Gender, Culture, and Society
Fall 2007 Undergraduate Courses
GSOC-002-001 GENDER AND SOCIETY
TR 10:30-12 Glaser (jglaser@sas.upenn.edu)
Society Sector
This course examines the impact of sex and gender roles on contemporary American society. Differentiation by sex is the central organizing principle of nearly every human society. How can we understand the relationship between biological sex and socially constructed gender? How do maleness and femaleness affect the balance of power and resources in our society? How much has changed since the beginning of the Women's Movement of the 1960s? The course will examine key issues of gender difference and inequality including family life, paid work, economic status, violence, body image, sexuality, and reproduction. The course will examine men's roles and women's roles, treating gender as an interactive and dynamic concept.
GSOC-002-601 GENDER AND SOCIETY
W 6-9 Gallon (kgallon@sas.upenn.edu)
Society Sector
This course examines the impact of sex and gender roles on contemporary American society. Differentiation by sex is the central organizing principle of nearly every human society. How can we understand the relationship between biological sex and socially constructed gender? How do maleness and femaleness affect the balance of power and resources in our society? How much has changed since the beginning of the Women's Movement of the 1960s? The course will examine key issues of gender difference and inequality including family life, paid work, economic status, violence, body image, sexuality, and reproduction. The course will examine men's roles and women's roles, treating gender as an interactive and dynamic concept.
GSOC-004-401 THE FAMILY
MW 2-3 Staff
Recitation
402 F 2-3
403 F 12-1
404 M 3-4
405 W 4-5
Cross Listed: SOCI-004
Society Sector
Fulfills College Quantitative Data Analysis Requirement
Historical and cultural development of the family, analysis of sexual codes; discussion of role differences between men and women; factors involved in mate selection and marital adjustment, analysis of family disorganization with both individual and societal implications.
GSOC-006-401 THE POLITICS OF SEX AND SCIENCE IN MODERN AMERICA
M 2-5 Burnett (pburnett@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HSOC/STSC 008
Want to work on your public speaking skills? You will have a hard time keeping quiet in a critical speaking course about sex and science. We will examine how scientific research has influenced common conceptions of sex differences and sexual behavior during the last century, and how this knowledge in turn has shaped cultural conceptions of gender roles and “normal” behavior. Students will discuss, debate, and deliver formal presentations about these questions as we examine moments from the history of psychiatry, sexology, ethnology, anthropology, endocrinology, genetics, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and neuro-endocrinology.
GSOC-016-301 AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS AND
TR 9-10:30 FILMMAKERS
Tillet
Cross-Listed: AFRC/CINE/ENGL-016,
Freshmen Seminar
Distribution Course Arts and Letters, Class of ’09 and prior
GSOC-055-401 19TH CENTURY NOVEL
TR 12-1:30 Auerbach (nauerbac@english.upenn.edu)
Cross-Listed: ENGL-055
Distribution Course Arts and Letters, Class of ’09 and prior
We will study the evolution of the nineteenth-century novel as it moves from Jane Austen's pastorals to the ruder ones of Thomas Hardy, exploring ways in which the novel at once reflects, soothes, and exacerbates the unspoken tensions within its culture. We will trace the disruptive pressure of increasingly powerful women and the intensifying pull of the past, which becomes more difficult to resist as modernity takes shape. Novels we shall read include Jane Austen's Emma, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Dickens' Bleak House, and Hardy’s Return of the Native. Each student will write a midterm and a final exam. There will also be an optional paper focusing on a nineteenth-century novel of your choice beyond the syllabus.
GSOC-090-401 GENDER,SEXUALITY&LITERATURE: SPECTACLES OF PUNISHED WOMEN
TR 3-4:30 Auerbach (nauerbac@english.upenn.edu)
Cross-Listed: ENGL/COML-090
Distribution Course Arts and Letters, Class of ’09 and prior
Popular culture has always enjoyed punishing women, but audience attitude to that punishment depends on our times, our gender and class, and to a degree this course will examine on the genre of the work. We will examine punished women in literature and film of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the questions we shall consider are the relation between punishment and the work's ideology of justice, the degree to which we are urged to enjoy a woman's punishment or protest against it, turning punishment into an inducement to social change. We shall read works by both women and men, analyzing their possibly different treatments of punishment. Among them are Jane Austen, EMMA; Dickens, OLIVER TWIST, Ellen Wood, EAST LYNNE; and Tennyson, IDYLLS OF THE KING. Films will include BROKEN BLOSSOM, PSYCHO, and FATAL ATTRACTION. Each student will write a midterm and a final exam. There will also be an optional paper focusing on a nineteenth-century novel of your choice beyond the syllabus.
