SOA 376/WGS Women & Sexualities Across Prof. Isabel P. B. Fêo Rodrigues [email protected]

CAUTION: THIS IS A DRAFT THIS SYLLABUS WILL BE ADAPTED FOR ONLINE TEACHING

WGS Requirement: In addition to satisfying the Department of Sociology & upper level electives, this course fulfills the Women and Gender Studies major requirement on Gender Across Cultures

I. Course Description: Sexuality and gender are not inborn fixed natural attributes but change through time and across different cultures intersecting shifting power structures, hierarchies, and individual life histories. This course engages these dynamics paying close attention to the interactions of gender with sexuality, race, age, and stratification in different world regions. Students are expected to carry on independent research projects based on a diverse selection of ethnographic case studies. The course will also engage main currents in feminist thought in anthropology and beyond the Western tradition.

II. Course Objectives: Students will learn how gender, sex, sexuality, and sexual preferences are differently constructed across cultures and how these differences challenge American normative beliefs. They are expected to theoretically refine their conceptions about feminism/s and how these articulate with power structures in the US and beyond. Similarly, students should gain an anthropological perspective to critically challenge parochialism and one’s own assumptions about what constitutes “normal” gender roles.

III. Required Texts: Available at UMD Bookstore 1-Nanda, Serena. Gender Diversity & Cross-cultural Variations. Waveland Press 2000.

2-Biehl, João. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. University of California Press 2005.

3-Anne Fausto-Sterling (1994): “The Five Sexes: Why males and females are not enough.” The Sciences, 33 (2): 20-25. http://www.neiu.edu/~lsfuller/fivesexes.htm

4-Mohanty, Chandra T. Under Western Eyes Revisited”. Signs. Vol. 28, No. 2, Winter 2003 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/342914.

5- Collin, Patricia Hill. “It’s all in the intersections of gender, Race, and Nation.” Hypatia, vol.13, No.3, Border Crossings: Multicultural and Postcolonial Feminist Challenges to Philosopy (Summer, 1998), pp.62-82. http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2012/SAN237/um/HillCollins_Hypatia-_Intersections.pdf

6-“DEAR IJEAWELE, OR A FEMINIST MANIFESTO IN FIFTEEN SUGGESTIONS” By Chimamanda Adichie.

Library Research & Independent Reading Project: You are required to carry on library research in order to locate and/or borrow one book from the list bellow and identify THREE additional scholarly articles that pertain to the topic/argument. You may find some of these titles at UMD Library. Otherwise, you may also do an interlibrary loan. Books will be assigned via a lottery system in the classroom.

The following books have been selected for your independent project: Caroline Brettell We Have Already Cried Many Tears: Portuguese Women and Migration. Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Population and History in a Portuguese Parish.

Barston, Suzanne Bottled Up: How the Way we Feed Babies Has Come to Define Motherhood, and Why it Shouldn’t

Cooper, Marianne Cut Adrift: in Insecure Times.

Hirsh, Jennifer Courtship After : Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families.

Hoang, Kimberly Kay Hoang Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendency, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work

Weiner, Annette Women of Value, Men of Renown.

Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas.

Kathryn Edin (Author), Maria Kefalas (Author) Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage.

Sabine Frühstück (Editor), Anne Walthall (Editor)

2 Recreating Japanese Men.

Ashley Mears Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model.

C. J. Pascoe Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School.

Yuki Tanaka Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation.

Neville Wallace Hoad African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization.

Melissa T. Brown Enlisting Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in US Military Recruiting Advertising during the All-Volunteer Force.

Kathleen Gerson The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America

Lila Abu-Lughod Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin . Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories.

Sarah Lamb White Saris and Sweet Mangoes Aging, Gender, and Body in North India

Cameron Lynne Macdonald Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Micropolitics of Mothering.

Jeniffer Cole Love in Africa.

Amy T. Schalet Not Under My Roof.

Gayatri Reddy Negotiating Identity in South India.

3 Hooks, Bell Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.

Sara Richardson Sex Itself.

Khiara M. Bridges Reproducing Race: An of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization.

Davies, S.J.

Challenging gender norms: Five genders among Bugis in Indonesia.

Collins, Patricia Hill

Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism.

Collins, Patricia Hill

Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (Contradictions of Modernity)

Gotliebe, Alma

The Afterlife is where We Come From: The of Infancy in West Africa

Mead, Margaret

Coming of Age in Samoa

Sacks, Karen Sisters and wives: The past and future of sexual equality. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.

Strathern, Marilyn The gender of the gift: Problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Weiner, Annette Women of value, men of renown: New perspectives in Trobriand exchange. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.

Kendall, Laurel Getting Married in Korea: of gender, morality, and modernity.

4 Sanday, Peggy Reeves Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriachy.

Shih, Chuan-Kang Quest for Harmony: The Moso Traditions of Sexual Union & Family Life.

Daigle, Megan D. From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-first Century.

Teman, Elly Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self.

Jarrin, Alvaro The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil.

Additional Articles: Throughout the course, additional reading material may be delivered in class and added to your reading load for the week. If you miss class, you are responsible for copying the missed material from one of your fellow students.

IV. Written & Oral Assignments:______Note: You will receive detailed descriptions of assignments in separate class handouts. If you miss class, it is your responsibility to obtain all handouts from your colleagues. I will not send any assignments/handouts via e-mail.

1-Participation, attendance, homework………………………………………... (10 points) 2-Coming of age, Self-ethnography…………………………………………… (20 points) 3- Midterm Test ……………………………………. ………………………………… (20 points) 4- Essay on Vita………………………………… ……………………………..(20 points) 5- Research Projects ……………………………………………………………(30 points)

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