Fall 2009 Undergraduate Courses
G101: Gender, Culture & Society (3 credits) (A&H)
Gender, Culture & Society provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of gender - the social creation and cultural representation of femininity and masculinity - by examining relevant beliefs, practices, debates and political struggles. Lectures, readings, and class discussions consider how people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and nationalities in various historical periods have assumed gendered identities. Topics may include: romantic love and marriage; sexuality; parenthood, reproduction, birth control and new reproductive technologies; interpersonal violence; the scientific study of sexual differences; fitness, health, body image, and popular culture; the sexual division of labor and economic development; and feminist movements.
Lecture: MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: Schweighofer, K
(section 9673) WH119
Lecture: MWF 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Schweighofer, K
(section 9674) WH 119
Lecture: MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: Frazier, L
(section 3637 Honors) BH 232
Lecture: MWF 8:00-8:50 am Instructor: Crump, V
(section 9677) SY 002
Lecture: MWF 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Crump, V
(section 9678) BH 322
Lecture: MWF 9:05-9:55 am Instructor: Shand, A
(section 9679) BH 237
Lecture: MWF 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: Shand, A
(section 9680) BH 147
Lecture: MWF 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: Leimbach, J
(section 11472) BH 237
Lecture: MWF 4:40-5:30 pm Instructor: Leimbach, J
(section 11474) BH 238
Lecture: MWF 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Basiliere, J
(section 27698) BH 332
Lecture: MWF 5:45-6:35 pm Instructor: Basiliere, J
(section 27699) SY 0006
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G104: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits) (S&H)
Topic: To Breed or Not to Breed
This course will interrogate the changing meanings of reproduction and nonreproduction, with a focus on their status within the US. We’ll be examining contraceptives, abortion, and childbirth. What meaning is attached to the decision to reproduce? To not reproduce? Special attention will be paid to how (non) reproduction intersects with gender, race, class, and space. We will be analyzing major trends within reproductive rights movements, and the shifts of these many movements over time, from the early birth control rights struggles to the burgeoning childfree by choice and home birth movements. Our interdisciplinary readings will include literary texts, legal decisions, historical documents and more.
Lecture: TR 8:00-9:15 am Instructor: Wall, J
(section 30454) BH 319
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G105: Sex, Gender and the Body (3 credits) (S&H)
Concepts of self are shaped and expressed through understandings of the nature of the body. Culturally speaking, bodies tend to be assigned to categories and to be ascribed certain tendencies, abilities, or deficiencies based on these understandings. These assigned categories and ascribed characteristics are often shaped by notions of sex and/or gender. This course addresses sex and gender as culturally and historically specific constructions of difference and identity, which are intertwined and inform one another. It investigates the ways that perceptions of sex and gender are realized in and through the body as actor and the body as subject of discourse. The investigation of these issues leads into the domains of cross-cultural comparison, science, health, sexuality, reproduction, and body image. This course is excellent preparation for further and upper level studies of gender, the body, sex differences, political, social, international, philosophical, anthropological, and cultural studies of men and women.
Lecture: TR 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Stryker, S MY 130
Discussion (DIS)
R 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: Baldwin, A (section 9661) HP 10
R 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Baldwin, A (section 9659) BH 144
R 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Stryker, S (section 9667 Honors) BH 235
R 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Clarkson, N (section 27722) ED 2280
R 4:40-5:30 pm Instructor: Baldwin, A (section 9662) BH 235
R 4:40-5:30 pm Instructor: Clarkson, N (section 27724) ED 1120
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G205: Themes in Gender Studies (3 credits) (S&H)
Topic: Writing Gender and Disability: Autobiographical Representations of Intersecting Identities
In this course, we will use autobiographical writings as a site for considering the socially constructed, embodied, and intersecting categories of gender and disability. Initially, we will develop a common vocabulary and theoretical base from which to think about gender and disability, being attentive to the fact that both terms have generated considerable scholarship, debate, and popular representation. We will consider the various ways in which gender and disability, as theoretically independent axes of identity, have been conceptualized historically; the various ways in which gender and disability intersect with one another to shape daily experience and social positioning; the various ways in which gender and disability intersect with other identity categories (such as class, race, and age). We will then move on to read and consider a series of autobiographies, ranging from Steve Kuusisto’s Planet of the Blind to Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. These texts will help us think about the fluidity of gender and disability (e.g. how these categories are similarly and/or differently defined and represented in and across the texts); the function of autobiography (e.g. how these texts operate personally and politically); the intersection of theory and autobiography (e.g. how these texts illustrate, clarify, or work against the gender and disability theory with which we opened the course).
