Instructor: Bilinda Straight

Office: 1001 Moore Hall

Office Hours: Mon 3:30-4:30p.m., Wed 3-4p.m., and by appmnt

Email: Bilinda DOT Straight AT wmich.edu

Website: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~bstraigh

ANTH 3480: Gender and Plastic Bodies

Course description

In U.S. society we tend to assume that there are two sexes—male and female. Even if we have learned that gender roles can change, as in expecting men to be more nurturing while more and more women pursue careers for example, we tend to accept that this is simply social change based on natural sexes. In this course we will focus on the United States with some cross-cultural comparisons in order to question this assumption of “natural” sexes as we explore physiological variations as they are culturally interpreted and understood and cultural interventions of “natural” sex. Thus, based on work in our own society and cross-culturally, we will focus our attention at and beyond the limits of sex and gender, examining: (1) the ways in which human societies interpret physiological variation; (2) transgender experiences and categories as they vary cross-culturally; (3) and the role of technology in (re)shaping the “natural” sexes. Whether we are considering cyborg bodies, virtual bodies, tattooed and pierced bodies, or bodies surgically altered in a stunning variety of ways, we will be asking what is “natural” and “unnatural” about the assumed biological categories of male and female.

Course Texts are available at the campus bookstore or from online vendors like amazon.com or half.com.

1. Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000). Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.

2. Alice Domurat Dreger (2000). Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex.

3. Serena Nanda (1998). Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India.

4. Susan Stryker, Stephen Whittle (eds.) 2006. The Transgender Studies Reader.

Other Readings are available on library e-reserve OR as full-text online articles at <www.wmich.edu/library>, where you can download them for free and print them out.

The course password for e-reserve is: plastic

Course Requirements:

Participation:

q Regular attendance and preparation prior to each class session

q Participation in class discussions

Assignments:

q Weekly Discussion Board posting to course in response to readings via e-learning (Blackboard) and response to another student’s posting.

q Small Assignments

q Final Research Project (paper or website)

Explanation of assignments:

Reading assignments

All readings must be completed before completing discussion board postings (due Monday) and coming to class. It is highly recommend that you annotate and/or write notes on each week’s readings, which you will need to bring to each class.

Blackboard Discussion Board Posting and Response (30% of grade)

You must post a thoughtful, concise one-paragraph response to the readings on the Blackboard Discussion Board each week. This must be posted by Monday. Your posting should reflect synthesized consideration of the week’s readings. You must also read other students’ postings and respond to at least one by 3PM Tuesday.

Assignments (20 % of grade)

Attendance will not be taken but there will be occasional in-class assignments that you must complete for credit. Attending the library and other workshops will also count as assignments, as will turning in your research project topic and source list.

Final Research Project Peer-Reviewed Draft (15% of grade)

Final Research Project (35 % of grade)

Your final product can be a research paper or website/multimedia presentation. Research papers should be 5-7 pages in length and should cite at least 4 course readings in addition to at least five external sources. Web pages and multimedia presentations must also cite the same number and type of sources, provide a bibliography at the end, and demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the topic chosen. All sources must be scholarly books or articles.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Introduction to the course

Week One (No reading)

Defining Sex and Gender

Week Two

Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body:

Ch 1: Dueling Dualisms and Ch 2: “That Sexe Which Prevaileth”

Bilinda Straight. 2006. Excerpt from Chapter 3.

Week Three

Transgender Studies Reader (TSR):

Ch 1: (De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Subjects (by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle) & Ch 13: Toward a Theory of Gender (by Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna)

Sexing Bodies

Week Four

Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body:

Ch 4: Should There Be Only Two Sexes, Ch 6: Sex Glands, Hormones, and Gender Chemistry,

Ch 9: Gender Systems: Toward a Theory of Human Sexuality

Week Five

Library Day

Week Six

Dreger’s Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex:

Prologue: “But My Good Woman, You are a Man!”, Ch 1: Doubtful Sex, and 3: In Search of the Veritable Vulva (but the whole book is recommended)

Genital Surgeries for Ideal Categories: Desire and Anti-Desire Meet Plastic.

Week Seven: All four readings are recommended but you may choose to read any 3 of the 4.

Simone Weil Davis (2002). Loose Lips Sink Ships. Feminist Studies 28(1): 7-35.

Kirsten Bell (2005). Genital Cutting and Western Discourses on Sexuality. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series 19(2): 125-148.

Robert Darby (2005). A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain: Ch 1: “Introduction: The Willful Organ Meets Fantasy Surgery” and Ch 2: “The Best of Your Property: What a Boy Once Knew About Sex”) (Pp. 3-43).

Fuambai Ahmadu (2007). “Ain’t I a Woman Too?”: Challenging Myths of Sexual Dysfunction in Circumcised Women. Pp. 278-310 In Ylva Hernlund and Bettina Shell-Duncan (eds.) Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context.

Sensuous Alterations

Week Eight

Susan Bordo (1993). Material Girl: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture. Pp. 245-275 in Bordo’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.

Anne Balsamo (1995). On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and New Imaging Technologies. Pp. 56-79 In Balsamo’s Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women.

Faiz Ansari (2007). Penis Enhancement Surgery: A Self Help Guide for Men. Excerpt: Pp. 1-11; 51-59.

Week Nine

Victoria Pitts (2003). Cyberpunk, Biomedicine, and the High-Tech Body. Pp. 151-184 In Pitts’ In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification.

Gabriela Sandoval (2006). Cutting Through Race and Class: Women of Color and Self-Injury. Pp. 85-88 In Nancy Chen and Helene Moglen (eds.) Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations. (3 pages)

Virginia Blum (2006). Love My Neighbor, Hate Myself: The Vicissitudes of Affect in Cosmetic Surgery. Pp. 47-53 In Nancy Chen and Helene Moglen (eds.) Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations. (6 pages)

Troubling the Categories: Experience and Transgender

Week Ten

TSR: Ch 10: Sappho by Surgery: the Transsexually Constructed Lesbian-Feminist (by Janice G. Raymond);

14: Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Sexuality (by Judith Butler); and

20: Judith Butler: Queer Feminism, Transgender, and the Transubstantiation of Sex (by Jay Prossser)

Week Eleven

Serena Nanda (1998). Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India.

Recommended: Hausman, B.L. (2001). Recent Transgender Theory. Feminist Studies 27(2): 465-490.

Week Twelve

TSR Ch 45: Selections from The Chic of Araby: Transvestisms and the Erotics of Cultural Appropriation (by Marjorie Garber);

47: Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the “Third Gender” Concept (by Evan B. Towle and Lynn M. Morgan); and 49: Whose Feminism is it Anyway? The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate (by Emi Koyama)

Sculpting Transgender

Week Thirteen

Jay Prosser (1998). A Skin of One’s Own: Toward a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment. Pp.61-98 In Prosser’s Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality.

TSR: Ch 24: Body, Technology, and gender in Transsexual Autobiographies (by Bernice L. Hausman); Ch 28: Bodies in Motion: Lesbian and Transsexual Histories (by Nan Alamilla Boyd)

Week Fourteen

TSR: Ch 31: Gender Without Genitals: Hedwig’s Six Inches (by Jordy Jones)

Laurie Essig. Plasticity: On the Queer Uses of Plastic Surgery. Unpublished ms in progress.