Abstract
From September 2017 to June 2020 the University of the Balearic Islands organised a monthly film workshop called Aules Sense Armaris: Cinema LGBTIQ+ a la UIB focused on giving visibility to affective and sexual diversity through film analysis in a university context. Each film was introduced with an interview with a queer activist or cultural expert related to the particular topics the film addressed, and after the screening a cinematographic and critical discussion was held in which the students contributed either with their own reflections or asking questions to the guests. This article exposes the necessity of approaching and celebrating sexual diversity from the university classroom as a form of activism. It also describes the as well as describing the criteria that were followed when choosing the films, how the monthly workshops took place and the most interesting conclusions from the post-film debates between activists, university students and spectators.
Highlights
If there was a motive that prompted the film university workshop seriesAules Sense Armaris, it was Sedwick’s reference in her article “Queer and ” to the large number of teen suicides within the LGBTIQ+ community: “Queer teenagers are two to three times likelier to attempt suicide, and to accomplish it, than others” (1993, 1)
As arts professor Ricard Huerta underlines in Transeducar: Arte, Docencia y Derechos LGTB (Transeducating: Arts, Teaching, and LGBT Rights), if when in class teachers or professors talk about Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Francis Bacon, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, Oscar Wilde, and hide these artists’ sexual orientation from their students, are they preventing their students’ access to knowledge—since understanding these artists’ work means being aware of their involvement in the historical fight for LGBTIQ+ rights and freedom—but they become accomplices in the perpetuation of an archaic and LGBTIQ+phobic pattern that diminishes these artists’ fearless dissidence (2016, 13-14)
Aules sense Armaris: Cinema LGBTIQA+ a la UIB started in September 2018 as a modest project that would take place monthly during the academic year 2018-19 as part of the cultural activities organized by the Vice-chancellorship of Cultural Projection and the Cultural Activities Office of the University of the Balearic Islands
Summary
Citation: Bermúdez de Castro, Juanjo. “Classrooms Without Closets: LGBTIQ+ Cinema in University Education.” Alicante Journal of English Studies, no. 33 (2020): 151-162. https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2020.33.04 Licence: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
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