**Carries S&H Distribution Credit**
Lecture: MW 4:00-5:15 pm Instructor: Schusterbauer, E
(section 11477) BH 322
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G205: Themes in Gender Studies (3 credits) (S&H)
Topic: The Rise of the Masculine Body
Women have long been associated with the materiality and immanence of the body. However, over the last several decades as men have increasingly been targeted as consumers in their own right there has also been a corresponding focus on the masculine body by corporate America, the media, medicine, and individual men and women alike. This course will examine the new attention paid to men’s bodies in terms of consumption, medicalization, and bodywork. As a class we will be exploring such questions as: What social and political changes have led to the increased visibilities of men’s bodies? Whose bodies are considered masculine? Is a man’s body always considered masculine? What types of bodywork do men do and why? How do race, class, and sexuality factor into which bodies are valuable and/or visible? Who is the intended audience for images of men’s bodies? Has this focus on bodies "feminized" American men or changed conceptions of masculinity?
Lecture: TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Weida, S
(section 11476) BH 149
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G206: Gay Histories, Queer Cultures (3 credits) (S&H)
Examines the social, cultural and political history of same-sex relationships and desires in the United States and abroad, emphasizing the historical emergence of certain American sexual subcultures such as the modern lesbian and gay "movement" or "community." The course also highlights particular formations such as race, class, gender and regional differences that interrupt unified, universal narratives of lesbian and gay history.
Lecture: TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Stryker, S
(section 11491) BH 246
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G225: Gender, Sexuality & Popular Culture (3 credits) (A&H, CS)
Gender, Sexuality & Popular Culture surveys the making and meaning of masculinity, femininity and sexuality in popular culture. Emphasizing ways in which the form and technology of popular culture have changed during the twentieth century, the course explores gender/sexuality in such contexts as: fiction, theater, cinema, music, television, journalism and other mass media. Issues interrogated may include: gender and the power of the image; sex and spectatorship; melodrama, film noir and "the women's film"; rock music women and MTV; race, age and representation; masculinity and femininity; and violence and pornography.
Lecture TR 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Maher, J
(section 3639) WH 003
Lecture TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Maher, J
(section 8100) BH 347
Lecture TR 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Shaw, J
(section 3640) SB 150
Lecture TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Shaw, J
(section 3641) BH 103
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G235: Scientific Understands of Sex & Gender (3 credits) (S&H)
Interrogates the evolution of scientific approaches to, and conceptualizations of, the terminology of sex and gender from the persepctive of the behavioral, medial, and social sciences. Topics may include: femininity, masculinity, and androgyny; femaleness,
maleness, intersex, and transgender; heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality.
Lecture TR 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Aizura, A
(section 27726) LI 033
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G300: Gender Studies: Core Concepts and Key Debates (3 credits) (IW)
Examination of the field of Gender Studies. Students will explore a series of themes through which gender is discussed, analyzed, and defined. Conceptual frameworks of gender, theories of sexuality, and the cultural and historical construction of the body are emphasized. Examination of gender as a contested, category ranging across categories of race, ethnicity, class and nationality.
Lecture MW 4:00-5:15 pm Instructor: Stein, M
(section 11497) SY 002
G302: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits) (CS)
Topic: Politics of Gender & Sexuality
Lecture MW 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Long, L
(section: 29707) SB 150
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G302: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: The Queer Past
Were there queer sexualities in the past? Most people would probably answer this question “no” because “queerness” is strictly a twentieth- and twenty-first century phenomenon. Some historians would even like to cry “anachronism!” at any attempt to find queerness in the past. Enter Elizabeth Freeman (and others), who argue that the next frontier of the queer is history itself. Freeman calls it “temporal drag,” a kind of history that abandons the linear, progressive model of history for a queer one—one that considers “friction of dead bodies upon live ones, obsolete constructions upon emergent ones.” This course will be an introduction into the theory and practice of “temporal drag.” We will investigate the landscape of sexualities in earlier cultures and use these investigations to question our modern (even queer) assumptions. One of the most enduring myths of modern culture and queer studies is the universality of heterosexuality, but what if it turns out that “heterosexuality” did not exist before the nineteenth century? What does that do to the “queer”? We will address these and other questions using contemporary queer theory along with historical and literary texts. The course will require two 6-8 page papers, a midterm and final.
