Social Norms / Social Power: Reading "Difference" in America (FYS)
AMST 117F
Fall 2020
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
FGSS 117F |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Disability Studies, Queer Studies |
This American Studies FYS is an interdisciplinary exploration of the privileges and penalties associated with "the normal" in the United States. We'll be centrally concerned with the ways bodily difference and social identity interarticulate with "normalness," locating individuals within hierarchical power structures. What is "normativity," if not a statistical norm? How are regimes of normativity produced, reproduced, and challenged?
Our focus is on queer studies, which we will approach through an intersectional lens, paying careful attention to the ways race, ethnicity, indigeneity, class, disability, gender, and sexuality intersect in social terrains of power. We will unpack and explore key concepts in American studies, including settler colonialism, compulsory ablebodiness, heteronormativity, biopolitics, neoliberalism, and ideology, drawing on a range of genres and disciplines, including memoir, ethnography, film, and theory in disability studies, queer theory, critical race studies, Marxist feminism, Native American studies, and trans studies. Along the way, we will encounter problematics ranging from disability and the "normal" to the American Dream, the "wedding-industrial complex," sexual "deviance" and desire, racialized state violence, the privatization of the public space, and the politics of queer/LGBT activism.
As a First Year Seminar, this course is writing-intensive and is structured to give you ample practice in core writing, reading, and presentation skills needed at Wesleyan. This course is part of the Queer Studies and the Disability Studies Course Cluster, and it is cross-listed in FGSS. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AMST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Credit/Unsatisfactory |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 | | Special Attributes: FYS |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Readings TBD. Potentially: Eli Clare, EXILE AND PRIDE; Chrys Ingraham, WHITE WEDDINGS; Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, NOBODY PASSES; Leslie Feinberg, STONE BUTCH BLUES; Samuel Delany, TIMES SQUARE RED, TIMES SQUARE BLUE; Dean Spade, NORMAL LIFE; Sins Invalid, SKIN, TOOTH and BONE; Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, DIRTY RIVER: A QUEER FEMME OF COLOR DREAMING HER WAY HOME; Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele, WHEN THEY CALL YOU A TERRORIST: A BLACK LIVES MATTER MEMOIR
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Examinations and Assignments:
In-class discussion, short reading papers, final paper/project and portfolio. |
| Instructor(s): Weiss,Margot Times: .M.W... 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: ONLINE; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: X | JR major: X | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: X | JR non-major: X | SO: X | FR: 15 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 3 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 2 |
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