FA1QF: Queer Futures

Module code: FA1QF

Module provider: Art; School of Arts and Communication Design

Credits: 20

ECTS credits: 10

Level: 4

When you’ll be taught: Semester 2

Module convenor: Mx Ollie Musson, email: o.c.musson@reading.ac.uk

Pre-requisite module(s):

Co-requisite module(s):

Pre-requisite or Co-requisite module(s):

Module(s) excluded:

Placement information: NA

Academic year: 2026/7

Available to visiting students: Yes

Talis reading list: Yes

Last updated: 25 March 2026

Overview

Module aims and purpose

This module aims to provide you with an interdisciplinary grounding in queer theory, its histories, and its applications across the arts and design. Taught by colleagues from across the School of Arts and Communication Design, along with invited guest contributors where possible, the module introduces you to different voices, concepts, and creative strategies that have shaped queer thought and cultural production.

A core purpose of the module is to establish a strong conceptual foundation through reading, discussion, and engagement with key texts in queer theory. You will explore how theoretical frameworks have informed artistic, design-based, and activist practices, and how these practices, in turn, have contributed to challenges and wider or new understandings of gender, sexuality, identity, and community.

The module examines practice-based approaches from fields including visual art, typography, graphic communication, film, popular music theatre, and television through critical study. You will analyse how queer thinking, methods and creative strategies operate, how they address challenges, and how they generate alternative ways of thinking and imagining the future across the globe.

Positioning “queer” as a mode of enquiry, a conceptual lens, and a problem-solving approach, the module encourages you to reflect on how queer perspectives are vital for future-building, community formation, and interdisciplinary understanding. Through studying past and present queer practices and theories, you will develop a conceptual and methodological toolkit that strengthens your ability to imagine alternatives, navigate complexity, and apply queer-informed strategies within your own academic, creative and professional trajectories.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module, it is expected that students will be able to:

1.  Demonstrate understanding of the key histories, theories and debates that inform queer studies across the arts and design.
2.  Apply queer theoretical concepts to practice-based outcomes.
3. Critically appraise your own personal approach to the practical application of queer theory.

Module content

The module offers a dynamic set of examples through which students engage with queer histories, aesthetic strategies, and the politics or representation, considering how these practices shape and contest contemporary cultural imaginaries.

You will be introduced to a rotating selection of themes drawn from current staff research, ongoing creative and scholarly projects across the School of Arts and Communication Design, and the expertise of invited guest contributors. Content is therefore intentionally flexible and will vary from year to year. Students may encounter topics such as queer futurity and the political imagination (for example, through readings of Muñoz), histories of queer and feminist visual activism, and the graphic interventions of collectives such as ACT UP and Gran Fury. Sessions may also explore queer cinema and screen cultures, including representations of AIDS activism, lesbian and trans filmmaking, and the emergence of New Queer Cinema.

Alongside these, the module may cover the role of textiles, banners, quilts, zines and other material or community-based practices within queer movements, as well as case studies such as Paris is Burning, Pose, or the cultural legacies of Greenham Common. Themes such as queer kinship, ecologies, nightlife, community spaces, theatre, performance, Live Art and site-specific practices may also be examined.

Similarly, a central concern is the power of representation: who is able to speak, who creates cultural images, how identities are framed or marginalised, and how queer artists, designers, writers and activists diversify visual and narrative fields.

Structure

Teaching and learning methods

You will learn through three interlinked elements: weekly presentations, your own independent preparation and exploration, and discussion-based seminars.

You will engage with presentations by different members of staff from across the School of Arts and Communication Design or by an invited practitioner, researcher, writer, or activist. These contributors bring their own disciplinary perspectives, methods, and styles of delivery, offering you experiences of multiple voices, approaches, and ways of thinking and talking.

Alongside these presentations, you will engage with directed readings, viewings, and other preparatory materials that allow you to build a solid knowledge foundation as well as develop your own understanding, questions, and critical position. This independent work supports you in identifying what matters to you, building your own voice, methods, and own pathway through the topics introduced.

Seminars follow each presentation and provide a forum where these voices, those you have encountered, and the one you are developing, come together. In these sessions, you participate actively, contribute your reflections, and take part in collective discussions. The seminar is a shared learning environment, allowing you to test ideas and respond to others, with an emphasis on articulating your own goals and monitoring your development over time, enabling you to take increasing ownership of your learning as the module progresses.

Study hours

At least 20 hours of scheduled teaching and learning activities will be delivered in person, with the remaining hours for scheduled and self-scheduled teaching and learning activities delivered either in person or online. You will receive further details about how these hours will be delivered before the start of the module.

Please note the independent study hours above are notional numbers of hours; each student will approach studying in different ways. We would advise you to reflect on your learning and the number of hours you are allocating to these tasks.

Semester 1 The hours in this column may include hours during the Christmas holiday period.

Semester 2 The hours in this column may include hours during the Easter holiday period.

Summer The hours in this column will take place during the summer holidays and may be at the start and/or end of the module.

Assessment

Requirements for a pass

Students need to achieve an overall module mark of 40% to pass this module.

Summative assessment

Penalties for late submission of summative assessment

The Support Centres will apply the following penalties for work submitted late:

Assessments with numerical marks

• where the piece of work is submitted after the original deadline (or a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment indicated in your Individual Learning Plan): 10% of the total marks available for that piece of work will be deducted from the mark for each calendar day (or part thereof) following the deadline up to a total of three calendar days;
• where the piece of work is submitted up to three calendar days after the original deadline (or a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment indicated in you Individual Learning Plan), the mark awarded due to the imposition of the penalty shall not fall below the threshold pass mark, namely 40% in the case of modules at Levels 4-6 (i.e. undergraduate modules for Parts 1-3) and 50% in the case of Level 7 modules offered as part of an Integrated Masters or taught postgraduate degree programme;
• where the piece of work is awarded a mark below the threshold pass mark prior to any penalty being imposed, and is submitted up to three calendar days after the original deadline (or a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment indicated in your Individual Learning Plan), no penalty shall be imposed;
• where the piece of work is submitted more than three calendar days after the original deadline (or a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment indicated in your Individual Learning Plan): a mark of zero will be recorded.

Assessments marked Pass/Fail

• where the piece of work is submitted within three calendar days of the deadline (or a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment indicated in your Individual Learning Plan): no penalty will be applied;
• where the piece of work is submitted more than three calendar days after the original deadline (or a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment indicated in your Individual Learning Plan): a grade of Fail will be awarded.

Where a piece of work is submitted late after a deadline which has been revised owing to an extension granted through the Assessment Adjustments policy and process (self-certified or otherwise), it will be subject to the maximum penalty (i.e., considered to be more than three calendar days late). This will also apply when such an extension is used in conjunction with a DAS-agreed extension as a reasonable adjustment.

The University policy statement on penalties for late submission can be found at: https://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/-/media/project/functions/cqsd/documents/qap/penaltiesforlatesubmission.pdf

You are strongly advised to ensure that coursework is submitted by the relevant deadline. You should note that it is advisable to submit work in an unfinished state rather than to fail to submit any work.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is any task or activity which creates feedback (or feedforward) for you about your learning, but which does not contribute towards your overall module mark.

Reassessment

Additional costs