GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN WORLD CIVILIZATIONS I GNSE 15002-02 AUTUMN QUARTER 2013 TUES, THURS 1:30 2:50 CENTER

TER FOR GENDER STUDIES, 007 PROFESSOR SONALI THAKKAR OFFICE HOURS: THURS 3:00 4:30 ROSENWALD 415C sonalit@uchicago.edu EMILY SWAFFORD, TEACHING INTERN OFFICE HOURS: TUES 3:00 4:30 CENTER FOR GENDER STUDIES, 009 elswafford@uchicago.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION Gender and sexuality are fundamental categories of human existence, as well as political and cultural categories that shape everyday life. The mutability of these categories is just as important as their ubiquity; while gender and sexuality shape every human beings experience, the social, political, and ideological valences of these terms vary widely according to cultural and historical context. Philosophers, activists, artists of all types, and scholars from a wide range of disciplines have addressed these issues; a substantial corpus of work speaks to themes such as love, sex, citizenship, family, law, violence, religion, creativity, migration, and politics through the lens of gender and sexuality. We will look closely at texts, films, and visual objects in order to open up these works to analysis and discussion. In this coursethe first of a two-quarter sequencewe will cover three broad topics. We will begin by examining the utility of gender and sexuality as critical lenses for historical and cultural analysis. We will also examine some of the diverse ways that various thinkers have defined gender, sex, and sexuality, and the relationship between these terms. The second part of the course considers how gender roles and oppositions are produced and organized according to kinship relations that are historically and culturally variable. We will discuss how such social arrangements shape norms and practices of sexuality, procreation, and material reproduction. The final weeks of the course focus on creativity and knowledge production. How has gender or sexual difference, often in combination with racial difference and political exclusion, limited access to some forms of artistic practice or knowledge making, while generating others? READINGS The majority of texts for this course are available on Chalk, under Library Course Reserves. You will also need the following books. Please get ahold of the specified editions so that we all the same pagination. Copies are available at the Seminary Coop Bookstore (5751 S. Woodland Ave.). Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Oxford Worlds Classics, ISBN: 0199535566) Rachilde, Monsieur Venus: A Materialist Novel (MLA, ISBN: 0873529308) Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own (Harcourt, ISBN: 0156030411)

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COURSE ASSIGNMENTS Blog Posts (20%) You can find our class blog at http://genderandsexualitycore.wordpress.com. Please write five blog posts of 350-500 words over the course of the quarter, making sure to post at least once during each of the three thematic clusters. You should post about a reading in advance of our class discussion about it. Posts about materials for a Tuesday class are due by Monday at 3:00pm; posts about materials for a Thursday class are due by Wednesday at 3:00pm. The blog posts are an opportunity to look closely at our reading so that you can deepen your understanding of their claims or complexities and formulate critical responses to them. You might choose to do one of several things in your posts: Focus on a single text: map the arc of its argument, identify its central claims, and tell us what you find compelling or problematic about those claims. Focus on a section or passage of a single text in order to analyze it closely. If the reading is making an argument or outlining a theory, you might choose a passage that you find especially difficult or interesting, or a passage that seems central to the argument. Tell us about its nuances and what they suggest about the work as a whole. For a literary work or primary source, consider how textual details are meaningful for interpretation. Consider a specific scene or an aspect of the texts language and tell us what you think it means and why its important. Focus on a key term in a work. Tell us how you think the author defines and understands the term and why its important to the theme or argument of a work. You might choose to focus on a term that reappears in several works, analyzing how its use and definition differ across works. You might also consider two terms that are defined or developed in opposition to one another in a single work. Juxtapose two texts and discuss their relation to one another. Consider sources of (implicit or explicit) agreement or disagreement. Are their claims complementary and reconcilable? If not, what are the key differences in their assumptions or conclusions? Which do you find more convincing or useful? Participation (20%) Class participation is crucial to the success of this class. Meaningful participation depends on the following: Come to class prepared with questions and observations about specific aspects of the reading. Always bring the readings with you and be ready to direct us to a page or passage that you think is important for discussion. Read any new blog entries before each class and be prepared to discuss some of the issues that they raise. Respond generously and critically to the readings: be ready to talk about what you think is important or relevant about them, as well things that are troubling or questionable. Raise new topics or issues for discussion while also being responsive to the comments and questions that others have introduced, so that we can generate sustained, in-depth discussion.

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5% of your participation grade will be based on your comments on other peoples blog posts. You should comment on at least 15 posts over the course of the quarter. Comments do not have to be long. You can ask a question, add information or clarify something about which there is confusion, respectfully challenge someones argument, weigh in with an opinion, suggest a connection between readings or even between blog posts, or amplify someones interpretation by pointing out additional evidence from the text. Short Papers (3 at 20% each) You will write 3 papers, one per thematic cluster, of 4-6 pages each. The due dates are October 15, November 12, and December 5. We will provide prompts for each essay. You will receive a separate document outlining best practices and expectations for the paper and we will provide prompts for each essay. Late papers will lose 1/3 of a letter grade per day. You will receive comments on your paper as well as a provisional grade. If you wish to rewrite your paper in order to improve your grade you may do so, provided that the initial submission was on time and complete. Revised papers must be turned in within one week of receiving our comments and will not be accepted after that deadline. COURSE POLICIES Attendance Attendance is mandatory. Missing more than two classes without documented cause will affect your final grade considerably. Repeated lateness will affect your participation grade; if you are more than twenty minutes late to class you will be counted as absent for that session. Electronic Devices You may not use electronic devices in class. Please keep phones off and out of sight. Readings are made available to you on Chalk, rather than in a photocopied reader, so that you can access them remotely and easily archive them after the end of the course. However, you are expected to print out and bring to class hardcopies of the readings: please no reading off of tablets and laptops. Attendance at Office Hours We encourage you to come often to office hours but we both expect to see you at least once in office hours for an individual meeting. You can come in to discuss your ideas for a paper, our feedback, or any other questions you might have about the course or the readings.