Lecture TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Lochrie, K KH 200
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G302: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits) (A&H)
Topic: Gender, Sexuality & the Unconscious
This class will focus on the work of Sigmund Freud and the analytic tradition of psychoanalysis in order to introduce students to the use of psychoanalytic theory, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality in Western visual representation. Psychoanalysis’s major contribution to modern theory is the exploration of sexuality via the unconscious. As such, it has been taken up by some of the major theorists of gender and sexuality in the late 20th century, particularly in the areas of film and literature. This course will use visual representation as a means of exploring the basic works of Freud. We will discover how Freud can help us unpack some of the visual tropes and formats used in depicting gender and sexuality in Western art. This dual approach will help students gain a basic understanding of psychoanalysis, and learn how to apply it when analyzing representation.
Lecture TR 2:30-3:35 pm Instructor: Shaw, J BH 319
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G304: Constructions of Masculinities (3 credits) (S&H, IW)
An interdisciplinary examination of what constitutes (and has historically constituted) masculinity. Designed to illuminate contested underpinnings of masculinity.
Lecture TR 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Weber, B
(section 27727) BH 319
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G340: Gender, Geography, Sex & Space (3 credits) (S&H)
Geographers are found of reminding us that everything that happens happens someplace. Gender and sexuality are no exceptions to this rule. This course examines the crucially important role that space and place play in the construction and maintenance of gender norms, sexual conventions, and critically and politically minded indictments of both of these things. In addition to surveying a broad range of classic and contemporary theoretical literature dealing with space and place, students will also consider various
social and historical contexts in which our understanding of gender and sexuality have either shaped, or been shaped by, popular perceptions regarding particular landscapes, locations, regions, or built environments. Subjects for investigation will include the gendered and sexualized imaginary of imperialism and territorial conquest; the gendered history of the domestic domain; the modernist art of flaneurie in fin de siècle Europe; feminist eco-criticism and gender-conscious critiques of architecture and urban planning; lesbian separatism and the “Women’s Land movement” of the late 1960s and 1970s; the spatial dimensions of feminist and queer protest and activism; spaces of sexual commerce in American cities and the culture of public sex generally; the gendered, racial and sexual politics of imprisonment in the United States; and the gendered and sexual utopianism (and dystopianism) of popular science fiction.
Lecture TR 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Johnson, C
(section 29710) FA 010
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G402: Problems in Gender Studies (3 credits) (A&H)
Topic: India, Lost & Found in Translation
This course looks at the work of Indian diasporic filmmakers and authors, from the 1980s to the present, through whose lens India is harshly critiqued, fiercely loved, and invariably treated as a site in need of reform- and transform-ation. Drawing on their own and others’ experiences of displacement, the artists whose work we study create works of powerful political provocation as well as historical testimony, inviting culture critique and debate over the success of India as a modern and modernizing nation. Our approach to this material will be ethnographic, as we study the social and cultural context of the places, events, and personages that figure centrally in these films and stories. The focus of the films themselves spans colonial and postcolonial periods, and our readings will focus accordingly on the continuities between the cultural critiques made both from afar and from within India during these respective eras. As gender inequalities in both Hindu and Muslim culture in India continue to figure prominently in reformist critiques of Indian modernity, this course treats as its centerpiece the films of two prolific feminist filmmakers producing highly acclaimed and controversial films over the last two decades, Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta. Theirs will not, however, be the only films we view, as we aim to build our cultural literacy regarding the interventions these filmmakers are aiming at Indian cultural life more broadly.
Lecture TR 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Seizer, S
(section 8612) C2 100
Films W 7:15-10:15 pm WY 015
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G402: Problems in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: Gender & Consumer Culture
Even in tiny farming villages in the highlands of New Guinea, men and women wear different clothes, display different kinds of jewelry and adornments, and have distinct kinds of possessions. Today Americans believe that tiny baby boys and girls need different kinds of toys, books, diapers and even soap. In this class we will explore
the way that gender is created with and through the things we buy, own, wear and eat. We will look at the way our society, built on consumption and mass media, creates and enforces particular ideas about gender through material culture. The class will read about the history of shopping, cooking, cosmetics, clothing, and cars. A good deal of the semester will be devoted to fieldwork aimed at excavating our own gendered consumption practices, the meanings of our own possessions. We will ask if it is possible to change or challenge gender norms and stereotypes through our own shopping and consumption.
