HIST GR8938 Gender As Critique Syllabus (Fall 2018)

Office Hours: TBA Office Location: Worrell Hall 302 COURSE DESCRIPTION This survey course will explore a range of core concepts, theoretical frameworks, and " applied " issues/debates in feminist thought. We begin with an overview of the nature of sexism and the social construction of femininity. Then, we turn to philosophical analyses of a variety of forms of social construction, such as the social constructions of disability and class. The next part of the course considers feminist scholarship on the challenges associated with the theorizing project itself—such as the " problem of speaking for others ". After that we shall delve into Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex prior to engaging the works of Crenshaw and Davis on dimensions of intersectionality. The final units of the course will survey feminist scholarship on homophobia, lesbian feminisms, Chicana, Latina and Latin American feminisms, feminist debates in recent U.S. politics, and feminist perspectives on abortion and reproductive rights. In " Toward a Revolutionary Feminist Pedagogy, " bell hooks wrote that " we must learn from one another, sharing our ideas and pedagogical strategies. If we are to learn from one another, we must be more engaged as a group. We must be willing to deconstruct this power dimension, to challenge, change and create new approaches. " 1 With hooks' words in mind, in this course we shall engage all course materials through open seminar discussion that emphasizes critical questioning and debate. In addition, at the beginning of each class students will be asked to provide written comments on one another's short essays on course materials.

This course is designed to provide an introductory overview of the histories, debates and political stakes in the study of gender and sexuality. We will examine sex and gender as modes of social organization in which sexed, gendered, and desiring individuals and groups are placed at the intersections of power, privilege, work, reproduction, and the creation of "self" through sexual identity. We will always keep in mind the effects of race, gender, class, economics, public policy, and the political climate on expressions and interpretations of gender and sexuality. Students will be expected to critically and respectfully engage with a variety of materials on human sexualities and develop a working understanding of the modes of study of gender sexuality in order to push back against commonly held, damaging notions on the "nature" of gender and sexuality.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2021

2024

This course explores the relations of cultural artifacts in the contemporary world to their various social contexts. Culture is understood as the material expressions and images that people create and the social environment that shapes the way diverse groups of people experience their world and interact with one another. The course focuses on the critical analysis of these various forms of media, design, mass communications, arts, and popular culture. Critical Black Studies and Black Feminisms Theory inform this course. It involves a critical and systematic examination of key works by influential thinkers, considering how they both contributed to and drew from larger intellectual movements. As an interdisciplinary, writing-intensive course, we will engage with seminal texts and ideas from these traditions while connecting them to contemporary culture, current events, and our creative and intellectual endeavors.

2022

This discussion-based course is designed to acquaint students with key texts in gender theory from the late 1950s to the present. We begin by examining basic concepts such as gender roles and gender inequality and proceed with more complex issues related to gender performativity and biopolitics. Required readings include classic and contemporary texts representing various approaches in the frame of gender theory. Drawing on texts by Simone de Beauvoir, Raewyn Connell, Judith Butler, Michelle Foucault, Maria Lugones, Jack Halberstam, Dean Spade, and others, we will explore the entanglement of gender, sexuality, body, race, punitive system (prisons), and coloniality. Seminars will comprise a combination of brief lectures, text discussions, and work in small groups for better comprehension of the main ideas of the readings. Students will also be invited to attend presentations and a workshop, "Appropriated feminism," that will take place at the University of Greifswald on January 17-18, 2023.

Teaching Sociology, 2005

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER STUDIES COURSE DESCRIPTION. This course offers an introductory overview of the interdisciplinary field of Gender Studies. The first part of this course introduces a social constructivist approach to the study of race, gender, sexuality, and disability, which foregrounds the historical and cultural contingency of concepts that are often assumed to be innate and grounded in nature. Next, the second part of this course offers a brief intellectual history of intersectionality, a foundational premise of the field, which in short argues the inextricability of various systems of privilege and oppression. These sections lay the conceptual groundwork for the third section of this course. In this section, we consider the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability in the United States during the long 20 th century. Finally, the last section examines the transnational circulation of ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and disability, in relation to the movement of people and capital in local and global markets. Overall, this course aims to introduce students to the topics, methods, and questions central to the field.

2014

The present course is a critical evaluation of the ways in which gender as a social category is shaped in certain social contexts through social institutions. It provides and discusses basic ideas around categories and terms 'sex' and 'gender'. It covers and presents sensitive issues on gender and genocide studies. It also touches upon issues of violence in its various forms and representations. It is important to understand gender, and gender studies in a broad sense, is a wide academic field, therefore, it should not always be limited to the studies of certain categories only. It is an open domain that crosses the boundary of philosophy and theology, psychology and biology, literature and linguistics, politics and economics, medicine and environment, etc, thus, addressing issues and often presenting some solutions and directions of analysis to certain problems. Though it is a socially and culturally constructed category the issues raised by gender are timeless and deserve a thorough consideration and investigation. So, the present course is a survey on gender studies which warmly invites students from different disciplines and wide interests to study some basic and key concepts, theories on gender studies both on global and local contexts. The course also challenges students to intellectually grapple with socially designed stereotypes and ideas which are often accepted as proper and accepted, and to consider how they are personally situated within the system.