SPRING 2001
This information effective for Spring 2001.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
Spring 2001
Instructor: Scott Morgensen, Lecturer
TTh 2 - 3:45 PM
This course studies lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer cultures, institutions, and politics across the many racial/ethnic communities of the U.S. and sovereign nations under its control. Sexuality and gender will be examined as cultural and political phenomena, organized by social relations of power. Coursework will prepare students for further social research on sexuality and gender. Major goals include:
This course is open to and welcomes people of all racial/ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, and sexual orientations.
Required Films: Khush, Brincando el Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican, Coming Out Under Fire, B.D. Women, You Don't Know Dick, It's Elementary
|
Percent of final eval |
Requirement |
|
20% |
Complete attendance at lectures and TA sections; active participation in discussions in lecture and sections. |
|
10% |
Self-portrait (2 pgs.) examining one's sexuality and gender in context of institutionalized relations of power |
|
40% |
Four Response Papers (400-500 words each) examining readings and films |
|
30% |
Final project, creatively detailing your engagement with course material. May be a research project, artistic piece, or form of community activism. |
There will be no final exam.
Week 1: Social constructions of sexuality and gender as institutionalized relations of power; contemporary politics of sexuality in the U.S.
Reading: Course Reader
Week 2: History of sexuality in the U.S.; racialization of sexuality in lgbt communities
Week 3: Lgbtq identity politics; transgender challenges to sexuality and gender theory
Week 4: Negotiating belonging: Revisiting "berdache" and hijra in Two-Spirit and transnational Indian-American sexual politics
Week 5: Negotiating betrayal: "Re-visioning" culture in Chicana and Puertorriqueña struggles with family, community, nation, and colonization
Week 6: Sexuality, gender, and imperial legacies: Pilipino and Hawaiian cultural production and the shaping force of U.S. militarism
Week 7: Sustaining communities against erasure: African American queer histories and struggles with AIDS across lgbt communities today
Week 8: The queer and the white: Jewish and Gentile anti-racist engagements with multiracial feminism, lesbian/gay/bi theories, and trans liberation
Week 9: Being bodies: Negotiating disability and transition
Week 10: Conclusions: Critically engaging emergent lgbtq politics
Spring 2001
Instructor: Scott Morgensen, Lecturer
Lieba Faier, Teaching Assistant
MW 5:00 - 6:45 PM
The course is designed for Community Studies majors and other students considering doing field study in relation to feminist social justice work. Goals include:
Required Texts (available at Herland Bookstore, downtown Santa Cruz):
|
Percent of final eval |
Requirement |
|
15% |
Attendance at lectures and TA sections; participation in discussions in lecture and sections. |
|
10% |
"Self-portrait" (2 pgs.) examining one's position in institutionalized relations of gender and power |
|
15% |
Short Essay (3 pgs.) evaluating contemporary feminist theories |
|
30% |
Two Response Papers (~400 words each) discussing guest presentations by social change organizations engaging feminisms and men |
|
(= One Response) |
Prepare and deliver questions for guest presenters |
|
30% |
Research Proposal (5 - 8 pgs.) for ethnographic field study in community-based social activism on questions of men and feminisms |
There will be no final exam.
bell hooks describes feminism as "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression." Barbara Smith defies institutionalized privileges by naming feminism a movement "to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women." Among the many efforts of feminist movements, one has been to critically examine institutionalized social constructions of manhood that produce sexism - bound to racism, colonialism, capitalism, ableism, heterosexism, and ageism. People of all gender identities - or as Kate Bornstein puts it, "women, men, and the rest of us" - have used feminist work to study how institutionalized relations of power constrain and enable their lives. This work has expanded critical consciousness about gender and grown feminist movements.
In this work, questions arise on the relation of various men to different forms of feminism, including what vision of social change does feminism offer men, and why should men care? can men be feminists? is feminism co-opted if men take it up as their own? is feminism betrayed if men are not invited into the work? These questions are important, yet each may presume what a "man" or "feminist" is in narrow ways. Thus, the questions might feel conflicted because of a problem in how they have been framed. This course directs students to critically investigate these questions and their implications, while located within multiple feminist conversations. The course offers the clarifying analyses of U.S. Third World feminism and queer/transgender engagements with feminism, which together redefine the terms "woman," "man," and "feminist."
Our work addresses questions of men and feminisms along two major tracks - both focused on contemporary social activism. We study feminist organizing on behalf of women which productively challenges institutional constructions of manhood, &/or engages men in personal change. We also study men organizing on their own for personal &/or institutional change, and ask how they productively engage feminism - or, how they might learn to do so. In the process, the course does not shy away from mistrust, debate, or conflict. Indeed, the course is born out of tensions in current conversations on men and feminisms, which impel it to foreground what productive engagement already exists, and then continue conversation from that basis.
Weeks 1-2: The social construction of gender as an institutionalized relation of power; feminist analyses of structural inequalities and social change
Reading: bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
Guest Lecture: Professor Bettina Aptheker, women's Studies
Week 3: U.S. women of color feminist interventions and social justice movements
Week 4: Feminist analyses of hegemonic masculinity in U.S. history and contemporary life
Reading: Course Reader
Week 5: Queer feminisms and transgender theories of gender and power
Week 6: Anti-feminist and feminist politics of varied "men's movements"
Week 7: Feminist anti-violence education work
Week 8: Feminist anti-violence support services and legal/political advocacy
Week 9: Men's anti-sexist alternatives to violence programs
Week 10: Models of current student work; conclusions, and evaluations