Summer 2005
Session I
MTWR 1-2:35 Kellogg (dkellogg@sas)
T R 6-8:50 Richard Hock shock@sas.upenn.edu
Cross List: FILM-208
In recent decades, the study of film has provided rich opportunities for understanding constructions of gender identities. Film theorists have done important work in illuminating the ways in which an industry dominated by male directors and geared towards male audiences has constructed sexualized, even fetishized, images of women as objects of male desire and the male gaze. This course will examine a variety of films to investigate the ways that cinema has addressed questions of gender, especially the construction of images of women. We will begin by studying films by Josef von Sternberg and Alfred Hitchcock that demonstrate the subjection of women to the gaze of the male director and spectator. We will then examine films by a number of men and women – including directors such as Dorothy Arzner, Kathryn Bigelow, Lizzie Borden, Jane Campion, Niki Caro, Gurinder Chadha, Jonathan Demme, Darnell Martin, Sally Potter, and Tom Tykwer – to understand ways in which these films challenge or reinforce the conventions of representations of women in film. Films screened may include Blonde Venus, Christopher Strong, Vertigo, Working Girls, The Silence of the Lambs, Orlando, The Piano, I Like It like That, Strange Days, Run Lola Run, Bend It like Beckham, and Whale Rider. Criticism read will include texts by authors such as Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Mary Ann Doane, Jane Gaines, Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, and Janet Staiger.
TR 1-4 Hall
Cross List: EDUC-235
Critical analyses of the psychological theories of female development, and introduction to feminist scholarship on gender development.
MW 10:30-1
Session II
MW
Cross List: BIOL-008
This course will discuss human reproduction,
including anatomy, physiology, hormonal control, genetics, development,
infertility, contraception, sexual behavior, sexually transmitted diseases such
as AIDS, and relevant basic molecular and cellular biology. In addition, this course will discuss sex
differences and similarities in health and mortality, including relevant basic
biology of the cardiovascular system and cancer.
WSTD -226-920 The Novel of Manners Tradition
T R
Cross List: ENGL-260
The traditional heroine-centered novel can be faulted, I suppose, for persuading susceptible readers to look at their own lives as if they were novels.
--Rachel Brownstein
This course examines the role and
formation of heroines, as characters and readers, in what is known as the novel
of manners tradition. Best embodied by the works of Jane Austen, Henry James,
and Edith Wharton, the novel of manners lies between two extremes. Concerned
with decoding society’s customs, dress, and private conduct, it occupies a
middle ground between courtly romance and cynical anti-romantic fiction. The
last decade has witnessed a major revival of this tradition in the form of film
adaptations and the popular fiction subgenre “chick lit,” exemplified by
international bestsellers Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City and Helen
Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. The course enables us to evaluate the
achievements of these perennial and new classics as well as to pinpoint how
novel writing is a way of creating, not just reporting, what Nancy Bentley has
termed “the governing fictions of culture.” We will work together in particular
to decode the ways in which these works depict male-female relations, romantic
love, and courtship. Writing assignments are varied but will focus on
constructing an effective argument and crafting individual style. Course not
only surveys the history of a major literary genre, but also offers an
introduction to key themes and issues in gender studies. Class participation
and preparation will comprise 30% of the final grade.