9/6 Course Syllabus & Introductions
9/8 What is Identity?
READ: Chris Weedon, “Chapter 1: Subjectivity and Identity,” from Identity and Culture: Narratives of Difference and Belonging.
9/13 How We See and Look (at Identity)
READ: Sherry Turkle (ed.), “Introduction: The Things that Matter,” in Evocative Objects: Things We Think With.
9/15 How We See and Look (at Identity)
READ: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Why Do We Stare?” and “What is Staring?” and “Chapter 6: Regulating Our Looks,” from Staring: How We Look.
- (background) Nicholas Mirzoeff, “How to See Yourself,” from How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More, 29-70.
- (background) T. Benjamin Singer. “From the Medical Gaze to Sublime Mutations: The Ethics of (Re)Viewing Non-Normative Body Images,” in Stryker & Whittle, The Transgender Studies Reader (2nd ed).
9/20 Looking at the Construction of Gender
SCREEN: No Dumb Questions (Regan, 2001, 24’)
READ: Judith Lorber, “The Social Construction of Gender.”
- (background) Linda Alcoff, “Introduction: Identity and Visibility,” from Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, 5-10.
9/22 Looking at the Construction of Gender
READ: Sigmund Freud, “Femininity.”
Questions/Prompts to consider:
- Freud begins his lecture by addressing his audience as “ladies and gentlemen,” but why does he go on to say “to those of you who are women this will not apply—you are yourselves the problem” (113)? Or, in different words, why are women “the problem” Freud has decided to address?
- While Freud’s lecture is about femininity, is he primarily writing about gender or sex? (Be sure to support your selection.)
- Freud states: “It seems that women have made few contributions to the discoveries and inventions in the history of civilization; there is, however, one technique which they have invented—that of plaiting and weaving” (132). What is this invention? Why does Freud suggest this invention is culturally significant (especially for women)?
9/27 Looking at Women & Femininity
READ: E. Ann Kaplan, “Is the Gaze Male?”
- (optional) Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”
- (background) Kaja Silverman, “Male Subjectivity and the Celestial Suture.”
- (background) Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.”
9/29 Looking at Men & Masculinity
READ: Susan Bordo, “Reading the Male Body.”
- (background) Steven Cohan, “Tough Guys Make the Best Psychopaths.”
- (background) Steve Neale, “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema.”
10/4 Looking at the Construction of Gender
DUE: Topic Paper #1
10/6 Looking at the Construction of Race/Whiteness
CLIPS: Suture (McGehee & Siegel, 2003, 96′)
READ: Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness.”
- (background) Linda Alcoff, “Chapter 8: Racism and Visible Race,” from Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self.
- (background) Richard Dyer, “White.”
- (background) Jane Gaines, “White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory.”
- (optional) Stuart Hall, “The Whites of Their Eyes” in Dines & Humez, fourth edition.
- (background) Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
10/11 Looking at the Construction of Race/Blackness
VIEW(outside of class): Precious: Based On the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire (Daniels, 2009, 109’) The film is available to rent/buy on Amazon and iTunes.
READ: Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness,” from Black Skin/White Masks
- (background) Manthia Diawara, “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance.”
- (background) Alessandra Raengo, On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value.
10/13 Looking at Sexual Bodies
SCREEN: Blow Job (Warhol, 1964, 27’) ; Removed (Uman, 1999, 7’)
READ: Ara Osterweil. “Andy Warhol’s Blow Job: Toward the Recognition of a Pornographic Avant-garde,” in Linda Williams(ed.) Porn Studies, 431-460.
- (optional) Jane Caputi, “The Pornography of Everyday Life,” in Dines & Humez, fourth edition.
10/18 Seeing Beyond Binaries: Gender Performativity & Sexual Orientation
READ: Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.”
DISCUSS: Martin Rochlin, “The Heterosexual Questionnaire”
Questions/Prompts to consider:
- Butler uses the phrase “a provisional totalization of this ‘I'” in reference to herself. Why is the “I” provisional/temporary; or, why does she suggest we can’t use “I” as a personal pronoun in a totalizing, determined way?
- Butler suggests that “heterosexuality…is always and only an imitation of an imitation, a copy of a copy, for which there is no original” What does Butler mean by arguing heterosexuality operates as a “copy” without an “original”?
- What does Butler mean when she uses the term “repetition” to describe gendered behavior (and the performance of gender)?
10/20 Seeing Beyond Binaries: HIV/AIDS & Virality
READ:
- Susan Sontag, “AIDS and its Metaphors,” in Davis (Ed.), The Disability Studies Reader, 153-157.
- Akira Lippit, “Out of the Blue (Ex Nihilo),” from Ex-Cinema: from a Theory of Experimental Film and Video, 15-37.
- (background) Nicholas Mirzoeff, “Blindness and Art,” in Davis (Ed.), The Disability Studies Reader.
10/25 Seeing Beyond Binaries: Queerness
READ: Nikki Sullivan, “Queer: A Question of Being or a Question of Doing?” in Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.
- (optional) Nikki Sullivan, “The Social Construction of Same-Sex Desire: Sin, Crime, Sickness,” in Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.
10/27 Seeing Beyond Binaries: Transgender/Transexuality
VIEW: Her Story (Freeland, 2016)
11/1 Seeing (Digital) Identities
READ:
- Douglas Rushkoff, “Identity: Be Yourself,” from Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, 79-89.
- danah boyd, “Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle,” from Mandiberg (Ed.), The Social Media Reader, 71-76.
- (background) Nancy K. Baym, “‘I Think of Them As Friends’: Interpersonal Relationships in the Online Community.”
- (background) danah boyd, It’s complicated: the social lives of networked teens.
- (background) Sherry Turkle, “Chapter 7: Aspects of the Self,” & “Chapter 10: Identity Crisis,” from Life on Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 177-209 and 255-269.
- (background) The Conversation Prism
11/3 Transitions and Transformations of (Digital) Relationships
READ:
- McClelland, “12 Tales of Getting it On in the Digital Age,” Wired Magazine, March 2015
- Honan, “Your D**k Pics Are About to be All Over the Internet,” Wired Magazine, March 2015
- McGowan, “Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex,” Wired Magazine, March 2015.
- Rubin, “Virtual Reality Porn is Coming,” Wired Magazine, March 2015.
11/8 Transitions and Transformations of (Digital) Relationships
DISCUSS: OKCupid Case Study (Website Discourse Analysis / “Affordances”)
READ: Dale Markowitz, “Kink is More Popular Than You Think,” OKCupid, April 2017
- (background) Christian Rudder, Dataclysm: Who We Are* (*When We Think No One’s Looking).
11/10 NO CLASS
11/15 Beyond Binaries of Race & Sexuality
DUE: Topic Paper #2
11/17 Visualizing Identity — Assignment Workshop
11/22-11/24 NO CLASS — Thanksgiving Break
11/29 Transitions and Transformations of (Digital) Relationships
READ: Michael Cobb, “Introduction: Bitter Table for One,” from Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled.
12/1 Identities in Crisis: The “Non-Human” as a Challenge to Human Subjectivity and Identity.
SCREEN: Air Doll (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2009, 125’)
READ: Kristopher L. Cannon, “Ec-Static Air: The Unseeable Sounds of Being Beside Oneself.”
12/6 Identities in Crisis: The “Non-Human” as a Challenge to Human Subjectivity and Identity.
SCREEN: Air Doll (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2009, 125’)
12/8 Visualizing Identity Assignment Due
DUE: Visualizing Identity Assignment (submitted on Blackboard by 5:00pm)