Lecture MW 2:30-3:45 pm Instructor: Wilk, R
(section 9693) SB 138
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G480: Practicum in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Restricted to Gender Studies Majors/Minors
Prerequisite: junior or senior standing; 12 credit hours of gender studies course work; project approved by instructor. Directed study of aspects of policy related to gender studies issues based on field experience. Directed readings, practicum in social agency, papers and analytical journal required.
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G495: Undergraduate Readings and Research in Gender Studies (1-3 credits)
Must have at least junior standing
Requires course authorization from Gender Studies (for authorization e-mail: gender@indiana.edu)
The undergraduate Readings and Research course exists to enable Gender Studies BA and undergraduate minor students to undertake intensive independent study of particular topics not usually covered in existing courses. An appropriate faculty member supervises the work. Students interested in independent study should develop a topic prior to registration in consultation with a faculty member and the Chair of Gender Studies.
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G498/598: Seminar in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: Feminist Theory: Texts/Debates
This course explores what are considered some of the founding texts of contemporary feminist theory. These works ask basic questions about identity, ethics, knowledge, sexuality, etc. Such works have emerged in relation to a variety of theoretical discourses, such as Marxism, structuralism, cultural studies, and others. We will
examine the intellectual history of feminist theory and its resonance with more recent trends in gender studies. As an advanced class, I expect a familiarity with the basic tenets of Anglo-American feminist theory.
Seminar M 10:00-12:30 Instructor: Maher, J
(section 27750) MME 139
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G498/701: Seminar in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: Gender, Medicine and the Body
How do medicine and the body interact with culture? What kinds of relationships exist between gender, medicine, and culture? This course will examine the intersection of perhaps the most important medical journeys with gender and the body. Changing gender. Altering the body. Psychiatric conditions that play with the mind and the body. The disabled body. Body sculpture. Etc. Students will have a chance to explore the exciting collections of The Kinsey Institute.
Seminar T 8:45-10:45 am Instructor: Malti-Douglas, F
(section 12027) MME 139
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Fall 2009 Undergraduate Courses
G101: Gender, Culture & Society (3 credits) (A&H)
Gender, Culture & Society provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of gender - the social creation and cultural representation of femininity and masculinity - by examining relevant beliefs, practices, debates and political struggles. Lectures, readings, and class discussions consider how people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and nationalities in various historical periods have assumed gendered identities. Topics may include: romantic love and marriage; sexuality; parenthood, reproduction, birth control and new reproductive technologies; interpersonal violence; the scientific study of sexual differences; fitness, health, body image, and popular culture; the sexual division of labor and economic development; and feminist movements.
Lecture: MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: Schweighofer, K
(section 9673) WH119
Lecture: MWF 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Schweighofer, K
(section 9674) WH 119
Lecture: MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: Frazier, L
(section 3637 Honors) BH 232
Lecture: MWF 8:00-8:50 am Instructor: Crump, V
(section 9677) SY 002
Lecture: MWF 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Crump, V
(section 9678) BH 322
Lecture: MWF 9:05-9:55 am Instructor: Shand, A
(section 9679) BH 237
Lecture: MWF 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: Shand, A
(section 9680) BH 147
Lecture: MWF 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: Leimbach, J
(section 11472) BH 237
Lecture: MWF 4:40-5:30 pm Instructor: Leimbach, J
(section 11474) BH 238
Lecture: MWF 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Basiliere, J
(section 27698) BH 332
Lecture: MWF 5:45-6:35 pm Instructor: Basiliere, J
(section 27699) SY 0006
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G104: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits) (S&H)
Topic: To Breed or Not to Breed
This course will interrogate the changing meanings of reproduction and nonreproduction, with a focus on their status within the US. We’ll be examining contraceptives, abortion, and childbirth. What meaning is attached to the decision to reproduce? To not reproduce? Special attention will be paid to how (non) reproduction intersects with gender, race, class, and space. We will be analyzing major trends within reproductive rights movements, and the shifts of these many movements over time, from the early birth control rights struggles to the burgeoning childfree by choice and home birth movements. Our interdisciplinary readings will include literary texts, legal decisions, historical documents and more.
