Gender Undone: Fiction, Film, and Feminist Theory

Semester and Year	FA 2012
Course Number	IDSEM-UG1731
Section	001
Instructor	Rose-Ellen Lessy
Days	Thu
Time	3:30 PM - 6:10 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement	HUM

Description

Is gender something one has or something one does? What does it mean to “do” a feminist reading of a text or a film? How might feminist theory endeavor to both describe and undo cultural constructions of gender? This course will explore these questions by reading a range of theoretical and literary texts that elaborate historical, medical, psychoanalytic, and cultural models of gender and sexuality. We will read critics and theorists who have become central to contemporary feminism, including Freud, Foucault, Mulvey, Butler, Spillers, and Fausto-Sterling, among others. We will pay particular attention to literary texts that have been productive for feminist formulations of gender, including work by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, and Angela Carter. Finally, we will screen several films that invite viewers to reform or rethink their own perceptions of gender, including Dark Victory, Safe , and Boys Don’t Cry . Topics we will discuss include: norms, the psychosomatic, the gaze, transgender theory, and performativity.

Syllabus

IDSEM-UG1731

Course Type

Interdisciplinary Seminars (IDSEM-UG)