The Spring 2026 listing for Queer Cinema in the online course catalog The Xavierite
The Communication elective course, Queer Cinema (Communication 256), was cancelled last spring semester due to low enrollment. Students in the SXU community–let’s not allow this to happen again.
The course is taught by Brad Mello, Ph.D., and was first offered during the Spring 2024 semester. There were 21 students enrolled in this session, whereas only about four or five signed up for the Spring 2025 one.
Courses like Queer Cinema, which discuss critical issues regarding marginalized communities, are essential to institutions of higher education–especially with the Trump Administration’s vicious attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), courses that discuss topics like LGBTQ+ issues which are arguably more important than ever.
Queer people are a historically-underrepresented group in media of all forms–particularly in cinema. Having courses like Queer Cinema exposes students to media portrayals of queer people and queer subjects they may not have seen in mainstream films, television, or literature, effectively combating the underrepresentation.
After Trump issued Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” on January 20, demanding that DEI programs be eradicated from the federal government, colleges and universities began to roll back their DEI programs and efforts as well.
On Feb. 4, The U.S. Military Academy West Point shut down a dozen of their clubs centered around ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality, and Ohio State University closed their Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) later that month–both following the Feb. 14 Dear Colleague Letter sent from the Department of Education to federally-funded institutions threatening to cut funding to any who refused to do away with DEI practices that grant economically-disadvantaged students access to higher education–practices the Department believes disproportionately favoring minority students.
Essentially, to put it lightly, higher education is under attack, and so are the rights and representation of marginalized groups within it.
In addition, with MAGA ideology on a rampant rise (in size of believers and level of extremism) in the dawn of the second Trump Administration, it is my worry that student interest and approval of courses like Queer Cinema, in the grand scheme of things, could be at risk of decline.
“Queer people have always existed, and will always exist,” SXU Class of 2024 alum and former deputy editor-in-chief of The Xavierite Nuala Hanlon, a student in the Spring ‘24 session of Queer Cinema, asserts. “Therefore it is crucial that an effort [is made] to understand queerness and queer individuals.”
“When courses such as Queer Cinema get cut for [low enrollment] when they are so few and far between especially at smaller colleges and universities, we have to look at them through a different lens and understand the cultural importance of keeping a course like that in the schedule, even if the enrollment numbers are not where the institution would like them to be at,” another SXU Class of 2024 alum and former editor-in-chief of The Xavierite Grace Van Cleave, also a student in Queer Cinema in the spring of 2024, said.
I agree, which is why I am relieved that Mello will be able to run the course in the Spring 2026 semester, just as long as ten people register before the class starts. I certainly will be one of them.
Giuliana Islas, SXU Orientation & Belonging Coordinator and former opinions editor for The Xavierite, reflects on her time in Queer Cinema: “While the actual class time was used to watch movies, there was a lot of thought put into the course work. There were discussions, outside reading, reflections, and other papers we worked on throughout the semester. I feel like this is one of the classes that actually changed me as a person. It really helped me understand the queer community’s impact on pop culture, and also allowed me to reflect on issues seen through the queer perspective.”
In addition to the course being a critical force for education about queer people, the students who took the course report positive experiences while taking it two springs ago.
“Sometimes it felt like we weren’t doing much in class because it was such an easy environment to learn in,” Van Cleave reminisces on her time in the course during her final semester at SXU. “We were allowed to openly share what we thought or how we felt about any media we looked at which always led to incredible class discussions.”
“I had a wonderful experience in Queer Cinema,” Islas reflected. “[Dr.] Mello was an excellent professor, and this was one of the most engaging and fun classes I ever took at SXU.”
Mello also speaks fondly of his experience while teaching the course: “I think people really loved spending that time to create articles,” adding, “[Queer Cinema] is a perfect Communication course because it teaches you how to write, teaches you how to write in a journalistic style, and, you know, so many of our mass media courses are focused on traditional reporting–this is entertainment writing.”
Queer Cinema will now be offered every other spring semester to ensure enrollment meets its requirement of ten students, as well as to give students a diverse selection of Communication electives to choose from, according to Mello.The class will run next semester on Thursdays from 2-4:40 p.m., and can be found in the course catalog on mySXU. I urge everyone–Communication majors, minors, or neither of the two–to take the course. It’s fun, but more importantly, addresses critical issues not always talked about in our heteronormative society.