Ethnographic Approaches to Sexuality and Gender (G14.3393)
NYU Department of Anthropology
Spring 2001
David Valentine
Tuesday 6:00-8:45pm
January 16 - May 1, 2001
Office Hours: by arrangement
Phone: 212-998-8559
email: [email protected]
Course Description
What do "sex," "sexuality" and "gender" mean, and how have anthropologists dealt with these concepts? What is the relationship between "sexuality" and "gender"? This course will explore ethnographic approaches to sexuality and gender, and the complex relations between sexual and gendered practices, identities, and roles. With a particular focus on ethnographic methodologies and research issues, we will consider how studies of sex and sexuality have intersected with traditional anthropological concerns about kinship, family, and community. We will examine ethnographic studies, both US and non-US focused, to assess how cross-cultural studies of sexuality and gender have contributed to more complex understandings of these areas of human experience. While this course does not specifically focus on queer issues in anthropology, we will also look at the growing body of LGBT/queer anthropology, examine its roots in feminist anthropology, and place the new anthropological literature on masculinity and transgender issues in the context of this history. Further, we will look at how shifts in feminist and queer politics have also required anthropologists to focus on other differences such as class, race, geography, and post-colonial relations. A focus on ethnographic studies will be complemented by readings in other bodies of literature that have informed sexuality studies in the past thirty years, including historical studies, queer theory, and sociology, with the emphasis on how ethnographic studies complicate and elaborate theoretical models from other disciplines.
Course Requirements
Attendance at all classes is required As this is a seminar, class discussions will be a central part of the course's success and consequently your participation will contribute to your assessment. In terms of formal written assignments, you will be asked to submit 4 (5-6 pages) reaction papers during the course, due in class on the day of the readings which are the topic of the paper, as well as a final paper of 10-15 pages. Each student will also be responsible for one formal class presentation during the semester.
Readings:
Articles can be found in the 2nd Floor Graduate Library. The following texts are required:
1. Foucault, Michel (1978) The history of sexuality. Volume 1: an introduction. New York: Vintage.
2. Butler, Judith (1990) Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
3. Newton, Esther (1979 [1972]) Mother camp: female impersonators in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4. Nanda, Serena (1990) Neither man nor woman: the Hijras of India. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
5. Tuzin, Donald (1997) The cassowary's revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
6. Johnson, Mark (1997) Beauty and power: transgendering and cultural transformation in the Southern Philippines. New York: Berg.
7. Allison, Anne (1994) Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8. Wilchins, Riki Anne(1997) Read my lips: sexual subversion and the end of gender. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.
Part 1: Histories and Paradigms
January 16: Introduction to the Course and the Field
January 23: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (I)
Readings:
Davis, D.L. and Whitten, R.G. 1987 The cross-cultural study of human sexuality. Annual Review of Anthropology 16:69-98
Morris, Rosalind 1995 All made up: performance theory and the new anthropology of sex and gender. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:567-592.
Weston, Kath 1993 Lesbian/Gay studies in the house of anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 22:339-369.
Blackwood, Evelyn and Saskia Wieringa 1999 Introduction In Female desires: same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gagnon, John H. and Richard G. Parker 1995 Introduction: conceiving sexuality. in Conceiving sexuality: approaches to sex research in a postmodern world. John H. Gagnon and Richard G. Parker (eds). London: Routledge.
Visweswaran, Kamala 1997 Histories of feminist ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:591-621.
January 30: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (II)
Readings: Group I
Foucault, Michel 1978 The history of sexuality. Volume 1: an introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage.
