Introduction to Gender and Sexuality
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Course Description In this course we will be introduced to the key concepts of Gender and Sexuality Studies. The goal of this course is to understand how the discipline has been shaped by scholars and activists.
Tanya’s Email: Tanyarawal84@gmail.com
Course Assignments
20% Participation
50% Papers (due dates: 4/18, 4/28, 5/5, 5/20, 5/31)
10% Midterm (5/12)
20% Final (6/9)
March 29: Introduction; Syllabus; “The Personal is Political”
April 5: Imagining the Self, Selfies, & the Self-Portraits of Amrita Shergill & Frida Kahlo
Laura Mulvey’s The Male Gaze (1973)
In class: Screen Laura Mulvey’s Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1983)
Assignment: Take a selfie (or use an old one) and write about it. Discuss how you edited yourself. How did you take the selfie? Where did you take it? Why did you take it? How many did you take before you settled on one?
April 7: I Am Woman, SEE Me Roar (the politics of self-representation)
What is the female gaze? Why is it important to reclaim the gaze. What is self-representation? In class: discuss selfie responses.
April 12: Women and Citizenship
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman”
Read bell hooks’ “Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism” (Ch. 1 + 2)
April 14: Suffrage
Screen: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Let’s talk about that 2 minute Ida B. Wells cameo. What would this film look like from Wells’ perspective?
April 19: (S) The white-washing of activism
Read bell hooks’ “Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism” (ch. 5)
April 21: Whiteness, Patriarchy, and the Intersections of Power
Read: bell hooks’ “Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism” (ch. 3+4)
April 26: Intersectionality
Read: Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”
April 28: Are We All the Same or is Everyone a Special Snowflake? A Critique of Intersectionality
Does intersectionality intensify capitalism’s emphasis on the individual and, therefore, limit our ability to think communally?
Read: “Marxist Feminism as a Critique of Intersectionality”
Read: “Limits of Intersectionality”
Read: “The Uses and Abuses of Intersectionality”
May 3: Thinking “Beyond Equality” with Italian Feminists
Read: Luisa Muraro’s “The Passion of Feminine Difference Beyond Equality”
May 5: woman is not dialectically related to the male world.
“Equality is what is offered as legal rights to colonized people. And what is imposed on them as culture. It is the principle through which those with hegemonic power continue to control those without.” -CARLA LONZI
Read: Lonzi’s “Let’s Spit on Hegel”/”Sputiamo su Hegel”
May 10: Third Wave Feminism, Gender Abolitionists, and Breaking the Binary
Read: Rebecca Walker’s “Becoming The Third Wave”
May 12: MIDTERM
May 17: Bridges
Read: Selections from Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua’s This Bridge Called My Back (“For The Color of My Mother” pgs. 12–14; “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like An Indian From The Reservation” pgs. 46–52; “The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House” pgs. 98–196; “Brownness” pgs. 232–237)
May 19: Borderlands
Read Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Ch.1–3)
May 24: Postcolonial Feminism
Read “Under Western Eyes” from Chandra Mohanty’s Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003)
Screen: an interview with Chandra Mohanty
May 26: Transnational Feminism, Wall Street, and Freedom
Can you be a feminist and a capitalist?
probably not.
Read: Nancy Fraser’s “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History”
May 31: Postfeminism
the commodification of the female body under the guise of girl power.
Read: Amelia Jones’ “Feminism Incorporated: Reading Postfeminism in an Anti-Feminist Age”
Read: Jess Butler’s “For White Girls Only: Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion”
June 2: On paper we all have equality…now what?
Final thoughts!
Final Exam: June 9, 2016 1:30–4 PM
Extras:
Further thoughts on selfies:
The #LemonadeSyllabus:
