SOCI 451/551

Body Politics
Spring 2023 M/W 1:00-2:15 pm
Instructor: Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci (ademirci@ku.edu.tr)
Office hours: SOS204 or online (by appointment)
TA: Şeyma Dursunoğlu
 Course description
This course examines the human body as a biological as well as social unit.
We will investigate how society assigns meanings to the body as well as how
individuals claim visibility and social participation through the body. We will
pay special attention to the social parameters and ideologies that serve to
differentiate, categorize, and classify our bodies, such as race, gender,
sexuality, nationalism, and capitalism. Students will understand and analyze
the dynamics of knowledge production and the functions of social and
biological bodies by utilizing interdisciplinary approaches and global
perspectives.
 Course requirements
1. Midterm papers: Undergraduate students will write one (30%), graduate students will write two midterm papers
(20% each). Topics will be announced later.
2. Final paper (undergrads: 30%; grads: 20%): Students will write a research paper on any topic that is relevant to
class discussions and readings.
3. Presentations (10%)
At the end of the semester, students will also give a short presentation on their final paper topics.
4. Attendance (10%): Live attendance will be taken via Blackboard. In-class attendance can be compensated by
viewing the recorded lecture videos. Frequent absences may severely impact the final grade.
5. Participation (20%): Students are expected to read all reading assignments for each class prior to the class
session and participate in class discussions. Contribution to Blackboard’s discussion board will also be counted. In
addition, each student will prepare their own discussion questions for one class session and present them in class.
(Questions must be posted on the discussion board on Blackboard a day before class at the latest.)
 Week 1
Introduction/theory
• Susan Bordo, “Feminism, Foucault, and the Politics of the Body,” in
Feminist Theory and the Body, edited by Janet Price and Margrit
Shildrick, p. 246-257.
o Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, select pages (optional).
 Week 2
Measuring and categorizing bodies
• Stephan Gould, “American polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin: Blacks and
Indians as Separate, Inferior Species” in The Mismeasure of Man, p. 30-72.
• Audrey Smedley, “Science and the Growth and Expansion of Race Ideology,” in Race
in North America, p. 250-272.
• Tracy Lang Teslow, “Reifying Race: Science and Art in Races of Mankind at the Field
Museum of Natural History,” in The Politics of Display, p. 53-76.
• Handan Üstündağ and Gökçe Yazıcıoğlu, “The History of Physical Anthropology in
Turkey,” in Archeological Human Remains, edited by Barra O’Donnabhain and Maria
Cecilia Lozada, p. 199-211.
 Week 3
Racial and national bodies
• Audrey Smedley, “Twentieth-Century Developments in Race Ideology,” in
Race in North America, p. 273-291.
• Ayça Alemdaroğlu, “Politics of the Body and Eugenic Discourse in Early
Republican Turkey,” Body & Society 11, no. 3 (2005): 61-76.
• Jenny Reardon, “In the Legacy of Darwin,” Race to the Finish, p. 45-73.
• M. Susan Lindee, “Voices of the Dead: James Neel’s Amerindian Studies,” in
Francisco M. Salzano, A. Magdalena Hurtado, eds., Lost Paradises and the
Ethics of Research and Publication, p.60-94.
 Week 4
Race and diseased bodies
 Nayan Shah, “Public Health and the Mapping of Chinatown,” in Contagious
Divides, p. 17-44.
• Priscilla Wald, “COVID-19 and the Outbreak Narrative,” Southern Cultures.
• Mark Jackson, “Changing Depictions of Disease: Race, Representation and
the History of ‘Mongolism,’” in Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1960,
edited by Bernard Harris and Waltraud Ernst, p. 99-111.
• Keith Wailoo, “Detecting ‘Negro Blood’: Black and White Identities and the
Reconstruction of Sickle Cell Anemia,” Drawing Blood, p. 134-161.
 Week 5
Nature and the female body
• Londa Schiebinger, “Why Mammals Are Called Mammals,” Nature’s Body,
p.40-74.
• Glenda Wall, “Moral Constructions of Motherhood in Breastfeeding
Discourse,” Gender & Society 15, no. 4 (2001): 592-610.
• Cynthia Eagle Russett, “The Machinery of the Body,” Sexual Science, p.104-
129.
