This course will introduce students to scholarship on gender and sexuality from the 1970s to the present. The twentieth-century U.S. will be our point of departure, and we will expand our scope to other historical and cultural contexts in the modern world. In the first half of the semester, we will approach scholarly debates chronologically, studying how key concerns and innovations developed over the course of a generation, from women’s studies and intersectionality to postcolonial feminism, queer studies, and trans studies. In the second half of the semester, we will read cutting-edge scholarship published in the past few years by the next generation of scholars, focusing especially on new approaches to studying kinship and the family in national and transnational contexts. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the formation of feminist and queer scholarly canons, as well as efforts to expand and transform canons by centering marginalized perspectives. In the process, we will introduce key theories and methods that historians and literary critics use in the study of gender and sexuality.