Introduction to Lesbian and Gay Studies CMLT 298a.0101 Seth Silberman Course Policies and Procedures Required Texts: De la Peqa, Terri. Latin Satins. Duberman, Martin Bauml, Martha Vicinus & George Chauncey, Jr, eds. Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past. Likosky, Stephan, ed. Coming Out: An Anthology of International Gay and Lesbian Writings. Ouologuem, Yambo. Le Devoir de Violence [Bound to Violence]. Thomas, H. Nigel. Spirits in the Dark. Warner, Michael, ed. Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Wittig, Monique. Le Corps Lesbian [The Lesbian Body]. Also required is the CMLT 298A.0101 Course Packet, which includes other essays, fiction, poetry, and drama we will explore throughout the semester. The materials for your packet are on reserve in the basement of Hornbake Library. Required Films (on reserve in the Non-Print Media Room, Hornbake Library): Arzner, Dorothy. Dance, Girl, Dance, 1940. Gonzalez, Mari Keiko. The Love Thang Trilogy, 1994. Julien, Isaac. Looking For Langston, 1988. Kaige, Chen. Farewell My Concubine, 1993. Livingston, Jennie. Paris Is Burning, 1991. Ma, Ming-Yuen S. Toc Storee, 1992. Course Description: Introduction to Lesbian and Gay Studies In this course we will investigate the construction and representation of homosexuality in cultures around the globe. To do this, we will review not only historical and sociological research, but also cultural representations of homosexuality in both literature and the media from Nigeria, France, Cuba, Britain, China, The United States, Taiwan, India, Canada, St. Vincent, and Mexico. Requirements: I have designed the required assignments for this course to test a variety of your academic abilities: Class participation is the most important grade you will receive because the success of our class depends upon substantive class discussions. Our class discussions are the most important part of the course, where we will investigate the growing, diverse discipline of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Your class participation grade reflects your ability to exhibit a clear understanding of the reading, to make connections between artistic and analytic texts, as well as to demonstrate complete respect for fellow classmates during class discussions. This is our class; and it is your responsibility as well as mine to be prepared to discuss the course's texts as well as listen to each other with respect. Your Class Participation grade also includes attendance (see page 3) and any pop quiz I may give. I find that pop quizzes are a waste of class time; I will only give one if you are not keeping up with the readings. Paper #1, 4-5 pp in length and due 23 February, is an exploration of one of three questions that relate to the material we will have covered as a class by 16 February, the day I will distribute the questions. What I am looking for here is a concise, contemplative answer to the question. Please do refer to or cite from any research material you feel necessary. Do not write more than 5 pages, even if you are inspired by the question. This is meant to be a short assignment. The Midterm Exam is an individually-scheduled 5-minute oral exam that will take place in my office. At least one week before the exam, you will receive a list of 5 questions, 4 of which will be questions that we have addressed as a class. When you arrive for your scheduled exam time, you will select one of 5 pieces of paper from a hat. Whatever number is on the paper you selected is the number of the question you have to answer. To assist you, you are allowed to bring one 3x5 card per question for any notations you would need to answer the question completely. You have 5 minutes to answer the question. I suggest that you use all 5 minutes of your time. Plan to say more than you possibly could in 5 minutes. If you think it would help you, feel free to study in groups. The Presentation is both an individual and a group project, where you will have to present the readings for one of the asterisked days, and write a 3-page assessment of them. This exercise will not only sharpen your analytical skills as a student, but offer you practice at class presentations. The written assessment is due the day you present. Paper #2 (Final Project), 8-10 pp in length and due 9 May, is your final project for the course. This paper must demonstrate clear and thorough thinking about either an issue, topic, or theme raised in the course that would investigate