{Click a link below to jump to that week’s reading assignments}
Weekly Schedule
8/22 WEEK 1: Gender
8/29 WEEK 2: Sexuality
9/5 WEEK 3: Early Theories of Gender Difference and Proto-Feminisms
9/12 WEEK 4: The First Wave
9/19 WEEK 5: The Second Wave
9/26 WEEK 6: The Gay Rights’ Movement and the Third Wave
10/3 WEEK 7: Intersectionality, Black, and Chicana Feminisms
10/17 WEEK 8: Intersections of Bodies, Genders and Sexualities
10/24 WEEK 9: Global Perspectives
10/31 WEEK 10: Health and Reproduction
11/7 WEEK 11: Work
11/14 WEEK 12: Family
11/28 WEEK 13: The Meaning of Marriage
12/5 WEEK 14: (Post)colonialism, Racism, and Violence
8/22 WEEK 1: Gender
Key Questions and Terms [KQ&T]: What is gender? What is transgender? How has gender been constructed socially over time? How do media, images, texts contruct gender? How do gender and transgender intersect with race and class and sexuality?
Monday
Introduction to the course
*Vote to use Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook*
Wednesday
Three to Infinity: Beyond Two Genders (2015). [Stream for $4.99 on Vimeo ]
Kate Bornstein, selections from My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely (1997) [Read up to p. 18 and complete the quiz, not to turn in, for yourself.]
Judith Jack Halberstam, selections from Female Masculinity (1998) [Read only up to p. 9]
Get a head start on reading for Friday.
Friday
Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes Revisited” (2000) and selections from Sexing the Body (2000)
[Optional] Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes” (1993)
8/29 WEEK 2: Sexuality
KQ: What is sexuality? When and how were the words and concepts homo- and heterosexuality invented? What is the “repressive hypothesis”? What is the relationship between capitalism and the ways that our lives and identities are organized? What is “compulsory heterosexuality” (Adrienne Rich)? What is “heteronormativity” (Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner)?
Jump back to weekly scheduled readings
Monday
Riki Wilchins, selections from Queer Theory, Gender Theory (2004)
Leila Rupp, “Toward a Global History of Same-Sex Sexuality” (2001) [Read to extract the key argument and three key examples of same-sex sexuality across time and place that strike you as important and/or relate to other readings.]
During class, you will be assigned to read one of the articles for Wednesday (either Katz or D’Emilio) and to summarize the main argument of the assigned article, with key examples, for the other half of the class that read the other article.
Wednesday
Jonathan Ned Katz, selections from The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995)
John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity” (1983)
Look up “compulsory heterosexuality” (Adrienne Rich) and “heteronormativity” (Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner) and be prepared to discuss their meanings.
Friday
Michel Foucault, selections from The History of Sexuality (1979) [Read enough to produce answers to the following questions, with examples: What is the repressive hypothesis? What is the “incitement to discourse”? How does this relate to D’Emilio’s argument?]
9/5 WEEK 3: Early Theories of Gender Difference and Proto-Feminisms
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Sharon Marcus, selections from Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (2007)
Wednesday
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, “The Reply to Sor Philotea” (1691)
Alice Sowal, “On Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal: Mind, Method, Custom” [Read enough to get a general sense of Astell’s text as well as Sowal’s general argument]
Friday
TBA
*Wordpress Training*
*Media Analysis due 9/20, published on the blog*
*Students should choose a monograph for their book review (due 9/30) by the end of Week 4, and visit Office Hours OR E-MAIL to get approval of said monograph by the end of Week 5 or 6.*
9/12 WEEK 4: The First Wave
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Luisa Capetillo, selections from A Nation of Women (1910s) and her bio
Anna Julia Cooper, selections from A Voice from the South (1892)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Solitude of Self” (1892) (attached to the Cooper PDF)
Friedrich Engels, selections from The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
Francisca Diniz, “Equality of Rights,” (1890)
WEB DuBois, “The Damnation of Women,” (1919)
Wednesday (Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” (1848)
Huda Shaarawi, “Speeches at Arab Feminist Conference,” (1944)
Simone de Beauvoir, selections from The Second Sex (1949)
*Media Analysis due 9/20, published on the blog*
9/19 WEEK 5: The Second Wave
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Betty Friedan, selections from Feminine Mystique (1963)
Committee on the Status of Women in India, “Towards Equality” (India, 1974)
bell hooks, “Black Women Shaping Feminist Theory” in Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (1984)
Wednesday
Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975)
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, selections from Our Bodies, Our Selves (1971)
Peruse the contemporary Our Bodies site as well
* Book review due 9/30*
9/26 WEEK 6: The Gay Rights’ Movement and the Third Wave
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto. London, 1971, revised 1978. {Skim this reading}
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/pwh/glf-london.asp
Documents from the 1969 Furor. [Early gay liberation flyers and manifestos, and
the emergence of the Gay Liberation Front in July 1969.] {Skim this reading}
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/pwh/1969docs.asp
Deborah Gould, selections from Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UPs Fight Against
Aids (2009)
Wednesday
Susan Faludi, “Blame It on Feminism” (1991)
Kathleen Hanna, “Riot Grrl Manifesto” (1991)
Michelle Jensen, Review of Baumgardner & Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000)
Friday
Book review due 9/30 on the blog
* Sign up for Office Hours meetings (or drop in) to discuss the Literature Review before 10/30*
10/3 WEEK 7: Intersectionality, Black, and Chicana Feminisms
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday-NO CLASS After Marriage Conference
Alice Walker, “Definition of a Womanist” (1983) and “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” (1972)
“Combahee River Collective: A Black Feminist Statement” (1977)
Gloria Anzaldúa, “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Toward a New Consciousness” (1987)
Wednesday
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” (1991)
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege” (1988)
FALL BREAK 10/10 – 10/11
10/17 WEEK 8: Intersections of Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Jean Kilbourne, TED Talk on Killing Us Softly IV: Advertising Images of Women (2014) 15 minutes
Marilyn Wann, foreward t0 The Fat Studies Reader (2009)
Deb Burgard, “What is Health at Every Size?” (2014)
Jen Baker, TEDx Talk on Complete and Total Body Love (2014) 16 minutes
Wednesday
Eli Clare, selections from Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation (1999)
Robert McRuer, “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence” (2006)
10/24 WEEK 9: Global Perspectives
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Beijing Declaration, “United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women” (1995) Also read this background on the significance of the Beijing conference.
Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others” (2002)
Uma Narayan, “Contesting Cultures: Westernization, Respect for Cultures and Third World Women” (1997)
Thursday: Laura Freixas visits class
Wednesday
Henesler, Christine. Conteporary Spanish Women’s Narrative and the Publishing Industry, introduction
Freixas, Laura, “Absurd Ending,” a short story
Prepare 3 questions for Laura about feminism in Spain, about the Henesler reading, and/or about her short story.
Event (attendance required at 2/3 events): Lecture by Laura Freixas, “The Silence of Mothers.” Thursday, March 17, 7:30pm, Hance Auditorium.
* Sign up for mandatory meetings 3/23-4/12 [change dates to fit accordingly] to discuss the Literature Review and Grant Proposal; see Sign-Ups page*
Bring to the meeting a draft of at least one page of the Lit. Review, 5 bibliographic entries, and be prepared to discuss your plan for the Grant Proposal (or alternative to the Grant Proposal).
10/31 WEEK 10: Health and Reproduction
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Jael Silliman et al., “Women of Color and Their Struggle for Reproductive Justice” (2004)
Wendy Hussey, “Slivers of the Journey: Using Photovoice and Storytelling to Examine FTM Experiences of Health Care Access” (2006) [Instead of reading from beginning to end, skim this article enough to extract: the argument; the discipline(s); the type of evidence; three key examples of such evidence; and the conclusion.]
Wednesday
Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles” (1991)
Anonymous, “How It All Began: I Have Had an Abortion” (1981)
11/7 WEEK 11: Work
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Anne Crittenden, “The Mommy Tax” (2001)
Adia Harvey Wingfield, “Racializing the Glass Escalator: Reconsidering Men’s Experiences with Women’s Work” (2009)
Brad Seligman, “Patriarchy at the Checkout Counter: The Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Class-Action Suit” (2006)
Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, “Holding Up Half the Sky: Chinese Immigrant Women Workers” from Sweatshop Warriors (2001)
Alice Kessler Harris, selections from In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in the 20th Century (2003)
11/14 WEEK 12: Family
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
John D’Emilio “Capitalism and Gay Identity” (1983)
Noël Sturgeon, “Penguin Family Values: The Nature of Planetary Environmental Justice” (2010)
Wednesday
Michael Cobb, introduction to Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled (2012) [Skim and read for main argument]
Patricia Hill Collins, “Controlling Images and Black Women’s Oppression” (1991)
THANKSGIVING BREAK 11/23 – 11/25
11/28 WEEK 13: The Meaning of Marriage
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Michael Warner, selections from The Trouble with Normal (1999)
Nancy Polikoff, selections from Beyond (Gay and Straight) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law (2008) [Skim the Intro. and read Chapter 1 pp. 11-33]
[Optional] Elizabeth Freeman, selections from The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in in Modern American Culture (2002)
Wednesday
Kenyan Farrow “Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?”
Marlon M. Bailey, Priya Kandaswamy, Mattie Udora Richardson “Is Gay Marriage Racist?”
12/5 WEEK 14: (Post)colonialism, Racism, and Violence
Reading Day 12/8
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
No reading: Presentation of my book project Queer Ambivalence: Latina/o American Sexual Cultures in the Age of Gay Marriage
Wednesday
Workshop: Why is it acceptable to transition genders, but not races?
The most common meaning of “transracial”
Ponder these questions:
How are race and gender different? What do they have in common as forms of social difference? How do they intersect?
Why is it increasingly socially acceptable to transition genders, but not races?
Putting aside the scandal of Dolezal, are there circumstances under which one could transition racially, in a process partially analogous to gender transitioning?
FALL SEMESTER??? WEEK 15: Conclusions
(Jump back to weekly scheduled readings)
Monday
Browse articles from Against Equality; Feministing; and Wear Your Voice. Pick one that relates to something that you learned in GSS 101 for the very first time, particularly an idea that surprised you, led you to shift your understanding of some aspect of our world. Be prepared to briefly summarize the article and how it relates to your learning in class.
Read through the list of Learning Goals, as well as the Assignments, on the syllabus and make a list of what you have learned this semester in GSS 101.
Wednesday
Class celebration, the GSS major, & course evaluations.
Class starts at 10:00am instead of 9:40
Bagels and coffee from Summit, courtesy of the GSS program