Lecture: TR 8:00-9:15 am Instructor: Wall, J
(section 30454) BH 319
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G105: Sex, Gender and the Body (3 credits) (S&H)
Concepts of self are shaped and expressed through understandings of the nature of the body. Culturally speaking, bodies tend to be assigned to categories and to be ascribed certain tendencies, abilities, or deficiencies based on these understandings. These assigned categories and ascribed characteristics are often shaped by notions of sex and/or gender. This course addresses sex and gender as culturally and historically specific constructions of difference and identity, which are intertwined and inform one another. It investigates the ways that perceptions of sex and gender are realized in and through the body as actor and the body as subject of discourse. The investigation of these issues leads into the domains of cross-cultural comparison, science, health, sexuality, reproduction, and body image. This course is excellent preparation for further and upper level studies of gender, the body, sex differences, political, social, international, philosophical, anthropological, and cultural studies of men and women.
Lecture: TR 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Stryker, S MY 130
Discussion (DIS)
R 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: Baldwin, A (section 9661) HP 10
R 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Baldwin, A (section 9659) BH 144
R 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Stryker, S (section 9667 Honors) BH 235
R 3:35-4:25 pm Instructor: Clarkson, N (section 27722) ED 2280
R 4:40-5:30 pm Instructor: Baldwin, A (section 9662) BH 235
R 4:40-5:30 pm Instructor: Clarkson, N (section 27724) ED 1120
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G205: Themes in Gender Studies (3 credits) (S&H)
Topic: Writing Gender and Disability: Autobiographical Representations of Intersecting Identities
In this course, we will use autobiographical writings as a site for considering the socially constructed, embodied, and intersecting categories of gender and disability. Initially, we will develop a common vocabulary and theoretical base from which to think about gender and disability, being attentive to the fact that both terms have generated considerable scholarship, debate, and popular representation. We will consider the various ways in which gender and disability, as theoretically independent axes of identity, have been conceptualized historically; the various ways in which gender and disability intersect with one another to shape daily experience and social positioning; the various ways in which gender and disability intersect with other identity categories (such as class, race, and age). We will then move on to read and consider a series of autobiographies, ranging from Steve Kuusisto’s Planet of the Blind to Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. These texts will help us think about the fluidity of gender and disability (e.g. how these categories are similarly and/or differently defined and represented in and across the texts); the function of autobiography (e.g. how these texts operate personally and politically); the intersection of theory and autobiography (e.g. how these texts illustrate, clarify, or work against the gender and disability theory with which we opened the course).
**Carries S&H Distribution Credit**
Lecture: MW 4:00-5:15 pm Instructor: Schusterbauer, E
(section 11477) BH 322
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G205: Themes in Gender Studies (3 credits) (S&H)
Topic: The Rise of the Masculine Body
Women have long been associated with the materiality and immanence of the body. However, over the last several decades as men have increasingly been targeted as consumers in their own right there has also been a corresponding focus on the masculine body by corporate America, the media, medicine, and individual men and women alike. This course will examine the new attention paid to men’s bodies in terms of consumption, medicalization, and bodywork. As a class we will be exploring such questions as: What social and political changes have led to the increased visibilities of men’s bodies? Whose bodies are considered masculine? Is a man’s body always considered masculine? What types of bodywork do men do and why? How do race, class, and sexuality factor into which bodies are valuable and/or visible? Who is the intended audience for images of men’s bodies? Has this focus on bodies "feminized" American men or changed conceptions of masculinity?
Lecture: TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Weida, S
(section 11476) BH 149
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G206: Gay Histories, Queer Cultures (3 credits) (S&H)
Examines the social, cultural and political history of same-sex relationships and desires in the United States and abroad, emphasizing the historical emergence of certain American sexual subcultures such as the modern lesbian and gay "movement" or "community." The course also highlights particular formations such as race, class, gender and regional differences that interrupt unified, universal narratives of lesbian and gay history.
Lecture: TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Stryker, S
(section 11491) BH 246
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G225: Gender, Sexuality & Popular Culture (3 credits) (A&H, CS)
Gender, Sexuality & Popular Culture surveys the making and meaning of masculinity, femininity and sexuality in popular culture. Emphasizing ways in which the form and technology of popular culture have changed during the twentieth century, the course explores gender/sexuality in such contexts as: fiction, theater, cinema, music, television, journalism and other mass media. Issues interrogated may include: gender and the power of the image; sex and spectatorship; melodrama, film noir and "the women's film"; rock music women and MTV; race, age and representation; masculinity and femininity; and violence and pornography.