a cultural representation of homosexuality; or it must investigate a body of historical, sociological, or psychological literature that theorizes homosexuality. Your choice of what you can write your paper about is virtually endless. This is why it is crucial that you meet with me at least once to discuss how we can narrow your inspirations into a lucid 8-10 pp paper. Give yourself plenty of time to think about the possibilities for your paper. Also give yourself plenty of time to schedule an appointment with me. Your paper topic must be approved by me before _____. No Exceptions. Don't come to me that day in a panic because we have never talked about (and you have never thought about) your paper. If you have never written an 8-10 pp analytical paper before, don't panic. We can talk about strategies and topic ideas. I will not, however, read any drafts. If you want, you can take your drafts to the Writing Center in the South Campus Surge Building. Also available is the Grammar Hotline at 405-3787 for word choice, punctuation, sentence structure, and documentation assistance. The most important thing to do (if you haven't noticed so far) is to start thinking about it soon. The Colloquium is an academic gathering where all sections of two-hundred level CMLT classes gather to hear 12 CMLT students present their final projects. One of those presentations could be yours. In preparation for your final project, you must submit a 1-2 pp synopsis of it for possible presentation at this Colloquium. You will need to hand in 4 copies of your proposal, 3 of which must not have your name on them. These 3 should only have your social security number so that they can be judged anonymously by a committee of your peers. I will also grade your submission, which counts for one fourth of the Colloquium grade. If yours is one of those selected, you will prepare an 8-10 minute presentation based on your proposal, and receive an "A" for your colloquium review grade. Your colloquium presentation will also take the place of your Presentation grade (#4). If your proposal is not selected, you will attend the Colloquium and write a 3 page review paper. You may also fulfill your Colloquium requirement by being on one of the Colloquium Committees, which will be explained in a forthcoming handout. Also in this handout will be the date that your synopsis is due, and the date by which the colloquium selections will be posted. The Colloquium is scheduled for 21 April from 1 to 4 pm. Attendance for the Colloquium is mandatory. The only excuse for not attending is a conflicting class or lab. Proof of this must be shown to me well before the Colloquium date. Schedule your work or other commitments accordingly. The Final Exam for this course is scheduled for 12 May, from 10:30-12:30. Attendance: I do take attendance at the beginning of each class; and I take attendance seriously. Because a great deal of the class is group discussion, your absence will be noticed. You can miss 3 classes without it affecting your Class Participation grade. If you have perfect attendance or only miss one class, you will receive a bonus to add to your Class Participation grade. For every day after 3 that is missed, your Class Participation grade may be lowered one full letter grade from the grade you have earned. If you miss more than 6 classes, you will fail the course. If you do need to miss a class, please consult one of your fellow students to determine what you missed. If you need clarification after you have consulted one of your fellow students, please see me. Our class will start on time. Please do not disrupt the class by arriving late. A late arrival may be counted as 1/3 of an absence. Format for Papers: All papers must be typed or produced on a word processor. Word processing is preferable because it makes the mechanics of revision incredibly easy. If you do not have your own computer with word processing capability, computer labs are available on campus with word processing software that is easy to learn. Comfort with word processing will make all your college writing assignments simpler to complete, so if you are unfamiliar with this technology, make this course your occasion for learning it. Papers should be submitted with a title, your name, your course and section numbers, the date, and my name on its title page. Each page should have one inch margins, and should be double spaced, numbered at the bottom, and "left justified." Use a reasonable font (10 