everything.study
21A.231

Gender, Sexuality, and Society

Undergraduate · Historical course

Spring 2006

This course seeks to examine how people experience gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - and sexuality in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. We will explore how gender and sexuality relate to other categories of social identity and difference, such as race and ethnicity, economic and social standing, urban or rural life, etc. One goal of the class is to learn how to critically assess media and other popular representations of gender roles and stereotypes. Another is to gain a greater sense of the diversity of human social practices and beliefs in the United States and around the world.

Readings

  • Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex . First Picador ed. New York, NY: Picador, 2003. ISBN: 9780312422158.
    Required
  • Prieur, Annick. Mema’s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226682563.
    Required
  • Paxson, Heather. Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780520223714.
    Required
  • Hubbard, Ruth. “Rethinking Women’s Biology.” In The Politics of Women’s Biology . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990, pp. 119-129. ISBN: 9780813514895.
    Listed reading
  • Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “The Five Sexes.” The Sciences (March/April 1993): 20-24.
    Listed reading
  • Thorne, Barrie. “Children and Gender: Constructions of Difference.” In Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference. Edited by Deborah Rhode. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 100-113. ISBN: 9780300044270.
    Listed reading
  • Le, Huynh-Nhu. “Never Leave Your Little One Alone: Raising an Ifaluk child.” In A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies . Edited by Judy S. DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 199-220. ISBN: 9780521664752.
    Listed reading
  • Diener, Marissa. “Gift from the Gods: A Balinese Guide to Early Child Rearing.” In A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies . Edited by Judy S. DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 91-116. ISBN: 9780521664752.
    Listed reading
  • Begin reading Middlesex . Discuss through p. 125.
    Listed reading
  • Collier, Jane. “From Mary to Modern Woman.” American Ethnologist 13, no. 1 (1986): 100-107.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 5 · TOPICS: Science, Republicanism and The Woman Question · READINGS: Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. “Introduction: The Romantic Solution.” In For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Experts’ Advice to Women. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1978, pp. 1-29. ISBN: 9780385126502. Kapsalis, Teri. “Mastering the Female Pelvis: Race and the Tools of Reproduction.” In Public Privates: Performing Gynaecology from Both Ends of the Speculum . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 31-59. ISBN: 9780822319283.
    Reading assignment
  • Rapp, Rayna. “Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes Toward an Understanding of Ideology.” In Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions . Edited by Barrie Thorne and Marilyn Yalolm. New York, NY: Longman, 1982, pp. 25-39. ISBN: 9780582282650.
    Listed reading
  • Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor.” In Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History . 3rd ed. Edited by Ellen C. DuBois and Vicki Ruiz. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999, pp. 436-459. ISBN: 9780415925167.
    Listed reading
  • Romero, Mary. “Who Takes Care of the Maid’s Children? Exploring the Costs of Domestic Service.” In Feminism and Families . Edited by Hilde Lindeman Nelson. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 151-169. ISBN: 9780415912532.
    Listed reading
  • Freeman, Carla. “Designing Women: Corporate Discipline and Barbados’s Off-Shore Pink-Collar Sector.” Cultural Anthropology 8, no. 2 (1993): 169-186.
    Listed reading
  • Film: Redmon, David. Mardi Gras: Made in China . Revised ed. Carinvalesque Films. Brooklyn, NY: D. Redmon, 2006. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Weston, Kath. “Production as Means, Production as Metaphor: Women’s Struggle to Enter the Trades.” In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture . Edited by Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991, pp. 137-151. ISBN: 9780807046128.
    Listed reading
  • McDowell, Linda. “Body Work 1: Men Behaving Badly” and “Body Work II: The Masqueraders.” In Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, pp. 158-203. ISBN: 9780631205302.
    Listed reading
  • Buy at MIT Press Williams, Rosalind. “Men and Women in a Technological World.” In Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 198-211. ISBN: 9780262232234. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2, no. 3 (1988): 274-290.
    Listed reading
  • Abu-Lughod, Lila. “The Romance of Resistance.” American Ethnologist 17, no. 1 (1990): 41-55.
    Listed reading
  • Counihan, Carole M. “Food Rules in the United States: Individualism, Control, and Hierarchy.” In The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning and Power . New York, NY: Routledge, 1999, pp. 113-128.
    Listed reading
  • Gremillion, Helen. “In Fitness and in Health: Crafting Bodies in the Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa.” Signs 27, no. 2 (2002): 381-414.
    Listed reading
