Intro to Women and Gender Studies, Hunter College Spring 2015

2016

The academic field of gender and sexuality studies is an interdisciplinary field of scholarly inquiry that explores and interrogates the operations of gender and sexual diversity across all realms of life. Gender and sexuality studies do not stop at what most people experience as their "natural" identities, but rather proceed by questioning precisely what appears to be natural, given, and self-evident about ourselves-in the world at large, within the various collective structures and institutions that constitute societies (family, school, neighborhood, city, state, nation, and so on), in our private and personal lives, and in our sense of identity and embodiment. Described as such, the reach of gender and sexuality studies appears limitless. Since gender and sexual diversity, in intersection with other categories of difference (e.g., race, class, ethnicity, able-bodiedness), pervade almost every aspect of life; there is no academic discipline that has nothing to say about gender and sexuality, even if some realms of study (the humanities, the social sciences) have traditionally played a more dominant role in the development of this interdisciplinary field. At the same time, gender and sexuality studies, even if they play out differently over time and cross-culturally, know no regional boundaries. This means that the field of gender and sexuality studies today is truly global in its outlook. This has not always been the case: as in so many other respects, the so-called West (Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia) has dominated, and to some extent still does, dominate the realms of knowledge and modes of knowing that are generated within academia, including university-based gender and sexuality studies. The goal we set for the Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies was to reflect the wide range of topics, debates, and approaches to this exciting interdisciplinary, and increasingly, global field, while yet being forced to work with the unequal power relations that have historically marked the relations between "the West" and "the rest." While the 719 entries included in this encyclopedia may not be able to cover the entire field of gender and sexuality studies as it continues to develop in virtually all parts of the world, we hope we have captured both its complexity and its international scope. One way in which we have sought to achieve the latter is by highlighting the contributions of scholars in gender and sexuality studies in different parts of the world. With 621 lead authors and 16 advisory and associate editors from 28 different countries, the encyclopedia reaches beyond national boundaries to comprehend theoretical questions, critical debates, and key terms that are relevant to a variety of scholars in the field across the globe-albeit often in different ways and to different effects. Jointly, the five volumes make clear how differences among and between genders and diverse sexualities are socially constructed and embedded in structures of power and of discourses that reproduce inequalities and provide the basis for distinct forms of local resistance, social movements, and political activism. The volumes, taken as a whole, further testify to the fact that the field of gender and sexuality studies has a long history that predates many twentieth-century social movements, feminist

Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition (Revised 2023) , 2023

Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as “natural” in our lives is actually cultural—it is not grounded in nature or in biology but invented by humans. Because culture is invented, it takes different forms in different places and changes over time. Living in the twenty-first century, we have witnessed how rapidly and dramatically culture can change, from ways of communicating to the emergence of same-sex marriage. Similarly, many of us live in culturally diverse settings and experience how varied human cultural inventions can be. We readily accept that clothing, language, and music are cultural—invented, created, and alterable—but often find it difficult to accept that gender and sexuality are not natural but deeply embedded in culture. We struggle with the idea that the division of humans into two and only two categories, “male” and “female,” is not universal. How can male and female be cultural concepts that take different forms and have different meanings cross-culturally? This chapter, newly revised for 2023, addresses these questions as it explores the anthropology of gender and sexuality. {See https://pressbooks.pub/perspectives/chapter/gender-and-sexuality/ for the online version, or download the chapter here.}

2008

This course will offer an introduction to theory and empirical research in the sociology of gender and sexuality. It will assist students in preparing for the Gender and Sexuality prelim exam, although the course will be useful for anyone with interests in these areas. We will review some of the classic pieces in the subfield as well as attend to what's new, emerging, and exciting. We will focus on the theoretical perspectives and analytical tools that offer sociologists the most assistance in developing empirical research.

New Woman Fiction, 2000

The Crisis of Gender and Sexuality 117 [I]t must never be forgotten that the differences which nature has fixed between the sexes are insuperable. .. The protectors of 'true womanhood' insist on these differences; but the insurgents ought to insist on them too. It is not only useless, it is suicidal to deny them. .. The perpetual. .. unassailable differences, organic and functional, biological and psychological, between men and women are just the safeguard which may enable men without scruple and apprehension to make women their political peers. Women may safely be relieved from political disabilities simply because they can never become men. J. B. Bury, 'The Insurrection of Women' (1892) 1 At a time when even those sympathetic to the women's movement asserted rigid notions of sexual difference, if only to deflate conservative fears about the sexual anarchy that would follow in the wake of women's political emancipation, feminists challenged the biological and psychological premise on which the sex/gender equation was based. While in the motto to this chapter women's claim to citizenship is linked to their inalterable difference from men, New Woman writers, arguing for women's rights on the grounds of their essential sameness, suggested in their cross-dressing narratives that women could, in fact, become men. The last chapter explored the degree to which masculinity became the target of feminist anger. By seeking to incriminate virtually all contemporary men of inherent immorality, and by contrasting male sexual violence with the caring ethic of many women, writers mobilized gendered stereotypes about intrinsically 'male' and 'female' traits. At the same

Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Ed., 2020

Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as "natural" in our lives is actually cultural-it is not grounded in the natural world or in biology but invented by humans. 2 Because culture is invented, it takes different forms in different places and changes over time in those places. Living in the twenty-first century, we have witnessed how rapidly and dramatically culture can change, from ways of communicating to the emergence of same-sex marriage. Similarly, many of us live in culturally diverse settings and experience how varied human cultural inventions can be.

Davy, Zowie, Julia Downes, Lena Eckert, Natalia Gerodetti, Dario Llinares und Ana Cristina Santos (eds.) (2008) Bound and Unbound: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Genders and Sexualities. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2020

This introductory course invites students to the explore the field of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As such, we will begin the semester by learning about the field's history and conclude the class by considering its future. The rest of the syllabus, which is organized into three parts, showcases scholarship that takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the social construction of sex, gender, and sexuality. Together, we will unpack the assumptions that underlie popular and academic discussions about sexed bodies, gender identities, and sexual desires, and we will examine the ways in which scholars, activists, and other feminist thinkers attempt to dismantle dominant power structures and enact lasting social change. The first part of the course explores the gendered regulation of bodies in relation to the rise of western science and the invention of sexual and racial difference. In the second part of the class, we will foreground questions of gender as we investigate the emergence of the modern nation-state alongside histories of capitalism, colonialism, slavery, and war. The third part of the course tackles issues of gender and globalization: in addition to studying the movement of bodies, capital, and things across geopolitical borders, we will also zero in on transnational feminist approaches to labor organizing and environmental justice. Although the syllabus is divided into three distinct parts, these units are designed to complement one another. In other words, students will be expected to draw connections between the sections and to relate material assigned at the beginning of the semester to what follows. As a whole, this course aims to give students a sense of the topics, methods, and questions that are central to women's, gender, and sexuality studies.

2017

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