or 12) for your text. Always make a back-up copy of every paper. If I should lose a paper, it is your responsibility to give me another copy. All papers should be proof-read carefully. Papers that do not follow these qualifications will not be accepted. Grades: All grades are on a 13 point scale that represent the 100 point and letter grades in figure 1. Your final grade is calculated by the average of the 6 different grades described in the previous requirements, detailed for you in figure 2. Each requirement but Paper #2 is worth one grade; Paper #2 is worth two. Your colloquium grade is the average of your proposal grade, your colloquium attendance grade, and two of your colloquium review grades. Your final grade, tabulated by averaging all seven 13-point scale grades, will not be rounded, i.e., a 10.832 final grade is a B+, not "automatically" an 11, or an A-. Borderline grades like this will be decided by your Class Participation Grade. Class Participation Paper #1 Midterm Exam Presentation Presentation Paper Paper #2 (final project) colloquium proposal colloquium attendance colloquium review Final Exam FINAL GRADE Figure 2 Getting In Touch With Me: My office hour is on Thursdays from 1-2 pm. My office is in the white trailer behind the Dance building with "Junior Writing Office" on the door. My office telephone number is 405-3766. I share this office with many others, so if you do leave a message, please leave a clear and succinct one. The easier way to reach me is electronically. My e-mail address is ss178@umail.umd.edu. I check my mail several times a day, and will respond to you quickly. E-mail is preferable because I can be hard to reach during the week. If you have an extended question or comment, type it to me; and I can in turn answer you in detail. If you do not already have an internet account at home, you are entitled to a free "wam" account that you can initiate at the Computer Library, third floor of the Computer and Space Sciences Building (on the other side of the parking garage by Hornbake library; I-4 on your Schedule of Classes map). You can access your "wam" account from any computer lab station. Information is available in the library on how to operate your "wam" account, and other ways to "join the information age." Course Syllabus -- Draft One [18 January 1995] All listed materials must be completed by the first day of scheduled discussion. Readings from the Packet are marked by ; readings from Fear of a Queer Planet are marked by "FQP"; readings from Hidden From History are marked by "HFH"; readings from Coming Out are marked by "CO." 19 Jan Introduction to the Course; Problematizing "Lesbian and Gay Studies" 24 Jan Gayle Rubin "Thinking Sex"; HFH(1): George Chauncey, Jr., Martin Bauml Duberman, and Martha Vicinus "Introduction"; Steve Abbott "Lives of the Poets"; FQP(vii): Michael Warner "Introduction" 26 Jan Meet in Room R to view Dance, Girl, Dance, and Without You I'm Nothing. [The United States/white/jewish/ ] 31 Jan Judith Mayne "Lesbian Looks: Dorothy Arzner and Female Authorship"; Laura Mulvey "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"; FQP(193): Lauren Berlant & Elizabeth Freeman "Queer Nationality" 2 Feb Le Corps Lesbien [France/white/ ] 7 Feb Le Corps Lesbien; Monique Wittig "The Straight Mind"; FQP(178): Cathy Griggers "Lesbian Bodies in the Age of (Post)mechanical Reproduction"; Beth Bryant "Her Name Is Helen"; HFH(281): Esther Newton "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman"; HFH(264): Carroll Smith-Rosenberg "Discourses on Sexuality and Subjectivity: The New Woman, 1870-1936" 9 Feb Meet in Room R to view Mari Keiko Gonzales's The Love Thang Trilogy [1994] and Ming-Yuen S. Ma's Toc Storee [1992]. Gertrude Stein "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene"; Judy Grahn "Exiled to the Center of the World: A Woman in Her Life"; CO(163): Guy Hocquenghem "To Destroy Sexuality"; CO(172): Jill Johnston "Woman Prime"; Martha Vicinus "They Wonder To Which Sex I Belong" [The United States/Asian-American/white/ / ] 14 Feb Le Devoir de Violence [Nigeria/black/ ] 16 Feb Le Devoir de Violence; Gordon Isaacs and Brian McKendrick "The Homosexual Sub-Culture and Homosexual Identity"; PAPER QUESTIONS DISTRIBUTED 21 Feb Group Discussion; Vern L. & Bonnie Bullough "Development of the Medical Model" 23 Feb Paper #1 Due; Meet in Room R to view Looking for Langston. Richard Bruce Nugent "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade" [Britain/The