Lecture TR 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Maher, J
(section 3639) WH 003
Lecture TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Maher, J
(section 8100) BH 347
Lecture TR 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Shaw, J
(section 3640) SB 150
Lecture TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Shaw, J
(section 3641) BH 103
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G235: Scientific Understands of Sex & Gender (3 credits) (S&H)
Interrogates the evolution of scientific approaches to, and conceptualizations of, the terminology of sex and gender from the persepctive of the behavioral, medial, and social sciences. Topics may include: femininity, masculinity, and androgyny; femaleness,
maleness, intersex, and transgender; heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality.
Lecture TR 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Aizura, A
(section 27726) LI 033
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G300: Gender Studies: Core Concepts and Key Debates (3 credits) (IW)
Examination of the field of Gender Studies. Students will explore a series of themes through which gender is discussed, analyzed, and defined. Conceptual frameworks of gender, theories of sexuality, and the cultural and historical construction of the body are emphasized. Examination of gender as a contested, category ranging across categories of race, ethnicity, class and nationality.
Lecture MW 4:00-5:15 pm Instructor: Stein, M
(section 11497) SY 002
G302: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits) (CS)
Topic: Politics of Gender & Sexuality
Lecture MW 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Long, L
(section: 29707) SB 150
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G302: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: The Queer Past
Were there queer sexualities in the past? Most people would probably answer this question “no” because “queerness” is strictly a twentieth- and twenty-first century phenomenon. Some historians would even like to cry “anachronism!” at any attempt to find queerness in the past. Enter Elizabeth Freeman (and others), who argue that the next frontier of the queer is history itself. Freeman calls it “temporal drag,” a kind of history that abandons the linear, progressive model of history for a queer one—one that considers “friction of dead bodies upon live ones, obsolete constructions upon emergent ones.” This course will be an introduction into the theory and practice of “temporal drag.” We will investigate the landscape of sexualities in earlier cultures and use these investigations to question our modern (even queer) assumptions. One of the most enduring myths of modern culture and queer studies is the universality of heterosexuality, but what if it turns out that “heterosexuality” did not exist before the nineteenth century? What does that do to the “queer”? We will address these and other questions using contemporary queer theory along with historical and literary texts. The course will require two 6-8 page papers, a midterm and final.
Lecture TR 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: Lochrie, K KH 200
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G302: Topics in Gender Studies (3 credits) (A&H)
Topic: Gender, Sexuality & the Unconscious
This class will focus on the work of Sigmund Freud and the analytic tradition of psychoanalysis in order to introduce students to the use of psychoanalytic theory, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality in Western visual representation. Psychoanalysis’s major contribution to modern theory is the exploration of sexuality via the unconscious. As such, it has been taken up by some of the major theorists of gender and sexuality in the late 20th century, particularly in the areas of film and literature. This course will use visual representation as a means of exploring the basic works of Freud. We will discover how Freud can help us unpack some of the visual tropes and formats used in depicting gender and sexuality in Western art. This dual approach will help students gain a basic understanding of psychoanalysis, and learn how to apply it when analyzing representation.
Lecture TR 2:30-3:35 pm Instructor: Shaw, J BH 319
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G304: Constructions of Masculinities (3 credits) (S&H, IW)
An interdisciplinary examination of what constitutes (and has historically constituted) masculinity. Designed to illuminate contested underpinnings of masculinity.
Lecture TR 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Weber, B
(section 27727) BH 319
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G340: Gender, Geography, Sex & Space (3 credits) (S&H)
Geographers are found of reminding us that everything that happens happens someplace. Gender and sexuality are no exceptions to this rule. This course examines the crucially important role that space and place play in the construction and maintenance of gender norms, sexual conventions, and critically and politically minded indictments of both of these things. In addition to surveying a broad range of classic and contemporary theoretical literature dealing with space and place, students will also consider various social and historical contexts in which our understanding of gender and sexuality have either shaped, or been shaped by, popular perceptions regarding particular landscapes, locations, regions, or built environments. Subjects for investigation will include the gendered and sexualized imaginary of imperialism and territorial conquest; the gendered history of the domestic domain; the modernist art of flaneurie in fin de siècle Europe; feminist eco-criticism and gender-conscious critiques of architecture and urban planning; lesbian separatism and the “Women’s Land movement” of the late 1960s and 1970s; the spatial dimensions of feminist and queer protest and activism; spaces of sexual commerce in American cities and the culture of public sex generally; the gendered, racial and sexual politics of imprisonment in the United States; and the gendered and sexual utopianism (and dystopianism) of popular science fiction.
