Queer Studies represent a synthesis of an academic and activist project, offering participants education on LGBT+ and queer topics in the broadest sense.
The program was first held at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in 2001, and continued between 2012 and 2015. It consisted of 24 lectures and was a unique academic course in the Balkans. The program was resumed in 2019 at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Subsequently, from 2022 onward, shorter lecture series were organized as part of Belgrade’s Pride Week.

In the 2026 academic year, Queer Studies will once again be a two-semester course consisting of 24 lectures, held at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory.

There are at least two reasons for this.

On the one hand, we live in an increasingly conservative world, where the social life of (not only) sexual minorities is becoming ever more difficult. On the other hand, in Serbia we are witnessing a decline in infrastructure intended for LGBT+ persons and a rise in homophobia — the closure of the Pride Info Center, uncertainty surrounding the organization of the Pride Parade, statistically recorded growth in social distance, etc.

Secondly, Queer Studies make use of the still-open space of academia in order to influence young people in particular — future agents of social change — by equipping them with a theoretical apparatus for critical thinking and a deeper understanding of “sensitive” (so-called taboo) topics concerning gender/sexual minorities, as well as political, social, and artistic queer/minority sensibilities more broadly. Today and here, sharpening our moral and intellectual lenses is therefore necessary in order to identify and deconstruct all ideological-political reprisals of the current moment — whether they come from the right or the left of the political spectrum — and to struggle for a more just world.

HISTORY OF QUEER THEORY AND THE QUEER COMMUNITY
Semester One

A SHORT HISTORY OF QUEER THEORY

1. Irina Deretić – Plato and Same-Sex Eros
2. Dušan Maljković – What Is (Homo)sexuality? From Plato to Freud and Beyond
3. Katarina Lončarević – Michel Foucault’s Genealogy of Sexuality
4. Adriana Zaharijević – From Gender Trouble to Gender Panic: The Queer Philosophy of Judith Butler
5. Jasmina Sinanović – Global Queer: Pinkwashing, Homonationalism, Homo/Transphobia
6. Laura Pejak – Introduction to Trans Theory

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BINARY

7. Predrag Šarčević – Transsexuality, Transgender Identity and DSD: Controversies of the Sex/Gender Dichotomous System
8. Slobodan G. Marković – Psychoanalysis, Bisexuality and LGBT+ Rights: Recognition, Rejection, Acceptance
9. Leo Ivanišević – The Complex Reality of Bisexuality
10. Nada Sekulić – Elizabeth Grosz – The Body and Phantasm

LESBIANISM, FEMINISM, QUEER (PART I)

11. lepa mlađenović The Lesbian Feminist Movement from Yugoslavia to 2000
12. Dragoslava Barzut – No Woman Is Free Until She Is Free to Be a Lesbian: On Lesbian Separatism and the Manifesto of the Society for Cutting Up Men

The first session is scheduled for Friday, March 6, at 5:30 PM at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Kraljice Natalije 45.

Registration: kvir.studije@gmail.com

All lectures are free of charge and open to everyone.