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OPINION: University of Minnesota’s latest gender studies developments show the field is a joke

It will be a busy summer for some University of Minnesota gender studies students, and then a very easy one for others.

The university’s Gender Studies Center announced in its latest newsletter doctoral student Nathan Buckley won a grant to create a new course titled “Queering Europe.”

The anthropology student is interested in “European integration, and wider geopolitics around borders and sovereignty,” according to a bio.

The grad student says Brexit is a “critical event from which to think queerly about these concepts.”

Buckley will use “Queer Theory” to develop these ideas further and “examine discourses of political self-determination.”

But he won’t be the only one working hard this summer to advance academic nonsense.

“Isaac Espósto” uses “they/them” pronouns (of course) and recently won a $20,000 fellowship for a dissertation about “The architecture of and algorithms of borderlands confinement.”

Esposto teaches in the gender studies department after having successfully completed a master’s degree in poetry at the University of Arizona. This person’s research “focuses on the intersection between Border violence, settler colonial architecture, Queer/Trans* studies, and the poetics of liberation,” according to the university bio.

University of Minnesota poster for a ‘Queer Kinship’ class.

But while they (the two students),will be working hard this summer, other gender studies scholars will not.

Students looking to knock out both their “Diversity and Social Justice in the U.S.” requirement and “Arts/Humanities” can spend eight-weeks watching movies, writing poetry, and making memes, much like every 15-year-old boy, minus the poetry part.

American Studies 3214, “Queer Kinship: Undoing the American Family,” has “NO QUIZ. NO TEST. NO FINAL EXAM,” according to the gender studies’ newsletter. Instead, students can learn what a “drag house” is as well as “queer kinship and nationalism.”

The class is a convenient escape hatch for both lazy students and those who cannot handle the academic rigor of other arts/humanities classes. Most of the classes in this core requirement do appear to be a waste of time; a significant amount revolve around films and depictions of different ethnic groups.

A few, however, hold some promise, such as a course discussing the ethics of war, and another on “contemporary issues in religion, culture, and society.” Another class, called “Critical Reasoning,” teaches students “how to better argue for beliefs that we hold, and claims we take to be true.”

But if that’s too tough, the school offers dozens of movie-based classes, such as “Engaging with Queer Cinema.” Who knows – one day a student could take a class on “queer cinema” and soon enough they could be earning a $20,000 fellowship to study nonsense.

MORE: Columbia Journalism Review editor fired after insisting on deadlines, ethics

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A photo of Europe, according to Canva; Artur Roman/Pexels

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