GSOC-096-401 THEORIES OF GENDER & SEXUALITY
MWF 10-11 Heffernan(laurah@english.upenn.edu)
Cross-Listed: ENGL-096
Distribution Course Arts and Letters, Class of ’09 and prior
Do literary and visual representations of gender and sexuality effect how we experience our own genders and sexualities? What can literature teach us about identity? Does the literary canon privilege masculine aesthetics? Is there a female canon? A gay canon? This course is designed to introduce students to literary theories of gender and sexuality, as well as to critical frameworks for talking about representations of gender and sexuality in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and contemporary media. We will begin with the present, looking at questions of identity and representation in contemporary media (TV, movies, magazines, and advertisements). We will then consider theoretical questions of gender and sexuality posed within the literary canon and outside of it. Course readings may include work by theorists such as Eve Sedgwick, Nancy Armstrong, Rita Felski, Peggy Kamuf, and Barbara Johnson, as well as novels by Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, and Hilary Mantel.
GSOC -105-401 TOPICS: Queer Politics, Queer Communities
TR 12-1:30 Love (loveh@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: COML-106/ENGL-105
What is sexuality? Does it exist in the body or in the mind? Is it a collection of actions, desires, and fantasies, or is it rather a disposition, a way of seeing oneself, an identity? Does what we want depend on who we are? Does what we do /define/ who we are? This course will address such questions by introducing students to several classic texts in the history and theory of sexuality and by looking at key moments in the struggle for sexual and gender freedom. The history we trace will focus on the effects of the “invention of homosexuality” in the late-nineteenth century; the history of butch/femme community; the cultural moment of Stonewall and gay liberation; the “Sex Wars” of the 1980s; women of color and queer of color critiques; responses to HIV/AIDS; and the emergence of the transgender rights movement. The course will end with a turn to contemporary debates about the meaning of “queer,” same-sex marriage, the politics of emotion, commodification, and gay normalization.
GSOC-108-601 WOMEN AND HEALTH IN SOUTH ASIA
M 5:30-8:30 Roy (divya@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HSOC-109/SAST-230
Distribution Course Society, class of 09 and prior
Drawing upon theoretical and empirical evidence, the course uses a socio-medical approach for understanding the health status and health behaviors of women in South Asia. We will consider the following issues: gender as a crucial explanatory variable of women’s survival experience; the burden of disease; nutritional status; and access to and utilization of health services. Girls and women face health and disease problems over their life course related to nutrition needs, reproductive health, work conditions, as well as to infectious and chronic disease. This course places the experience of women’s health in South Asia in contemporary, historic and comparative frameworks. Lectures, discussion and assignments provide entry to greater understanding of both the specialized nature of South Asian women’s health problems, as well as those common to women worldwide.
GSOC-118-401 IRAN CINEMA: GENDER, POLITICS, RELIGION
MW 2-3:30 Minuchehr (pardis@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: COML/NELC/CINE-118
Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema has gained exceptional international reception in the past two decades. In most major national and international festivals, Iranian films have taken numerous prizes for their outstanding representation of life and society, and their courage in defying censorship barriers. In this course, we will examine the distinct characteristics of the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Discussion will revolve around themes such as gender politics, family relationships and women's social, economic and political roles, as well as the levels of representation and criticism of modern Iran's political and religious structure within the current boundaries. There will be a total of 12 films shown and will include works by Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Beizai, Milani, Bani-Etemad and Panahi, among others.