  • Katz, Jonathan Ned. “The Invention of Heterosexuality.” Socialist Review 20, no. 1 (1990): 7-33.
    Listed reading
  • Davis, Maxine. “The Importance of Sexual Harmony.” In The Sexual Responsibility of Women . New York, NY: Dial Press, 1956, pp. 22-36.
    Listed reading
  • Bérubé, Allan. “Marching to a Different Drummer: Lesbian and Gay GIs in World War II.” In Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality . Edited by Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1983, pp. 88-99. ISBN: 9780853456094.
    Listed reading
  • Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Continuum.” In Women-Sex and Sexuality . Edited by Catharine Stimpson and Ethel Spector Person. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981, pp. 62-91. ISBN: 9780226774770.
    Listed reading
  • Stein, Arlene. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, chapters 1, 2 and 3, 1997. ISBN: 9780520202573.
    Listed reading
  • Lewin, Ellen. “Wives, Mothers and Lesbians: Rethinking Resistance in the U.S.” In Pragmatic Women and Body Politics . Edited by Margaret Lock and Patricia Kaufert. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 164-177. ISBN: 9780521629294.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 13 · TOPICS: Other Genders/Sexualities · READINGS: Herdt, Gilbert. “Gender and Socialization.” In The Sambia: Ritual and Gender in New Guinea . Wadsworth Publishing; 1 edition, 1987, pp. 67-99. ISBN: 9780030689079. Prieur, Annik. Mema’s House . Chapter 1.
    Reading assignment
  • LEC #: 14 · TOPICS: Transvestite Lives and Sex Work · READINGS: Prieur, Annik. Mema’s House .
    Reading assignment
  • Heyes, Cressida J. “Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender.” Signs 28, no. 4 (2003): 1093-1120.
    Listed reading
  • Film: Schermerhorn, Candace, and Bestor Cram. You Don’t Know Dick: Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men . VHS. Berkeley, CA: University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning, 1997. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Chase, Cheryl. “Hermaphrodites with Attitude.” GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4, no. 2 (1998): 189-211.
    Listed reading
  • Beeman, William, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Brown University. “What are you?” Baltimore Morning Sun , Sunday, March 17, 1996.
    Listed reading
  • Discuss Middlesex .
    Listed reading
  • Swarr, Amanda Lock, and Richa Nagar. “Dismantling Assumptions: Interrogating ‘Lesbian’ Struggles for Identity and Survival in India and South Africa.” Signs 29, no. 2 (2004): 493-516.
    Listed reading
  • Wardlow, Holly. “Anger, Economy, and Female Agency: Problematizing ‘Prostitution’ and ‘Sex Work’ among the Huli of Papua New Guinea.” Signs 29, no. 4 (2004): 1017-1040.
    Listed reading
  • de Leonardo, Michaela. “White Lies, Black Myths: Rape, Race and the Black ‘Underclass’.” In The Gender/Sexuality Reader . Edited by Roger N. Lancaster and Michaela de Leonardo. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, pp. 53-68. ISBN: 9780415910057.
    Listed reading
  • Heise, Lori L. “Violence, Sexuality, and Women’s Lives.” In The Gender/Sexuality Reader . Edited by Roger N. Lancaster and Michaela de Leonardo. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, pp. 411-433. ISBN: 9780415910057.
    Listed reading
  • Collier, Jane, Michelle Rosaldo, and Sylvia Yanagisako. “Is there a Family? New Anthropological Views.” In Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions . Edited by Barrie Thorne and Marilyn Yalolm. New York, NY: Longman, 1982, pp. 25-39. ISBN: 9780582282650.
    Listed reading
  • Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Lifeboat Ethics.” In The Gender/Sexuality Reader . Edited by Roger N. Lancaster and Michaela de Leonardo. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, pp. 82-88. ISBN: 9780415910057.
    Listed reading
  • Landsman, Gail. “‘Real Motherhood’, Class, and Children with Disabilities.” In Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000, pp. 169-187.
    Listed reading
  • Gailey, Christine Ward. “Ideologies of Motherhood and Kinship in U.S. Adoption.” In Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000, pp. 11-55.
    Listed reading
  • Petchesky, Rosalind. “Fetal Images: The power of visual culture in the politics of reproduction.” Feminist Studies 13, no. 2 (1987): 263-292.
    Listed reading
  • Banerjee, Neela. “Church Groups Turn to Sonogram to Turn Women From Abortions.” New York Times , February 2, 2005, National section.
    Listed reading
  • Layne, Linda L. “Baby Things as Fetishes? Memorial goods, Simulacra, and the ‘Realness’ Problem of Pregnancy Loss.” In Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000, pp. 111-138.
    Listed reading
  • Kanaaneh, Rhoda. “Conceiving Difference: Birthing the Palestinian Nation in the Galilee.” Critical Public Health 7, nos. 3-4 (1997): 64-79.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Boys or Men? Duped or ‘Made’? Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military.” American Ethnologist 32, no. 2 (2005): 260-274.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 22 · TOPICS: Making Modern Mothers · READINGS: Paxson, Heather. Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece . Chapters 1-3.
    Reading assignment
  • LEC #: 23 · TOPICS: Making Modern Mothers (cont.) · READINGS: Paxson, Heather. Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece . Chapters 4-5.
    Reading assignment
Sources