v97.0010
introduction to women’s studies
Teaching Assistants:
Kimberly Johnson <Quinn419@aol.com>
Denise Mckenna <dqm0043@is.nyu.edu>
description: This course uses issues surrounding bodies and reproduction to introduce students to key debates in women’s studies. It explores a wide range of topics relating to bodies and reproduction including the science of sex, the racing of bodies, the gender politics of medicine, the global stratification of reproduction, national population policies, culture and body modification, and the construction of families. How do gender, sexuality, race and class get produced in this areas? What do they tell us about societies, cultures and politics?
attendance and participation 10%
journal 20%
2 short papers (5-7 pages each) 25% each
group project 20%
All readings for this course are in a packet available for purchase or on reserve at Bobst library.
attendance and participation
In addition to biweekly lectures, you will also meet with your teaching assistant once a week in sections for discussions. Attendance in lectures and discussion sessions is mandatory. You are expected to complete the week’s reading assignment and write a journal entry (see below) in time for your section meetings so that you are prepared for section discussions.
journal
The goal of the course is to introduce you to new and important questions and encourage you to seriously reflect on them. Weekly journal entries will help in this direction. Briefly identify central points of each week’s readings, lectures, films and engage them, evaluate them, articulate a substantial opinion of them. Entries must be 2 typed pages per week in size 12 Times New Roman font, double spaced, 1 inch margins only.
2 short papers
You will also be required to write two essays (5-7 pages) in response to questions that will be handed out in section (Questions distributed in your section the week of 10/2 and due at the beginning of section during the week of 10/16 ; and the week of 11/6 and due at the beginning of section on the week of 11/20). Each essay will be worth 25% of your course grade. The questions will push you to synthesize material that you have read in preceding weeks, to take a stand on an issue and defend that position using the readings from the course.
group project
Finally, groups of students (apx 5 people) will give presentations to the entire class at the end of the semester. These presentations can be oral presentations, visual displays, videos, theatrical performances, etc and you are encouraged to be creative. They must be group projects involving all members, and they are limited to 10-15 minutes each. They should pick up on themes or issues related to the readings, films or class. Proposals (1-2 pages) for these presentations should be submitted in section the week of 10/25.
thursday sep 7
intro class
tuesday sep 12, thursday sep 14
gender and sex
Anne Fausto-Sterling from Sexing the Body
tuesday sep 19, thursday sep 21
hetero and homo-sexualities
Siobhan Somerville Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body
Jonathan Katz from The Invention of Heterosexuality
film: boys don’t cry
tuesday sep 26, thursday sep 28
race
Sander Gilman, Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine, and Literature
Ann Laura Stoler Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race and Morality in Colonial Asia
Rickie Sollinger Race and ‘Value:’ Black and White Illegitimate Babies in the U.S.A. 1945-1965
tuesday oct 3, thursday oct 5
medicine; gynecology
Emily Martin Medical Metaphors: Menstruation and Menopause
Terri Kapsalis Mastering the Female Pelvis
tuesday oct 10, thursday oct 12
gender and U.S. health policy
Evelynn Hammonds Race, Sex, AIDS: The Construction of ‘Other'
Faye Harrison “Racial and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care"
Ruth Hubbard from Profitable Promises: Essays on Women, Science and Health
tuesday oct 17, thursday oct 19
AIDS
Cindy Patton From Nation to Family: Cotnaining ‘African AIDS’
Paul Farmer On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View From Below
film Voices from the front: America 1988-1991, c1994
tuesday oct 24, thursday oct 26
Sex Education
Cindy Patton from Fatal Advice: How Safe-Sex Education Went Wrong
Susie Bright from Susia Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World
sexploration workshop from the NYU center for health promotion
tuesday oct 31, thursday nov 2
Barbie
Ann Ducille Toy Theory: Black Barbie and the Deep Play of Difference
Jacqueline Urla and Alan Sewedlund The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture
Erica Rand from Barbie’s Queer Accessories
film Karen Carpenter story.
tuesday nov 7, thursday nov 9
reproductive technologies
Sarah Franklin Postmodern Procreation: A Cultural Account of Assisted Reproduction
Kath Weston from Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship.
tuesday nov 14, thursday nov 16
under western eyes
Chandra Mohanty Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses
Linda Gordon from The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction
tuesday nov 21
FGM??
Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer Female Genital Surgeries: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable
Isabel Funning Cutting through the Obfuscation: Female Genital Surgeries in Neoimperial Culture
guest speaker: Huda Seif
thursday nov 23
(university holiday, no class)
tuesday nov 28, thursday nov 30
global stratification of reproduction
Betsy Hartmann from Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control and Contraceptive Choice
Soheir Morsy Deadly Reproduction among Egyptian Women: Maternal Mortality and the Medicalization of Population control
film: something like a war
tuesday dec 5, thursday dec 7
reproducing the nation
Victoria de Grazia from How Fascism Ruled Women
Rhoda Kanaaneh Conceiving Difference: Planning Families for the Palestinian Nation
guest speaker Heather Paxson.
tuesday dec 12, wednesday dec 13
student presentations and wrap-up