WSTD-122-401 SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER
TR 10:30-12 Roth (silkerot@ssc)
Cross Listed: SOCI-122
Society Sector
The assignment of gender roles and the construction of gender identities has profound consequences for women and men at every level of society: from their intimate relations, how they manage and participate in the institutions of society, their place in society's stratification systems. This course examines four aspects of gender relations: historical and cross-cultural examples of gender roles; gender relations in contemporary American institutions; theories of sex differences and gender inequality; and movements and policies for gender equality. Some specific topics to be covered are: Women and the economy, women and the professions, working class women, changing male identities, the nature of male power, and the women's liberation movements
GSOC-149-301 WOMEN, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND THE LAW
T 1:30-4:30 Tracy (ctracy@lawproject.org )
This course will examine how statutory law, court decisions and other forms of social policy, encourage or discourage various forms of sexuality, reproduction and parenting. Such issues as contraception, abortion, gay and lesbian rights, reproductive technology, family violence, and welfare and family policies will be covered.
GSOC-170-401 THE AMERICAN SOUTH
MW 11-12 McCurry (smccurry@sas.upenn.edu )
Recitation
F 11-12
F 12-1
R 12-1
Cross Listed: AFRC-172/HIST-170
Distribution Course History & Tradition
This course explores the history of the American South, from its formation and rise as a slave power in the Atlantic world in the seventeenth century, to the definitive defeat of the slaveholders' republic in the American Civil War. As such, the course engages a range of critical subjects in southern and American history: the Atlantic slave trade; the emergence of slavery, the plantation system and the racial order associated with it; the development of African-American life under slavery; the particular relationship between masters and slaves in the antebellum period; the changing gender and class relations of southern society; the defense of slavery; and the unpredictable political road to secession. The course ends by focusing on the Confederate political project and its undoing in the course of the nation's bloodiest war.
GSOC-199 INDEPENDENT STUDY
Arranged Kurz (dkurz@sas.upenn.edu)
Permission needed from department.
GSOC-213-401 INDIAN CINEMA & SOCIETY
TR 10:30-12 Majithia (majithia@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: CINE-215/SAST-213/SAST-513
Society Sector
This course provides a historical and thematic introduction to the variety of films that constitute a “national” cinema of “India,” with a particular focus on Hindi popular cinema. We will begin by considering the cultural backgrounds of Hindi cinema, including the translation of traditional forms through modern technology such as the mythological, and move on to exploring in the post-independence context: the genres of the national epic, the courtesan film, the historical, parallel film, the social, the masala, and the romance. We will also consider the relationship between particular regional cinemas and Bollywood. Finally, we will conclude by examining Hindi cinema within the context of globalization and changes that distribution, marketing, and thematic shifts herald by considering the roles that the diaspora, neo-liberal economic policy, consumerism, and trans-nationalism play in producing new genres such as Bombay noir and the new wave. Three themes will organize our study: the nation, the public, and gender, particularly as it is constitutive of the previous two. Our study will expose is to various theories of the study of culture but will emphasize methods which will fall under the rubric of cultural studies. By the end of this course, students should be able to write and analyze film critically and consider its role in relation to other contexts such as society.
GSOC-220-401 OUT/SIDE BLACKNESS
W 2-5 Brockenbrough (edbrocke@dolphin.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: AFRC-220
The goal of “Out/Side Blackness” is to explore the origins and effects of contemporary constructions of black queerness in America. Central to the course is an understanding of black queer bodies as targets of multiple systems of domination, thus producing black queerness as a consequential form of difference in contemporary American culture; and a recognition of black queer subjectivity as the confluence of myriad identities and experiences, thus precluding any single master narrative of black queer life, black queer consciousness, or black queer progress. Presented as an introduction to the burgeoning field of Black Queer Studies, Out/side Blackness employs the theoretical frameworks of this intellectual discourse to shed new light on, and raise new questions about, the presence of black queers in America.
GSOC-221-401 CHIVALRY & ROMANCE
TR 3-4:30 Wallace (dwallace@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: ENGL-222
Medieval romance has been a highly influential literary genre. Young men, over centuries, have been encouraged to go to war to prove their martial prowess; still today the US Marines employ chivalric imagery in looking for, the few, worthy to serve. Women, in romance, might find themselves worshipped as a domina: a position that was far from passive, since the knight might (again) be commanded to prove his worth. Indeed, a great knight such as Lancelot might be commanded by any damsel to serve her interests because he is Lancelot: who wields the power in this situation? Women might also learn and eventually monopolize the kinds of magical powers associated with Merlin; Morgan la Fay becomes Arthur’s great adversary; women sail off into the sunset when the Round Table is destroyed.
