AP/CCY 3693 3.00

The Rainbow List: GLBTQ literature and culture for children and youth

Each year, the Rainbow Project Committee announces its annual Rainbow List. These titles reflect significant gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered and queer-questioning (GLBTQ) experience for young people from birth to age 18. This course analyzes some of that literature in addition to other expressions and representations of GLBTQ children and youth (film, television, digital media, music, etc.) in a variety of child-centred socio-cultural contexts.
While “queer fiction for children and young adults remains, like queer theory, a contentious and confused area for many” (Kerry Mallan), it is also true that representations of GLTBQ children and youth have become ubiquitous in the twenty-first century, both in mainstream television programs such as Glee, and in online projects including the “It Gets Better” and “Make It Better” Campaigns. GLBTQ themes and issues are now frequently incorporated into literary narratives, while organizations such as the “Rainbow Project” actively seek to evaluate and promote “significant and authentic” GLBTQ content (“Rainbow Book List”).

Students in this course will read critical sources that explore the specific relationship between children, child sexuality and queerness in queer theory, psychoanalysis, literary criticism and cultural studies. Scholarly sources will provide contexts for analyzing representations of GLTBQ-questioning children and youth in literature, film, television, digital media, music, etc. Literary texts may include picture books, chapter books, YA (young adult) fiction, poetry, graphic novels, comic books, etc. produced by and for children and youth. Students will be exposed to the historical development of diverse forms of cultural expression that depict gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered and queer-questioning (GLBTQ) experiences of young people from birth to age 18.