Gender and Representation

Catalog description

This course understands gender as a social construct rather than as self-evident and immutable, and examines the ways in which constructions of gender shift across time and place. Some of the questions we will consider include the following: what does it mean to be "male" or "female," "masculine" or "feminine," and how do the meanings of such categories vary across historical periods and geographic locations? How do we understand gender in relation to other social differences such as race, class, sexuality, religion, nationality, and disability? How have ideologies of gender been central to colonial and nationalist projects from the nineteenth century to the present? How does gender shift in the context of diaspora, migration, and globalization? Students will approach these questions through a consideration of aesthetic practices and representational forms from many periods and cultures - literature, film, visual art - that suggest alternatives to a binary logic of gender and instead articulate different visions of gender justice.