This advanced seminar offers the opportunity to follow the evolution of a specific genre and body of tales, Arthurian romance, in particular detail. We begin with Chrétien de Troyes, the great founding genius of the romance genre, who tells of Lancelot’s comical and disastrous loving of Guinevere; he also invents the Grail Quest. Next comes Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a text that adapts the Arthur myth to suit the new Anglo-Norman overlords of England (while telling tales that Shakespeare will later develop, such as King Lear and Cymbeline). We then consider the extremely violent alliterative Morte, a text sees Arthur become an imperial figure as he fights pagans and giants to become Emperor of Rome. All this leads to the core text of our course, Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur. Written by a professional soldier who was active in the English civil conflicts of the fifteenth century, the Wars of the Roses, the Morte is one of the greatest and most pleasurable of all English texts. We will follow Arthur’s career from his early acquisition of the Round Table to its final destruction. We will see a society grappling with the dilemma that its greatest knight, the figure upon all hope and safety depends, is also cuckolding the king as his queen’s lover. We will also trace the fortunes of other great figures such as Tristram, Gawain, Gareth (kitchen boy made good), Nineveh (who supplants Merlin), Morgan La Fay, and the Fair Maid of Astolat. We will also see how Arthurian legend has been treated in film, from the work of Eric Rohmer to John Boorman’s Excalibur; and what about Spamalot?
This course offers the kind of satisfactions that you will only have opportunity or time for at Penn: to get to know ancient material in detail that, week by week, accumulates to provide a complex and detailed view of a fascinating fictional subject. Most of the material will be read in the original Middle English. Class assignments will thus be shorter than in a novel class; help will be given; no previous experience required. Once all the faint-hearts and chancers have dropped away, by about week two, we should have a tight-knit and supportive seminar that allows everyone to produce their best work. Assessment will be by one shorter essay and one longer one (with research component).
GSOC-235-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN
T 4-7 Staff
Cross Listed: EDUC-235
Critical analyses of the psychological theories of female development, and introduction to feminist scholarship on gender development.
GSOC-252-401 FREUD
TR 10:30-12 Weissberg (lweissbe@sas.upenn.edu)
Recitation
402 F 10-11
403 F 10-11
404 F 11-12
405 F 11-12
406 F 12-1
407 F 12-1
408 F 1-2
Cross Listed: COML/GRMN/HSOC/STSC-253
Human & Society Science Sector (New Curriculum Only)
No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will try to study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lecturers from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humanities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.
GSOC-274-401 SOUTHERN WOMEN WRITERS:
GENDERED BODIES, RACIAL SUBJECTS
TR 10:30-12 Davis (davistm@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: ENGL-264
What conclusions do we reach about the South when we read nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings in which southern women portray race and gender as well as region? We will examine some of the constructions of “the South” in the production of gender- and race-specific fictions and some of the connections among women writers in their representations of gendered bodies and racial subjects. Our examination will include, for example, attention both to “whiteness” and “blackness” as constructed categories within Southern literature, and to gender and sexuality as categories of analysis in texts selected from Dorothy Allison, Kate Chopin, Anna Julia Cooper, Kaye Gibbons, Lillian Hellman, Beth Henley, Zora Neale Hurston, Carson McCullers, Margaret Mitchell, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Alice Randall, Dori Sanders, Evelyn Scott, Lee Smith, Lillian Smith, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, and Shay Youngblood.
GSOC-280-401 FEMINIST POLITICAL THOUGHT
TR 10:30-12 Hirschmann (njh@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: PSCI-280
Society Sector
This course is designed to provide an overview of the variety of ideas, approaches, and sub-fields within feminist political thought. Readings are divided into three sections, each representing one of the three major “kinds” of feminist theory that the discipline of Political Science engages in. The first is contemporary feminist theorizing about the meaning and status of “feminism” itself and what is feminism about? What approaches are best? What values and ideas are central to the meaning of the term “woman?” How do race, class, and sexuality intersect with "gender"? Once these terms are introduced, the second section focuses on women in the history of Western political thought; what is the historical basis for the ideas we discussed in Section I? The third section is on feminist approaches to practical political problems and issues, including abortion, domestic violence, cultural difference, and sexual harassment; what can feminist theory contribute to the lived conditions of women’s lives?
