Page architecture celebrating 30 years

My ambition at the time 

was to teach a course 

on LGBTQ people and 

the media – which I 

eventually would do

what first attraCted you 

to Queer studies as an area 

of aCademiC study?

 

Bruce Drushel: My attraction to Queer 

Studies actually pre-dates the field per 

se and goes back to its precursor, Gay 

& Lesbian Studies. By the late-1980s, 

I already had written an article for a 

special issue of Journal of Homosexuality 

addressing reporting by the press on HIV/

AIDS. My ambition at the time was to 

teach a course on LGBTQ people and the 

media – which I eventually would do – but 

in the meantime, all I had was a file folder 

(physical, not virtual) into which I would 

chuck any printed material I could find on 

the subject. It grew quite thick.

Shelley Park: I came to queer theory, 

as many feminist philosophers of my 

generation did, through the early work 

of Judith Butler. Her deconstruction of 

the sex/gender distinction, of gender 

identity politics, and her insistence that 

gender was a form of doing rather than 

a form of being or having were deeply 

transformative to the thinking of many 

feminist scholars in the 1990s and 

marked a shift in feminist academic study 

from women’s studies to gender studies.  

These ideas were, at the time, both 

challenging and provocative. I was among 

those who initially resisted but was 

eventually seduced. I have been taking 

pleasure in queer theory ever since.