99396

ANTH 244 Anthropology & The Politics of the Body

Diana Brown

M . W . .

1:30 -2:50 pm

OLIN 205

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies Anthropology has been long concerned with bodies as sources of symbolic representations of the social world and as vehicles for expressing individual and collective identities. More recent interests center on mind-body relations and embodiment, and on bodies as targets for the production of consumer desires and sites of commodification and political control. This course will explore a range of different issues raised by these perspectives through readings theorizing the body, supplemented by comparative ethnographic studies of bodily knowledge and practice. We will view bodies as sites of negotiation and resistance and contextualize them within local and global political economies and systems of power. Topics will include the gendering of bodies and other culturally constructed markings of social class, race, age; decisions concerning fertility and reproduction; manipulation of bodily surfaces and forms to establish boundaries and identities through techniques such as tattooing, piercing, dieting, sculpting and cosmetic surgery; commodification and fragmentation of the body through the selling and transplantation of body parts; and the blurring of body/non-body and human/non-human boundaries under the impact of new technologies.

99516

ANTH 270 Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Anthropology

Megan Callaghan

. T . Th . .

9:00 - 10:20 am

OLIN 204

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Human Rights This course examines the emergence and transformation of gender studies within anthropology since the 1970s. We will read early texts that challenged anthropologists to recognize women’s lives as valid subjects of study, as well as more recent work that encompasses constructions of both femininities and masculinities. In doing so, we will explore the division between and interrelation of biological and social factors in determining sex and gender. How are perceived biological differences accorded social meaning in various contexts? How are bodies interpreted and shaped within gender discourses? Additionally, we will focus on the politics of gender, including its relation to ideologies of colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism. How are broader political and economic forces connected to kinship, reproduction, work, and sexuality? How do anthropologies of gender relate to political feminism, construed narrowly as advocacy of women’s rights or more broadly as attention to the role of gender in structuring society? Finally, how might one do feminist anthropology? This course includes examination of cross-cultural constructions of gender structures and practices. It also requires critical interpretation of gender and sexuality in contemporary American popular culture. Prior experience with anthropology is preferable but not necessary. This course approaches the social construction of gender and sexuality through cross-cultural variation; it examines the politics of representation of gendered, sexual and cultural difference; and it considers inequalities of class and race as they intertwine with gender and sexuality.

99417

HIST 3108 Jewish Women: Gender Roles & Cultural Change

Cecile Kuznitz

M . . . .

4:00 -6:20 pm

OLIN 301

HIST

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies This course will draw on both historical and memoir literature to examine the lives of Jewish women and men and their changing social, economic, and religious lives across the medieval and modern periods. We will consider the status of women in Jewish law and then look at issues including forms of women’s religious expression; marriage and family patterns; the differing impact of enlightenment and secularization on women in Western and Eastern Europe; and the role of women in the Zionist and labor movements in Europe, Israel, and the United States. Among the central questions we will ask is how women’s roles changed from the medieval to the modern period. Did modernity in fact herald an era of greater opportunity for Jewish women? How did their experiences differ from those of Jewish men?

99501

LIT 3143 Women on the Edge

Mary Caponegro

. . . Th .

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 303

ELIT

A study of numerous experimental women authors and their predecessors, including Dorothy Richardson, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Sarraute, Clarice Lispector, Elfriede Jelinek, Marguerite Young, Kathy Acker, Jamie Gordon, Yoko Tawada, Diane Williams, Christine Schutt, Patricia Eakins, Fiona Maazel, and others. Critical essays will supplement the fiction.

99437

MUS 217 Voice, Body, Machine: Women Artists & the Evolution of the Composer

Marina Rosenfeld

. . W Th .

10:30 - 11:50 am

BLM N119

AART

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies This class explores the works and legacy of a diverse group of artists, mostly female, whose hybrid, often interdisciplinary practices challenged conventional ideas of embodiment, performance, expression and technology, and redefined the fields of experimental and electronic music during the last half-century. Course work includes critical writing as well as creative compositional and/or performance work. Artists considered include Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Joan La Barbara, Alison Knowles, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Diamanda Galas, Laetitia Sonami, Pamela Z. Terre Thaemlitz, Slits, Kembra Pfahler, Kaffe Matthews, Fe-Matt, Sachiko M, and others.

99492

PHIL 264 Contemporary Feminist Philosophy

Adam Rosen

. . W . F

10:30 - 11:50 am

ASP 302

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies This course will pursue the question of the future of feminism by drawing attention to how the various philosophical resources feminist philosophers draw upon – Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Rawls, Kant, Arendt, Freud, Lacan – influence their articulations of the tasks, strategies, and goals of feminist philosophy and politics. Remaining attentive to the enabling and constraining impact of their primary philosophical influences and interlocutors, as well as the specific manner in which influences are appropriated and interlocutors engaged, we will attempt to stage a multiparty dialogue between Irigaray, Kristeva, Butler, Braidotti, Cavarero, and Cornell about the tasks and future of feminism.

99172

SOC 120 Inequality in America

Yuval Elmelech

. T . Th .

10:30 - 11:50 am

OLIN 202

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Human Rights, Social Policy, SRE Why do some people have more wealth, more power, and receive greater respect than others? What are the sources of this inequality? Is social inequality inevitable? Is it undesirable? Through lectures, documentary films and discussions, this course examines the ways by which socially-defined categories of persons (e.g., women and men, Blacks and Whites, rich and poor, native- and foreign-born) are unevenly rewarded for their social contributions. Sociological theories are used to explain how and why social inequality is produced and maintained, and how it affects the well being of individuals and social groups. The course will focus on two general themes. The first deals with the structure of inequality while studying the unequal distribution of material and social resources (e.g., prestige, income, occupation). The second examines the processes that determine the allocation of people to positions in the stratification system (e.g. education, intelligence, parental wealth, gender, race).