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SCHEDULE Part I Gender and Sexuality as Analytic Categories Week 1 10/1 Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction, in The Second Sex [1949], trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage, 2011), 3-17. Joan W. Scott, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, in The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986), 1053-1075. 10/3 Rebecca Jordan-Young, Sexual Brains and Body Politics, in Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010), 1-20. Judith Butler, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991) 13-31.

Week 2 10/8 Gayle Rubin, Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 267-319. [Sections 1 and 2] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Introduction: Axiomatic, in Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1-63 [We will discuss 1-35] 10/10 Catharine MacKinnon, Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: Pleasure Under Patriarchy, in Ethics 99, no. 2 (1989), 314-346. Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, in Signs 5, no. 4 (1980), 631-660. Part II Kinship, Marriage, Sex, Reproduction Week 3 10/15 FIRST PAPER DUE Genesis 1-10, The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with The Apocrypha, ed. Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford UP, 2010), 11-25. Nancy Munn, The Effectiveness of Symbols in Murngin Rite and Myth, in Forms of Symbolic Action: Proceedings of the 1969 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, ed. R.F. Spencer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 178-207. 10/17 Daniel P. Moynihan, The Negro American Revolution, The Negro American Family, The Tangle of Pathology, in The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington: Office of Planning and Research, US Department of Labor, 1965), 1-14, 29-45. Carol Stack, Black Urban Poor, Swapping: What Goes Round Comes Round, and Personal Kindreds: All Our Kin, in All Our Kin: Strategies for

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Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 22-61. Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing, in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 110-169 [We will focus on Maternal Imagery, 110-125]. Week 4 10/22 Liu Xiang The Mother of Meng-ko [Mencius] [18 BCE?] in The Position of Women in Early China According to the Lieh N Chuan, The Biographies of Eminent Women, ed. and trans. Albert OHara (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1945), 39-42. Li Yu, A Male Mencius Mother Raises Her Son Properly by Moving House Three Times, in Silent Opera [1650?], ed. Patrick Hanan, trans. Gopal Sukhu and Patrick Hanan (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990), 101134. 10/24 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice [1813] (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008). Week 5 10/29 Austen cont. Lila Abu-Lughod, Polygyny, in Writing Womens Worlds: Bedouin Stories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 87-125. 10/31 John Boswell, A Friend Inspired by God: Same-Sex Unions in the GrecoRoman World, in Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Vintage 1995), 53-107. Deborah A. Elliston, Erotic Anthropology: Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia and Beyond, American Ethnologist 22, no. 4 (1995), 848-867. Week 6 11/5 M. K. Gandhi, BrahmacharyaI and BrahmacharyaII, Part III, Chapters 7-8 in An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth [1927/1929] (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 204-212. M. K. Gandhi, On the Necessity of Continence and Purity, in Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence [1927] (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1958), 51-58, 68-70. St. Leander, Archbishop of Seville, Introduction: On the Teaching of Nuns and Contempt for the Other World [6th century], in A Book on the Teaching of Nuns and a Homily in Praise of the Church, ed. and trans. John Martin (New York: Lexington Press, 2008), 62-85. 11/7 Margaret Sanger, The Case for Birth Control, in Woman Citizen 8 (February 23, 1924), 17-18. Thomas Laqueur, Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology, in Representations 14 (Spring 1986), 1-41. Amartya Sen, Population: Delusion and Reality, in The New York Review of Books 41, no. 15 (September 22, 1994), 62-71.

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Faye Ginsburg, Procreation Stories: Reproduction, Nurturance, and Procreation in Life Narratives of Abortion Activists, in American Ethnologist 14, no. 4 (1987), 623-636. Part III Cultural and Knowledge Production Week 7 11/12 SECOND PAPER DUE Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own [1929] (Orlando: Harvest/Harcourt Books, 2005). Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz, The Poets Answer to the Most Illustrious Sister Filotea de la Cruz [1691] in The Answer: Including Sor Filoteas Letter and New Selected Poems, 2nd Ed., ed. and trans. Electra Arenal and Amanda Powell (New York: The Feminist Press, 2009), 39-105. 11/13 Evening Film Screening, dinner provided. 11/14 Assia Djebar, La Nouba des Femmes du Mont-Chenoua [1977] (New York: Women Make Movies, 2007). Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Screen 16, no. 3 (1975), 6-18. Week 8 11/19 Alice Walker, Looking for Zora [1975] and In Search of Our Mothers Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South [1974] in In Search of Our Mothers Gardens (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1983), 93-116, 231-243. Hlne Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa [1975], trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, in Signs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1976), 875-893. 11/21 Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? in ARTnews 22-39 (January 1971), 67-71. Griselda Pollock, Firing the Canon, in Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desires and the Writings of Art History (London: Routledge, 1999), 3-38. Guerrilla Girls, Introduction and The 19th Century: Girls Going Places, in Guerilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art (New York: Penguin, 1998), 6-9 and 46-57. Week 9 11/26 Rachilde, Monsieur Venus: A Materialist Novel [1884], trans. Melanie Hawthorne, ed. Melanie Hawthorne and Liz Constable (New York: MLA, 2004). 11/28 Thanksgiving break, no class. Week 10 12/3 Rachilde cont.

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Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship, in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination [1979], 2nd Ed. (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000), 45-92. 12/5 THIRD PAPER DUE Reading Period, no class.