GSOC-290-401 BRITISH FICTION BY WOMEN, 1985-PRESENT
TR 3:30-5 Harzewski (sharzews@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: ENG/THAR-290
Distribution Course Arts and Letters, Class of ’09 and prior
In a paraphrase of the heroine of Muriel Spark’s novel Loitering with Intent, Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), writes, “I went about my way rejoicing, thinking how wonderful it is to be a woman and a writer at the end of the twentieth century.” In this spirit, this seminar surveys acclaimed female voices in late twentieth-century and contemporary British fiction. We will focus in particular on these recent authors’ formulation of the Bildungsroman (novel of education), representations of sexual identity, and the dynamics of power in marriage and intimate relationships. We will also explore how these artists craft the acts of writing and the interpretation of narrative. Authors and texts may include A.S. Byatt (Possession), Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit), Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies), Janice Galloway (The Trick Is to Keep Breathing), Zadie Smith (On Beauty), Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones’s Diary), Penelope Fitzgerald (The Blue Flower), Rachel Cusk (Saving Agnes), Penelope Lively (Moon Tiger), and Anita Brookner (Hotel du Lac). Besides consistent active contributions to discussion, assignments will include a class presentation, a short paper early in the semester, and a long essay (12+ pgs.) at the end of term. No midterm or final exam.
GSOC-290-601 MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS TOGETHER AND APART: MYTH, THEORY AND LITERATURE
W 5:30-8:30 Glaser (jglaser@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: ENGL-290-601
Distribution Course Arts and Letters, Class of ’09 and prior
Oscar Wilde once wrote that all women eventually turn into their mothers, and that was our tragedy. But need the relationship between mother and daughter be tragic? The romance as well as the antagonisms between mothers and daughters has been beautifully addressed by some of the best writers of our time! In this course, we'll be examining the ways in which writers have represented the relationships between mothers, who are also daughters, and daughters, who see a possible future in their mothers. How does this first relationship inform what it means to be a woman? We'll start by examining a few influential myths regarding mothers and daughters: the stories of Persephone and Demeter, Snow White and her (step) mother, and Clytemnestra, Iphigeneia, and Electra. We'll then read contemporary literature alongside the work of feminist psychoanalytic theorists such as Nancy Chodorow and Luce Irigaray in order to gain an understanding of the complexity of these relationships. Writers may include: Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Rita Dove, Edith Wharton, Kirsty Gunn, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, Tanith Lee, and Amy Tan. We may also watch the film Lovely and Amazing.
GSOC-307-401 GENDER IN LATIN AMERICA
TR 9-10:30 Farnsworth-Alvear (farnswor@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HIST/LALS-307
This course critically examines the process of constructing and interpreting personal experience/life history narratives told by African women. Urban and rural women's narrative texts are considered as they inform our understanding of the nature of personal experience narrative, the role of collaborating researchers in life history production, and the significance of enabling African women to "speak for themselves."
GSOC-318-401 RACE, GENDER, CLASS AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE
W 2-5 Fairman (fairman@nursing.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HSOC-341, NURS-318
Benjamin Franklin Seminar
This multidisciplinary course surveys the history of American health care through the multiple perspectives of race, gender, and class, and grounds the discussions in contemporary health issues. It emphasizes the links between the past and present, using not only primary documents but materials from disciplines such as literature, art, sociology, and feminist studies that relate both closely and tangentially to the health professions and health ca issues. Discussions will surround gender, class-based, ethnic, and racial ideas about the construction of disease, health and illness; the development of health care institutions; the interplay between religion and science; the experiences of patients and providers; and the response to disasters and epidemics
GSOC-344-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL GROWTH
T 4:30-7:30 Staff
Cross Listed: EDUC-345
Intellectual, emotional and behavioral development in the college years. Illustrative topics: developing intellectual and social competence; developing personal and career goals; managing interpersonal relationships; values and behavior. Recommended for sub matriculation in Psychological Services Master's Degree program.
