FG219
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Gendered Controversies
Course Subject Code
FG
Course Number
219
Course Long Title
Gendered Controversies
Status
Active
Division
Non-Divisional
Department
Unit(s)
0.5
Unit(s) Max
1
Schedule Type
Block Seminar, Extended Format
Instruction Mode
Traditional, Traditional
Grade Modes
Letter Grades, S/CR/NC, Audit
Course Attributes
CPG, EPG
Course Description
Introduces students to a transnational feminist approach by critically analyzing gendered controversies from different historical-political conjunctures and parts of the world. Examples might include debates on Sati (widow immolation) in colonial India, so-called honor-killings in the Middle East, foot-binding in China, female circumcision in Sub-Saharan Africa, veiling and the practices of Muslim parents (such as exempting their children from co-ed swimming and/or gym classes) in contemporary Europe, and gender-testing in the Olympics. Among the questions that this course will ask: What gendered practices tend to elicit public outrage? What kinds of power relations does this outrage both depend on and enable? Which bodies tend to become the objects of moral panic? What anxieties are articulated, projected and displaced through these controversies? And what can we learn about modernity, colonialism, multiculturalism, feminism, humanitarianism, and power by analyzing the politics of such gendered controversies from a critical transnational feminist perspective?