GEN/PHI 333. Theories of Gender & Sexuality
Prof. Kyoo Lee, 524 West 59th St. Rm 8.63.15, Dept. of Philosophy, John Jay College, CUNY
Office Hours: By Appointment (Before or After Class)
kylee@jjay.cuny.edu
Some Classical/Contemporary Texts You're
Strongly
Encouraged to
Read Cover to Cover and
Write About As Main Part of Your Research Paper. 

An Extra Credit of Up to 5 Points Applicable. 
John Jay Library has copies. 

@ Linda Alcoff. Visible Identities : race, gender, and the self
@ Simone de Beauovir. The Second Sex
@ Judith Butler. Gender Trouble
@ Nancy Chodorow. Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities:
Freud and Beyond
@ Patricia Hill Collins. Black Feminist Thought:
knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment
@ Ann Cudd and Nancy Holmstrom, Capitalism, For and Against: A Feminist Debate
@ Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality
@ Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn : a history of women
Vol.2: The Masculine Mystique
@ Sander Gilman. Freud, Race and Gender
@ bell hooks.  Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
@ Michael Kimmel. Men's Lives
@ Martha Nussbaum. From Disgust to Humanity : Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law
@ Kelly Oliver. Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the Media
@ Alice Walker.  In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose



GENDER STUDIES RESOURCES @ JJAY LIBRARY


<<On Daily Reading and Journaling>>
  • Try and read all (typically two or three per class day) but
  • if pressed for time, aim to read at least one, starting with the first on the list and
  • write a well-condensed and composed (no rambling or waffling, please) journal either
  • combining all/any of the readings or doing an in-depth analysis of one text of your choice. 
  • Supplementary readings are for your own reference, also potential material for your further research, and so
  • there is no need to write about any of them for your journal unless you happen to find anything particularly interesting. 
<<Examples: Journals on "The Personal is Theoretical?"; Theoretical is Scientific?; "Naming Opression and Position": These examples are quite extensive, and you should aim for a shorter version of the comparable level of analytic and critical reading.>>


I. INTRODUCTION: Some Theoretical Questions

01/31. Orientation
No readings: come unprepared

02/02. Starting with Ma vie en rose
No readings: come unprepared
Supplementary Reading: Butler on "a Man Who Lived in Maine ... and He Walked Down ..." (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Kidd. Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale
Supplementary Reading: Media Education Foundation. Tough Guise (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Oz. The Stepford Wives (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Pierce. Boys Don't Cry (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Simmons. Transgeneration (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Stewart, Toemageddon 2011: This Little Piggy Went to Hell. (Video Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Stockton. The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways in the Twentieth Century

02/07. Starting with Ma vie en rose
No readings: come unprepared
Supplementary Reading: Butler on "a Man Who Lived in Maine ... and He Walked Down ..." (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Kidd. Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale
Supplementary Reading: Media Education Foundation. Tough Guise (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Oz. The Stepford Wives (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Pierce. Boys Don't Cry (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Simmons. Transgeneration (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Stewart, Toemageddon 2011: This Little Piggy Went to Hell. (Video Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Stockton. The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways in the Twentieth Century

02/09. Key Issues Around Gender/Sexuality As Illustrated in Berliner's Ma vie en rose
Chanter. "Introduction: The Challenge of Transgendered Identity: The End of Gender As We Know It?" Gender: Key Concepts
Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough"
Young."Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality."
Supplementary Reading: Chanter. The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Difference
Supplementary Reading: Chodorow, "Gender as a Personal and Cultural Construction."
Supplementary Reading: Foucault. "What is called "punishing"?"
Supplementary Reading: Jacobsen, "My Sexual Regulation? Family Values and Social Movements,"

02/14. The Personal is Theoretical?
Chanter. "Chapter 1: Formative Moments and Concepts in the History of Feminism." Gender: Key Concepts
Flax. "Women Do Theory."
Lugones and Spelman."Have We Got a Theory for You! [...]'"
Supplementary Reading: Canner, Orgasm, Inc (film)
Supplementary Reading: Lugones. "Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception"
Supplementary Reading: The New School, Conference on The Body and the State: How the State Controls and Protects the Body (Conference)
Supplementary Reading: Spelman on "Philosophers do Talk About Sex."


