Transnational Sexualities
ANTH 228
Fall 2015 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
FGSS 241, AMST 263 |
| Course Cluster: Queer Studies |
This course is an introduction to the anthropology of sexuality. Our focus will be on practices and relationships understood as nonnormative--and thus on the relationships between gender, sexuality, and power. For anthropologists, this might mean same-sex marriage or mail-order brides, butch/femme relationships or ritualized homosexuality, two-spirit people or transgender sex workers, gay immigration or Caribbean sex tourism, female genital surgeries or plastic surgery.
We will explore bodies, genders, desires, sexual practices, sexual identities, sexual labor, and socio-sexual relationships in a variety of locations: the United States, Brazil, Suriname, India, the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Indonesia, China, Thailand, and Japan, among other places. Our readings will range from the classic to the contemporary: Margaret Mead's (1928) COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA to Esther Newton's (1972) MOTHER CAMP to several ethnographies published in the last year or two. Throughout, we will ask, How do sexuality, sex, desire, and gender vary across cultures? How are our concepts--queer, gay and lesbian, transgender, sex worker, or heterosexual--challenged by these similarities and differences? What happens when our concepts travel across temporal, national, and cultural boundaries? And, finally, how does thinking both locally and globally help us understand, analyze, and reformulate the content of basic social categories like gender, sex, and sexuality?
Our course will take an intersectional and transnational approach, paying careful attention to the ways sexuality intersects with class, nation, and race, as well as the effects of globalization, transnational mass media, and cross-border economies and activisms on local or "traditional" genders and sexualities. Our aim is to use ethnography to illuminate important cultural and national differences between people and, thus, unsettle U.S.-centric approaches to gender, sexuality, and queer studies. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(FGSS) |
Major Readings:
Nicole Constable, ROMANCE ON A GLOBAL SCALE
Don Kulick, TRAVESTY: SEX, GENDER AND CULTURAL AMONG BRAZILIAN TRANSGENDERED PROSTITUTES
Gloria Wekker, THE POLITICS OF PASSION
Martin Manalanson, GLOBAL DIVAS.
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Examinations and Assignments:
One or two turns as class discussion leader-presenter; (8) two to three page critical reading response papers; final (8-10 pps); research paper on aspect of sexuality of your choice. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
The reading list mentioned in the course description is to give you some idea of potential readings; email me at mdweiss@wesleyan.edu if you would like the finalized list of course texts. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
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