Course Description:
Many contemporary and historical issues of social, political, and cultural conflict have been centered on women's bodies and issues of sexuality. This seminar will investigate the significance of such contestations, in terms of both how they constitute gender and sexuality, and what they tell us about societies, cultures and politics. We will begin with historical-medical construction of gender and sexuality, its intersections with racializing the body, queer and transgender bodies, and ethnic and national bodies. We will investigate how these bodies have been constructed by science, art, politics, and in other domains. These themes will be explored through theoretical works and case studies from various regions to see how different conceptions of the body have affected women's lives in each context.
Course Requirements: Seminar participation and presentation. Regular and informed participation in the weekly seminars is required. Reading assignment for each seminar must be completed prior to that seminar. You are also required to post one question on the reading, or a paragraph from reading, for class discussion. Our newsgroup address is: columbia.spring.wmst3132.
One (or more) student(s) will be asked to be the main discussant(s) for each topic. Student discussants will begin class discussion by presenting the major points of readings, followed by one or two critical observations, and some questions for class discussion.
Research term paper. There is only one writing assignment for this course, 20-25 pages long, written in three stages. Choose one controversy, historical or contemporary, in any country, that has not been covered in this course. Write a paper proposal sketching out some of the issues that this controversy poses and an outline for your paper. In addition, you are required to do some preliminary library research and include an annotated bibliography. This assignment should be 5-7 pages long. Next, you will write a rough draft of your paper and will make a class presentation about it. This draft should be at least 15-20 pages long.
Readings:
A Reader inclusive of all readings is marked (R).
Michel Foucault. History of sexuality, Vol. 1.
Bernice L. Hausman. Changing sex: Transsexualism, technology and the idea of gender.
Jennifer Terry. An American obsession: Science, medicine, and homosexuality in modern society.
Susan Moller Okin. Is multiculturalism bad for women?
Seminar Topics and Reading: Week 1: Introduction.
Week 2: Premodern sexualities. Reading:
(R) Fradenburg, Louise, and Carla Freccero, eds. 1996. Premodern sexualities. Routledge, preface and Introduction (vii-xxiv) and chapter 6 Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, The hermaphrodite and the orders of nature, 117-136.
(R) Laqueur, Thomas. 1986. Orgasm, generation, and the politics of reproductive biology. Representations, 14, 1-41.
(R) Sanders, Paula. Gendering the ungendered body: Hermaphrodites in medieval Islamic law. In Beth Baron and Nikki Keddie, eds. Women in middle Eastern history.
(R) Rosenthal, Franz. 1978. Ar-Razi on the hidden illness. Bulletin of the history of medicine, 52, 45-60.
(R) Wikan, Unni. 1977. Man becomes woman: Transsexualism in Oman as a key to gender roles," MAN, 12, 304-319.
(R) Roscoe, Will. Gender diversity in native America: Notes toward a unified analysis. In Martin Duberman, ed. A queer world.
Week 3: Modern bodies. Reading:
Michel Foucault. History of sexuality, vol. 1.
Week 4: Transgendered Bodies.
See Boys Don't Cry. Reading:
Hausman, Bernice L. 1995. Changing sex: Transsexualism, technology and the idea of gender. Duke University Press, Introduction, and chapters 1, 3, 5, 6.
Week 5: Preliminary discussion of paper topics in class. Deviant bodies. Reading:
Terry, Jennifer. 1999. An American obsession: Science medicine, and homosexuality in modern society. The University of Chicago Press, Introduction and chapters 1, 2, 6, and 7.
Week 6: Racializing the body. Reading:
(R) Gilman, Sander. 1985. Black bodies, white bodies: Toward an iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth-century art, medicine, and literature. Critical Inquiry 12.
(R) Schiebinger, Londa. Nature's body: Gender in the making of modern science, chapters 4 and 5.
