GSTU 101: Problems in Gender Studies

Basic assignment structure will be

• reading for each class meeting,
• short weekly response papers on the reading,
• a mid-quarter project,
  and
• a take-home final.

Texts:

1. Anne Herrmann and Abigail Stewart, eds., Theorizing Feminism (TF)
2. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (IL)
3. Herculine Barbin and Michel Foucault, Herculine Barbin: being the recently discovered memoirs of a nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite (HB)
4. Manifestos: booklet (MA)
5. Newspaper clippings: booklet

Also recommended:

1. Dorothy Allison, Trash (TR)
2. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (WW)
3. Pumping Iron-- 1977 bodybuilding documentary
4. Ranma 1/2-- genderbending Japanese anime series

Some notes about the layout of the course:

-We have made an effort to organize by motif rather than by identity politics, so that categories like race, class, and sexuality should be employed and examined throughout the course rather than being ghettoized as the subject of a single week of the quarter.

-Ten weeks is an extremely short time for a comprehensive introduction to gender studies, so the course will rather attempt to provide a manageable, coherent selection of topics. To this end, many excellent and pertinent sources will be relegated to recommended, rather than required, status.

Week One: Maps

readings:

Manifestos and other Roadmaps (MA)

• (1792) Mary Wollstonecraft, Introduction, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• (1851) Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman"
• (1949) Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction, The Second Sex
• (1966,1972) Black Panther Platform and Update
• (1967) Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto
• (1993) Sarah Schulman, Dyke Manifesto
• (1999) Emi Koyama, The Transfeminist Manifesto (NOTE: this is a non-printing copy)
• (2002) Campus Crusade for Christ, Ethnic Student Ministries, IMPACT Manifesto

• Denise Riley, Does Sex Have a History? (E)

Week Two: Minds and Bodies

readings:

• bell hooks, "Reflections on Race and Sex" (E)
• Isaac Baker Brown, "On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity" (E)
• Jacques Lacan, "The Meaning of the Phallus" (E)

visual art: Alice Matzkin, "Naked Truth" series

also recommended: Martha Coventry, "Making the Cut"

Week Three: Gender and Classification

readings:

• Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (E)
• R.W. Connell, “The Social Organization of Masculinity” (E)
• Judith Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” (E)

photoessay: Graves, Lipman, and Werry, "Man: An American Assay" (misfiled: find it here)

also recommended: NY Times, Women in the Military slideshow; interactive

Week Four: Sexes and Biology

readings:

• Anne Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes" (E) and "The Five Sexes Revisited" (here-- see PDF file)
• Bonnie Spanier, "`Lessons from nature' : gender ideology and sexual ambiguity in biology" (here)
• Foucault's Introduction, Barbin's narrative, and medical dossier from Herculine Barbin: being the recently discovered memoirs of a nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite (HB)

• Esther Morris, "The Missing Vagina Monologue"
• Angela Moreno, "In Amerika They Call Us Hermaphrodites"
• Lynnell Stephani Long, "A Girl Named Steve"

also recommended:

• gender testing of athletes
• book review: What is Sex?
• marine sex

Week Five: Looking, Objectivity, Self and Other

readings:

• Helene Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (E)
• Luce Irigaray, “The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine and "This Sex Which Is Not One"” (E)

• Sally Haslanger, “On Being Objective and Being Objectified” (E)
• Guerilla Girls--- read Posters/Actions section from website

Week Six: Language and Names

readings:

• Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (E)
• Mary Daly, Preface, Gyn/Ecology (E)
• Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not A Luxury," "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House” and "An Open Letter to Mary Daly" (E)
• Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue"

also recommended:

• Geoffrey Nunberg, "A Loss For Words"
• Donna Haraway, “In the Beginning Was the Word: The genesis of biological theory” (E)
• Maxine Hong Kingston, "No Name Woman" (WW)

Week Seven: Commerce and Commodity

readings:

• Harriet Jacobs, Preface, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (memoir) (IL)
• Patricia Williams, “On Being an Object of Property” (TF)
• Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women” (E)

fiction: Dorothy Allison, “River of Names” and “Steal Away” (TR)

Week Eight: Borders and the State

readings:

• Judith Williamson, “Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization” (TF)
• Proposition 187
• John Borneman, "Emigres as Bullets/Immigration as Penetration: Perceptions of the Marielitos" (E)
• Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London, "Gender and the Politics of Punishment"
• Zachary Dowdy, "Crime and Punishment"
• Paul Wright, "The Cultural Commodification of Prisons"

also recommended:

• Proposition 187 online resource guide
• Human Rights Watch, "Losing the Vote: the impact of felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States"
• Angela Davis, "Race and criminalization: black Americans and the punishment industry"
• newspaper article on prison labor debate
• Daniel Bergner, "How We Punish the Wicked"

Week Nine: Pornography, Prostitution, and the Sex Wars

readings:

• Judith Walkowitz, "Male Vice and Female Virtue" (E)
• Catherine MacKinnon, "Sexuality" (TF)
• Pat Califia, "Feminism and Sadomasochism" (E)
• Andrea Dworkin, "Prostitution and Male Supremacy"; "Pornography Happens to Women"

zine: Emi Koyama, "Instigations from the Whore Revolution"

also recommended: Susie Bright, "As Porn As We Wanna Be"

Week Ten: Wrapping Up

readings:

• Martha Nussbaum, "'Whether From Reason Or Prejudice': Taking Money For Bodily Services" (here)