain foundational skills in theory, history, and research methods, investigating the social construction of sexual identity and its interplay with [race], class, religion, and nationality.”

Learning outcomes for the course include, but are not limited to:

• “Demonstrate a strong understanding of LGBTQ+ studies and its historical context–both locally and globally,” 
• “Demonstrate how gender intersects with race, class, ability, and other social constructs,” and 
• “Use and produce language to go beyond binaristic ways of thinking.”

Required reading includes a collection of essays called “The Routledge Queer Studies Reader” with multiple contributing authors. The introduction says the book pays “homage to the publication nearly twenty years previous, The Routledge Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader.”

In chapter one—entitled “Queer and Now”—the author leads a discussion on teen suicide among those who profess to be gay or lesbian by declaring:

“I look at my adult friends and colleagues doing lesbian and gay work, and I feel that the survival of each one is a miracle… How to tell kids who are supposed never to learn this, that, farther along, the road widens and the air brightens; that in the big world there are worlds where it’s plausible, our demand to get used to it.”

The “Introduction to LGBT Studies” is only one hyper-sexualized course among several undergraduate credit hours available to students in the LGBT Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies programs.

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