United States/black/ ] 28 Feb HFH(318): Eric Garber "A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem"; Robert Reid-Pharr "The Spectacle of Blackness"; FQP(230): Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "The Black Man's Burden"; HFH(54): Robert Padgug "Sexual Matters: Rethinking Sexuality in History"; Angelina Weld Grimki poetry; Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer "True Confessions: A Discourse on Images of Black Male Sexuality" [The United States/black/ / ] 2 Mar Charles Henry Fuller "The Jazz Singer"; Kate Bornstein from Gender Outlaw [The United States/black/jewish/transgender/ / ] 7 Mar Paris Is Burning; Shyam Selvadurai "Pigs Can't Fly"; CO(346): Mario Mieli from Homosexuality and Liberation: Elements of a Gay Critique; CO(355): from La Pluma "Transvestites and Transsexuals: Introduction to a Specific Type of Oppression" [India/The United States/black/Asian/transgender] 9 Mar Meet in Room R. Paris Is Burning/The John Laroquette Show; FQP(300): Douglas Crimp "Right On, Girlfriend!"; John Rechy "The Fabulous Wedding of Miss Destiny" [The United States/black/white/Latin-American/transgender/ ] 14 Mar Michel Tremblay "Hosanna"; FQP(264): Robert Schwartzwald "'Symbolic' Homosexuality, 'False Feminine,' and the Problematics of Identity in Quibec" [Canada/french-Canadian/white/transgender/ ] 16 Mar Midterm Exam Day 21-23 Mar Spring Break 28 Mar Latin Satins [Mexico/The United States/Mexican-American/Latina/ ] 30 Mar* Presentation Day: ______________________________________ Latin Satins; CO(201): "First Encounter of Lesbians and Feminists" from Polmtica Sexual, Cuadernos del Frente Homosexual de Accisn Revolucionaria; CO(481): Joseph M. Carrier "Gay Liberation and Coming Out in Mexico"; Cherrme Moraga from The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry 4 Apr HFH(106): Paula Gunn Allen "Lesbians in American Indian Cultures"; CO(498): Clyde M. Hall "Children of Grandmother Moon"; Will Roscoe "How to Become a Berdache: Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender Diversity"; Beth Bryant "Coyote Learns a New Trick" [The United States/Native American/transgender/ ] 6 Apr* Presentation Day: ______________________________________ Severo Sarduy From Cuba With A Song; Severo Sarduy "Writing/Transvestism"; CO(308): Marlene Wildeman "Turning Platform" [Cuba/Latino/transgender/ ] 11 Apr Stone Butch Blues [The United States/jewish/white/transgender/ ] 13 Apr* Presentation Day: ______________________________________ Stone Butch Blues; HFH(183): The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project "'She Even Chewed Tobacco': A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women in America"; HFH(426): Madeline Davis & Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy "Oral History and the Study of Sexuality in the Lesbian Community: Buffalo, New York, 1940-1960" 18 Apr Spirits in the Dark [St. Vincent/Canada/black/ ] 20 Apr* Presentation Day: ______________________________________ Spirits in the Dark; Peter Noel with Robert Marriott "Batty Boys in Babylon: Can Gay West Indians Survive the 'Boom Bye Bye' Posses?"; CO(507): Makeda Silvera "Man Royals and Sodomites: Some Thoughts on the Invisibility of Afro-Caribbean Lesbians" [St. Vincent/Canada/West Indian/black/ / ] 21 Apr Colloquium, 1 to 4 p.m., room to be announced. 25 Apr Meet in Room R. Farewell My Concubine [China/Asian/transgender/ ] 27 Apr* Presentation Day: ______________________________________ Farewell My Concubine; HFH(76): Vivien W. Ng "Homosexuality and the State in Late Imperial China"; CO(24): Fang-fu Ruan & Yung-mei Tsai "Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Mainland China"; Vern L. Bullough & Fang Fu Ruan "Same-Sex Love in Contemporary China"; Pai Hsien-yung "A Sky Full of Bright, Twinkling Stars" [China/Taiwan/Asian/transgender/ ] 2 May Meet in Room R. Frasier/My So-Called Life/Roseanne; Sasha Torres "Television/Feminism: HeartBeat and Prime Time Lesbianism" [The United States/white/Latino/jewish/ / ] 4 May FQP(19): Andrew Parker "Unthinking Sex: Marx, Engels, and the Scene of Writing"; FQP(82): Janet E. Halley "The Construction of Heterosexuality"; Robert K. Martin "Toward an 'Icriture Gaie'" 9 May Paper #2 Due; Student-Organized Review of Course ....................................................................... seth clark silberman .............................. ss178@umail.umd.edu .......................................................................