(R) Hammonds, Evelynn. New technologies of race. In Jennifer Terry and Melodie Calvert, eds. Processed lives: Gender and technology in everyday life.
Week 7: Paper proposal and bibliography due in class. The Jewish body. Reading:
(R) Gilman, Sander. The Jewish body: A foot-note. In Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed. People of the body.
(R) Geller, Jay. (G)nos(e)ology: The cultural construction of the other. In Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed. People of the body.
(R) Boyarin, Daniel. Unheroic conduct, Introduction and chapter 5.
(R) Pellegrini, Ann. Jewishness as gender: Changing Freud's subject, chapter 1 of Performance anxieties.
Screening of Wedding in Galilee (Michel Khleifi, 1987, 113 min.), time and place TBA. Required viewing for Week 8 class.
Week 8: Gender, nation, and sexuality. Reading:
(R) de Groot, Joanna. 'Sex' and 'race': The constructions of language and image in the nineteenth century. In Susan Mendus and Jane Rendall, eds. Sexuality and subordination.
(R) Stoler, Ann. 1989. Making empire respectable: Race and sexual morality in 20th-century colonial cultures. American Ethnologist, 16:2.
(R) McClintock, Anne. 1993. Family feuds: Gender, nationalism, and the family. Feminist Review, 44.
(R) Massad, Joseph. 1995. Conceiving the masculine: Gender and Palestinian nationalism. Middle East Journal, 49: 3.
Week 9: Contested veils: In-class video and discussion of Elizabeth Fernea's The veiled revolution. Reading:
(R) MacLeod, Arlene. 1992. Hegemonic relations and gender resistance: The new veiling as accommodating protest in Cairo. Signs, 17: 3.
(R) Karam, Azza. 1996. Veiling, unveiling, and meanings of 'the veil.' Thamyris, 3:2.
(R) Odeh, Lama Abu. 1993. Post-colonial feminism and the veil: Thinking the difference. Feminist Review, 43.
(R) Hoodfar, Homa. 1997. The veil in their minds and on our heads: Veiling practices and Muslim women. In Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, eds. The politics of culture in the shadow of capital. Duke University Press, 248-279.
Week 10: First draft of term paper (plus proposal/bibliography) due in class. Please include a (maximum) 30-page article you want the class to read for your presentation.
In-class video and discussion of Gita Sahgal's SATI. Reading:
(R) Mani, Lata. Contentious traditions: The debate on Sati in colonial India. In Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, Recasting women.
(R) Hawley, John S. Hinduism: Sati and its defenders. In Hawley, ed. Fundamentalism and gender.
(R) Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder. The subject of Sati: Pain and death in the contemporary discourse on Sati. Yale Journal of Criticism, 3: 2.
(R) Sinha, Mrinalini. Gender in the critiques of colonialism and nationalism: Locating the 'Indian Woman'. In Shapiro, ed. Feminists revision history.
Week 11: Female genital mutilation. In-class viewing and discussion of Warrior marks, Pratibha Parmar, Alice Walker, and Debra Hauer (54 min.) Reading:
(R) El-Saadawi, Nawal. The hidden face of Eve, ch. 6.
(R) Thomas, Lynn M. 1996. 'Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself)': The gender and generational politics of the 1956 ban on clitoridectomy in Meru, Kenya. Gender and History, 8:3.
(R) Musalo, Karen. 1998. Ruminations on In RE Kasinga: The decision's legacy. Introduction and two affidavits. Southern California Review of Law and Women's Studies, 7: 329, 357-361, 373-425.
(R) Winter, Bronwyn. 1994. Women, the law, and cultural relativism in France: The case of excision. Signs, 19: 4.
Week 12: Class presentation of term papers.
Week 13: Class presentation of term papers.
Week 14: Multiculturalism re-visited
Reading: Okin, Susan Moller. 1999. Is multiculturalism bad for women? Princeton University Press.
Final draft of term paper (plus first draft plus proposal/bibliography) due in class.
