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W
S 397: "Trans"
Bodies and Politics & WS 490:
Topics in Women, Gender & Sexualities Course
description: This
seminar examines the historical and political significance of the current models
of, claims about, and contests for meaning surrounding "sex" and the
human body. In general, our readings and discussions will aim to critically
examine the dynamics implicated in the ongoing making of nature and sexual
difference as they are enacted and encoded on and through trans-bodies. We are
using the term "trans" as a cover term for the multiple categories of
bodies and identities that are not simply integrated into the dominant
gender/sex/sexuality matrix (and that may or may not challenge the familiar
heterosexual/homosexual division). We
will use theoretical writings, empirical studies, and concrete exemplars to
critically evaluate the durability of the dichotomies informing the
essentialist/constructionist (nature/nurture) debate. That is, rather than
viewing the debate as futile and/or outdated, our seminar aims to take the
debate seriously. By focusing on concrete medical and scientific trans-related
technologies and technologies as practices of classification, regulation, and
order, we will investigate the formation of fundamental categories, the
production of evidence, and the changing concepts, practices and relationships
related to pathology, sex, and nature. Examples will be drawn from case studies,
clinical reports, and cultural commentaries, and will include work by academics
of various persuasions, videomakers, laboratory scientists, health
practitioners, activists, health policy makers, public figures, and performance
artists. Ideally, several recent events will help organize our discussions
throughout the semester: Transgender civil rights; the Aurora/Zachery Lipscomb
case; Littleton v. Prange; the academic (including recent research from the
Johns Hopkins Children's Center) and public response to post-As Nature Made Him John Money; the International Olympic Committee's
"sex testing" policy; ISNA's influence on paradigms of intersex
surgery; and Transgender Health Projects. The concerns and issues raised through
the specific cases should help us think about a wide variety of empirical and
theoretical questions. Thus, our discussions will be organized around the
concrete medical and everyday, and, relatedly, the enabling and limiting aspects
of feminist theory, queer theory, and their relationship. In sum, our readings
and discussions will constantly move between the empirical and theoretical,
research and culture, culture and science, sexuality and bodies, technologies
and identities, and conceptual dynamics and ethics. Requirements:
Biweekly response papers, a mid-term paper on a contemporary trans event, and a
final position paper. All students are required to attend class, facilitate one
seminar discussion and contribute to a lively and collaborative intellectual
experience.
Required
Texts (available at UI Bookstore) Colapinto, John. 2000. As Nature Made Him:
The
Boy who was Raised as
a Girl.
New York: Harper
Collins. Dreger, Alice. 1998. Hermaphrodites and the Medical
Invention of Sex.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction.
New
York: Vintage. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Herculine Barbin: Being the
Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French
Hermaprodite.
New
York: Pantheon. Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female
Masculinity.
Durham: Duke UP. Hausman, Bernice. 1995. Changing Sex: Transexualism,
Technology,
and the Idea of
Gender.
Durham:
Duke UP. Kessler, Suzanne: 1998. Lessons
from the Intersex.
New Brunswick:
Rutgers. Meyerwitz, Joanne. 2002. How Sex Changed: A History of
Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard. More, Kate & Whittle, S., eds. 1999. Reclaiming
Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siiecle. NY: Cassell. Namaste, Viviane. 2000. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual
and
Transgendered People.
Chicago: UCP. Stryker, Susan, ed. 1998. GLQ: The
Transgender Issue.
Durham: Duke UP. |