Documenting the Feminized Body: Literature, Photography, Science

Catalog description

How are certain bodies made to express femininity, to satisfy the expectations of the gender binary? How can femininity be used to vilify or control people? How do these operations intersect with other complex identity categories, such as race and class? This first-year seminar introduces students to questions central to gender and sexuality studies. Reading twentieth-century American works (poems, novels, comics, and photographs) we consider the creative function of documentation. Highlighting the work of contemporary poets, Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine, and Ocean Vuong, this course introduces students to new ways of reading poetry beyond the lyric tradition. students are encouraged to think critically about how knowledge and subjectivity are contextually produced. This course will provide an introduction to important critical traditions, including feminist theory, trans studies, Black feminism, and photography theory. This course satisfies the WRIT requirement.