• Laura Mamo and Jennifer Ruth Fosket, “Scripting the Body: Pharmaceuticals
and the (Re)Making of Menstruation,” Signs 34, no. 4 (2009): 925-949.
 Week 6
“Deviant” bodies
• Londa Schiebinger, “Theories of Gender and Race,” in Sexual Science, p. 49-77.
• Siobhan Somerville, “Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body,”
in The Gender Sexuality Reader, edited by Roger N. Nancaster and Micaela di
Leonardo (New York: Routledge University Press, 1997), 37-52.
• Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, “The Powers of Testosterone:
Obscuring Race and Regional Bias in the Regulation of Women Athletes,” Feminist
Formations 30, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 1-39.
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Should There Only Be Two Sexes?,” Sexing the Body, p. 45-
114.
 Week 7
Body image
• Naomi Wolf, “Introduction,” “The Beauty Myth,” “Beyond the Beauty
Myth,” The Beauty Myth, p.1-19, 270-291.
• Eugenia Kaw, “Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American
Women and Cosmetic Surgery,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7, no. 1
(1993): 74-89.
• Katy Day and Tammy Keys, “Starving in Cyberspace: A Discourse
Analysis of Pro-Eating-Disorder Websites,” Journal of Gender Studies 17,
no. 1 (2008): 1-15.
 Week 8
Body mutilation
• Don Ihde, “The Tall and the Short of It: Male Sports Bodies,” in Revealing Male
Bodies, edited by Nancy Tuana, p. 231-246.
• Asli Zengin, “Violent Intimacies: Tactile State Power, Sex/Gender Transgression,
and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary Turkey,” Journal of Middle East
Women's Studies 12, no.2 (2016): 225-245.
• Sara Johnsdotter & Birgitta Essén, “Genitals and Ethnicity: The Politics of Genital
Modifications,” Reproductive Health Matters 18, no. 35 (2010): 29-37.
• Kirsten Bell, “HIV Prevention: Making Male Circumcision the ‘Right’ Tool for the
Job,” Global Public Health 10, no.5-6 (2015): 552-572.
 Week 9
Nourishing bodies
• Guest lecturing by Şeyma Dursunoğlu (topic TBA)
 Week 10
Body activism
• Kathy Davis, “Introduction,” “OBOS in the United States,” The Making of
Our bodies, Ourselves, p. 1-15, 50-84.
• Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism, 2nd edition (London: Zed
Books, 2014), xiii-xxx, 1-21.
• Maia Boswell-Penc, “Polluting the ‘Waters’ of the Most Vulnerable:
Environmental Racism, Environmental Justice, and Breastmilk
Contamination,” Tainted Milk, 137-166.
 Week 11
Reproductive bodies
• Rayna Rapp, “Gender, Body, Biomedicine: How Some Feminist Concerns
Dragged Reproduction to the Center of Social Theory,” in Medical Anthropology
Quarterly 15, n. 4 (2001): 466-477.
• Marcia C. Inhord, Pasquale Patrizio, Gamal I. Serour, “Third-Party Reproductive
Assistance around the Mediterranean: Comparing Sunni Egypt, Catholic Italy, and
Multisectarian Lebanon,” in Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Sunni
and Shia Perspectives, p.223-260.
• Sara Dubow, “Interpreting Fetal Bodies,” “Debating Fetal Pain,” Ourselves
Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America, p. 38-66, 153-183.
 Week 12
Disease and gendered bodies
• Keith Wailoo, “White Plague,” How Cancer Crossed the Color Line, p. 13-37.
• Maren Klawiter, “Racing the Cure, Walking Women and Toxic Touring: Mapping
Cultures of Action within the Bay Area Terran of Breast Cancer,” Social Problems 46,
no. 1 (1999): 104-126.
• Tatiana Zhidkova and Oguzhan Omer Demir, “Turkey’s Response to Sex Trafficking
of Migrant Women: Is It Efficient Enough?” International Migration 54, no.6 (2016):
122-137.
• Melinda Chateauvert, “Resisting the Virus of Repression: Disease Vectors and Sexual
Experts,” in Sex Workers Unite, p. 83-116.
 Week 13
Class presentations
 I am XX, but I am/am not YY
• Introduce your name and something about yourself
• “But… [possible stereotypes about your identity/body]”