Lecture TR 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Johnson, C
(section 29710) FA 010
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G402: Problems in Gender Studies (3 credits) (A&H)
Topic: India, Lost & Found in Translation
This course looks at the work of Indian diasporic filmmakers and authors, from the 1980s to the present, through whose lens India is harshly critiqued, fiercely loved, and invariably treated as a site in need of reform- and transform-ation. Drawing on their own and others’ experiences of displacement, the artists whose work we study create works of powerful political provocation as well as historical testimony, inviting culture critique and debate over the success of India as a modern and modernizing nation. Our approach to this material will be ethnographic, as we study the social and cultural context of the places, events, and personages that figure centrally in these films and stories. The focus of the films themselves spans colonial and postcolonial periods, and our readings will focus accordingly on the continuities between the cultural critiques made both from afar and from within India during these respective eras. As gender inequalities in both Hindu and Muslim culture in India continue to figure prominently in reformist critiques of Indian modernity, this course treats as its centerpiece the films of two prolific feminist filmmakers producing highly acclaimed and controversial films over the last two decades, Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta. Theirs will not, however, be the only films we view, as we aim to build our cultural literacy regarding the interventions these filmmakers are aiming at Indian cultural life more broadly.
Lecture TR 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Seizer, S
(section 8612) C2 100
Films W 7:15-10:15 pm WY 015
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G402: Problems in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: Gender & Consumer Culture
Even in tiny farming villages in the highlands of New Guinea, men and women wear different clothes, display different kinds of jewelry and adornments, and have distinct kinds of possessions. Today Americans believe that tiny baby boys and girls need different kinds of toys, books, diapers and even soap. In this class we will explore
the way that gender is created with and through the things we buy, own, wear and eat. We will look at the way our society, built on consumption and mass media, creates and enforces particular ideas about gender through material culture. The class will read about the history of shopping, cooking, cosmetics, clothing, and cars. A good deal of the semester will be devoted to fieldwork aimed at excavating our own gendered consumption practices, the meanings of our own possessions. We will ask if it is possible to change or challenge gender norms and stereotypes through our own shopping and consumption.
Lecture MW 2:30-3:45 pm Instructor: Wilk, R
(section 9693) SB 138
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G480: Practicum in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Restricted to Gender Studies Majors/Minors
Prerequisite: junior or senior standing; 12 credit hours of gender studies course work; project approved by instructor. Directed study of aspects of policy related to gender studies issues based on field experience. Directed readings, practicum in social agency, papers and analytical journal required.
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G495: Undergraduate Readings and Research in Gender Studies (1-3 credits)
Must have at least junior standing
Requires course authorization from Gender Studies (for authorization e-mail: gender@indiana.edu)
The undergraduate Readings and Research course exists to enable Gender Studies BA and undergraduate minor students to undertake intensive independent study of particular topics not usually covered in existing courses. An appropriate faculty member supervises the work. Students interested in independent study should develop a topic prior to registration in consultation with a faculty member and the Chair of Gender Studies.
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G498/598: Seminar in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: Feminist Theory: Texts/Debates
This course explores what are considered some of the founding texts of contemporary feminist theory. These works ask basic questions about identity, ethics, knowledge, sexuality, etc. Such works have emerged in relation to a variety of theoretical discourses, such as Marxism, structuralism, cultural studies, and others. We will
examine the intellectual history of feminist theory and its resonance with more recent trends in gender studies. As an advanced class, I expect a familiarity with the basic tenets of Anglo-American feminist theory.
Seminar M 10:00-12:30 Instructor: Maher, J
(section 27750) MME 139
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G498/701: Seminar in Gender Studies (3 credits)
Topic: Gender, Medicine and the Body
How do medicine and the body interact with culture? What kinds of relationships exist between gender, medicine, and culture? This course will examine the intersection of perhaps the most important medical journeys with gender and the body. Changing gender. Altering the body. Psychiatric conditions that play with the mind and the body. The disabled body. Body sculpture. Etc. Students will have a chance to explore the exciting collections of The Kinsey Institute.
Seminar T 8:45-10:45 am Instructor: Malti-Douglas, F
(section 12027) MME 139
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