02/16. Theoretical is Scientific? The Science of Gender and Science: Pinker vs. Spelke Debate
Pinker and Spelke. A Debate on "The Science of Gender and Science." Script
Fausto-Sterling. "the Five Sexes"
Foucault. "Scientia Sexualis." The History of Sexuality (summary: do read the whole book, three volumes, if further interested.)
Supplementary Reading: Bordo. "What is a Phallus?." The Male Body
Supplementary Reading: Freud. "Female Sexuality"
Supplementary Reading: Freud. "Some Psychical Consequences of Anatomical Differences"
Supplementary: Reading: Hale. "Are Lesbians Women?"
Supplementary Reading: (on) Lacan. "Symbolic, Real, Imaginary"

02/23. No Class: Work on and turnitin.com-submit Two Sample Journals (firm deadline, automatic cut-off.)
Class ID: 4800704
Login: madness

02/28. Personal, Theoretical, Differential ... 
Kimmel. "Who's Afraid of Men Doing Feminism?"
Alcoff.  "Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory."
Haraway. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century."
Davis. "Difficult Dialogues (Video, 2009)." Keynote Speech at the 30th Annual Conference, NWSA, Atlanta, GA .


II.GENDERED/SEXED EXISTENCE

03/01. Coming to Be: Existentially Speaking?
de Beauvoir. "Introduction. " The Second Sex.
Wittig. "One Is Not Born a Woman"

03/06. Right to Be: "Subalterns" Spoken At and About, but not Speaking?
Chanter. "Ch5: Postcolonial Feminist Theory: the Rhetorical Clash of 'East' and 'West'. Gender: Key Concepts
Gramsci. "History of the Subaltern Classes"; "The Concept of "Ideology."; "Cultural Themes: Ideological Material." Prison Notebooks 3.   
Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?"
Chanter. "Ch5: Postcolonial Feminist Theory: the Rhetorical Clash of 'East' and 'West'. Gender: Key Concepts

03/13. Desire to Be: Only Through The Gender Bind?
Butler. "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire"
Supplementary Reading: Butler. "Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Assignment and Allegories of Transsexuality."
Supplementary Reading: Butler and Talyor. From Examined Life (Video, 2008)

03/15. Naming Oppression and Position
Friedan. "The Problem That Has No Name."
Lorde. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House."
Frye. "Oppression."
Supplementary Reading: MacKinnon, Catharine. "Consciousness Raising."

03/20. Docility and Subjection
Foucault. "Docile Bodies"
Rich. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience"
Chanter. "Ch3: Disciplining, Controlling and Normalizing Female sexuality with Foucault and Feminist Friends." Gender: Key Concepts

03/22. Pregnant with Thin Possibilities?
Young. "Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation."
Bordo. "Reading the Slender Body."
Mr. Lee. The First Male Pragnancy, Interview
Walters. "Barbara Walters Exclusive: Pregnant Man Expecting Second Child"
Supplementary Reading: Freud. "Female Sexuality"
Supplementary Reading: Limbaugh, "Birth Control Moms" (Video)

III.GENDERED/SEXED KNOWLEDGE

03/27. Does The Sex of the Knower Matter?  
Code. "Is the Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant?" (abridged version)
Chanter. "Ch4: Feminist Epistemology: Science, Knowledge, Gender, Objectivity." Gender: Key Concepts

03/29. Dunno? What, Why, and How Come? 
Tuana. "Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance."
Alcoff. "Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types"
Supplementary Reading: Why is Sex Fun? (Video)

04/03. Knowing Otherwise or Specificially?
Collins. "Towards an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology."
Haraway. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective."

04/05. Discussing Paper Topics in Class

04/17. No Class: Work on and turnitin.com-submit Paper Proposal/Outline/Draft (firm deadline, automatic cut-off.)
Class ID: 4800704
Login: madness


IV.GENDERED/SEXED ACTS

04/19. Marrying, For instance
Pateman."Feminism and the Marriage Contract."
Rubin. "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex."
Chanter. "Ch2: Feminism and Marxism: The Usefulness and the Limitations of Parallel Models." Gender: Key Concepts

04/24. Performing
Butler. "Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions."
Halberstam. "Transgender Butch: Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum."
Cohen. "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical. Potential of Queer Politics?"
Supplementary Reading: Butler on "a Man Who Lived in Maine ... and He Walked Down ..." (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Simmons. Transgeneration (Youtube Clip)
Supplementary Reading: Stewart, Toemageddon 2011: This Little Piggy Went to Hell. (Video Clip)

04/26. Gender Justice and Intersections of Justice
MacKinnon. "Toward Feminist Jurisprudence."
Crenshaw. "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics."


IV.YOUR THEORY?

05/01, 03, 08, 10, 15. Summing Up and Pre-scheduled Student Presentations

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