GSOC-349-401 HISTORY OF SEXUALITY IN THE US
TR 1:30-3 Peiss (peiss@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HIST-349
Distribution Course History & Tradition, Class of ’09, and prior
This course introduces students to a relatively new field of inquiry, the history of sexuality in the U.S. It explores the past to consider why sexuality has been so central to American identities, culture, and politics. Primary documents and other readings focus on the history of sexual ideology and regulation; popular culture and changing sexual practices; the emergence of distinct sexual identities and communities; the politics of sexuality; and the relationship between sexual and other forms of social difference, such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, and class. Topics include many with continuing relevance to contemporary public debate: among them, sexual representation and censorship, sexual violence, adolescent sexuality, the politics of reproduction, gay and lesbian sexualities and sexually transmitted diseases.
GSOC-386-301 ELLAS Y ELLOS O ELLOS Y ELLAS: THE
MWF 12-1 SUBVERSION OF GENDER ROLES IN SPANISH LITERATURE
Fernández (francfer@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: SPAN-386
Prerequisite(s): Spanish 219. In this course, students will examine and analyze the way traditional gender roles are questioned and subverted in different works of Spanish literature, from the Baroque period to the present. Students will also have the opportunity to learn, through close reading of the stories, how to analyze and recognize different points of view, voices and narrative strategies, thus becoming more aware of their active role as readers. Among other authors included in this course, we will read works by María de Zayas, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Carmen de Burgos, Carmen Riera and Marina Mayoral.
GSOC-396-401 QUEER LATIN AMERICA
TR 1:30- Martínez-San Miguel (yolandam@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: SPAN-396
Prerequisite(s): Spanish 219. This course will analyze the ways in which Latin(o) American sexualities get expressed outside or beyond the script of the “coming out” narrative. Topics of discussion include the following within a Latin(o) American context: “Colonial Homosocialities,” “Nationalism and Sexualities,” “Against the Closet,” “Beyond Homonormativity,” “Queer Diasporas,” “Bodies of Desire,” and “Non-Corporeal Sexualities, or Queer Phenomenology.” Throughout the course, students will read critical and historical texts on the configuration of queer, sexuality and gender studies in Europe, the United States and Latin America. We will study texts by Christopher Columbus, Pero Vaz de Camihna, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, José Martí, Piri Thomas, Manuel Puig, César Aira, Richard Rodríguez, Reinaldo Arenas, Achy Obejas, Junot Díaz, Sonia Rivera Valdés, Javier Bosco, Rey Emanuel Andújar, Rita Indiana Hernández, Ena Lucía Portela, as well as critical works by Jorge Salessi, José Quiroga, Emilio Bejel, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Lázaro Lima, Juana María Rodríguez, Licia Fiol Matta, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Lawrence LaFountain Stokes, Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Michael Horswell, and Jossianna Arroyo, among others. We will also discuss film clips from Brincando el charco, Frida, Fresa y chocolate, Y tu mamá también, Before Night Falls, and The Kiss of the Spider Woman.
GSOC-400-301 SENIOR THESIS
F 2-5 Kurz (dkurz@sas.upenn.edu)
This seminar is for senior undergraduate Women's Studies majors who are writing their theses. The seminar will help students decide on their theses topic and methodology. The seminar will also focus on drawing conclusions from primary and secondary sources of data.
GSOC-491-401 19th C. ROMANTIC BALLET
TR 12-1:30 Kant (mkant2@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: HIST-491, ENGL-250, THAR-290
Ballet has suffered from bad press for a long time. It is seen as a “misogynist,” “conservative” art form and an “aristocratic” relic. In this course we will study the context and the content of romantic ballet as it emerged as a revolutionary movement in the early 19th century in France. We will read and analyze ballet libretti of French, English, German, Italian and Russian works and contextualize their stories. We are going to answer the following questions: When and why do women become the heroines of ballet narratives? What do these heroines stand for? What is their relationship to their male counterparts?
Through the theories of Heinrich Heine and Théophile Gautier we are going to understand the concept of romanticism in dance and follow its development to the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century. Together with the narrative we shall trace the history of ballet from the 15th century to the French revolution, study the social reality of the dance world, the practice in the opera houses of Europe and the development of a particular dance aesthetic that made ballet world famous.
GSOC-499-000 INDEPENDENT STUDY
Arranged Kurz (dkurz@sas)
Permission needed from department.
