INTRODUCTION TO GENDER STUDIES

This course provides students with an introduction to the field of gender studies as practiced across a range of disciplines and in relation to various kinds of texts, issues, and contexts. Students will explore issues in gender studies related to concepts of femininity, masculinity, heterosexuality, homosexuality, sexuality, identity, and more. Students will consider the ways in which gender identities and roles are produced and performed, and the ways that ideology and representation shape our understanding of gender. The course will show how research on gender is done across disciplines, highlighting differences in methodology and research questions; it thus provides students with the opportunity to learn about the unique character and approach of different disciplines by taking up debates and discourses around gender from sociology, anthropology, film and visual culture, history, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, theology, and other fields which engage gender as a salient research topic. Theories, criticism, films, literature, art, and everyday life will be analyzed through a perspective informed by gender. Gender will be analyzed in contexts that bring out debates and differences related to race, national identity, globalization, and historical and ideological shifts. Thus, rather than assume that masculinity or femininity or queer or straight or transgender are stable or static concepts, we will attempt to unpack and explore their changing meanings.