Weeks, Jeffrey 1981 Sex, politics, and society: the regulation of sexuality since 1800. London: Longman (Chps.1,2)
Group II
Butler, Judith 1990 Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. (Chps. 1,3)
Kessler, Suzanne and Wendy McKenna 1985[1978] Gender: an ethnomethodological approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chp. 1)
February 6: Sex for the Ancestors: Sexuality and Gender in Anthropological Theory
Readings:
Mead, Margaret 1969 [1935] Sex and temperament in three primitive societies. New York: Dell. (Selections)
Malinowski, Bronislaw 1960 [1927] Sex and repression in savage society. New York: Meridian Books. (Part IV)
Collier, Jane, Michelle Z. Rosaldo, and Sylvia Yanagisako 1997 Is there a family? New anthropological views. in The gender sexuality reader. Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo (eds.) Pp 71-81. New York: Routledge.
Newton, Esther 1979 [1972] Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Edgerton, Robert B. 1964 Pokot intersexuality: an East African example of the resolution of sexual incongruity. American Anthropologist 66(6)
February 13: Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Anthropological Theory
Readings:
Löfström, Jan 1992 Sexuality at stake: the essentialist and constructionist approaches to sexuality in anthropology. Suomen Antropologi 17(3):13-27.
Vance, Carole 1992 More danger, more pleasure: a decade after the Barnard sexuality conference. In Pleasure and danger: exploring female sexuality. Harper Collins.
Rubin, Gayle 1992 [1984] Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. in Pleasure and danger. Carole Vance (ed). Harper Collins.
Freedman, Estelle and Barrie Thorne 1984 Introduction to the feminist sexuality debates. Signs 10(11):102-06.
Alarcón, Norma 1990 The theoretical subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back and Anglo-American feminism. In Making face, making soul/haciendo caras: creative and critical perspectives by feminists of color. Gloria Anzaldúa (ed.) pp. 356-369. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Moore, Henrietta 1988 Feminism and anthropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Chps. 1,6)
Ortner, Sherry B. 1996 Making Gender: toward a feminist, postcolonial, subaltern etc. theory of practice In Making gender: the politics and erotics of culture. Boston: Beacon.
February 20: Sexuality, Gender, and Language
Readings:
Leap, William 1996 Words out: gay men's English. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. (Intro, Chp. 1)
Hall, Kira and Anna Livia (eds) 1996 "It's a girl!" Bringing performativity back into linguistics. In Queerly phrased: language, gender, and sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Barrett, Rusty 1995 Supermodels of the world, unite! Political economy and the language of performance among African-American drag queens. in Beyond the lavender lexicon: authenticity, imagination, and appropriation in lesbian and gay languages. William Leap (ed). Buffalo, NY: Gordon and Breach
Cameron, Deborah 1997 Performing gender identity: young men's talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In Language and masculinity. Sally Johnson and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof (eds). pp.47-64. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Kulick, Don 2000 Gay and lesbian language. Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 243-285.
Gal, Susan 2001 Language, gender, and power: an anthropological review. In Linguistic anthropology: a reader. Alessandro Duranti (ed). pp. 420-430. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
February 27: Gender, Sexuality, Methodology
Readings:
Weeks, Jeffrey 1995 History, desire, and identities. In Conceiving sexuality: approaches to sex research in a postmodern world. John H. Gagnon and Richard G. Parker (eds). London: Routledge.
Bolton, Ralph 1992 Mapping terra incognita: sex research for AIDS prevention -- an urgent agenda for the 1990s. In The time of AIDS: social analysis, theory and method. Gilbert Herdt and Shirley Lindenbaum (eds.) pp 124-158. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications
Kulick, Don 1995 The sexual life of anthropologists: erotic subjectivity and ethnographic fieldwork. In Taboo: sex, identity and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork. Don Kulick and Margaret Willson (eds). Pp.1-28. New York: Routledge
Blackwood, Evelyn 1995 Falling in love with an-Other lesbian: reflections on identity in fieldwork. In Taboo: sex, identity, and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork. Don Kulick and Margaret Wilson (eds). New York: Routledge.
Nussbaum, Emily 1998 Return of the natives. Lingua Franca February 1998: 53-56.
Part 2: Themes and Issues
March 6: Cross-Cultural Approaches (I): The Power of Three: Third Gender Roles
Readings:
Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang. 1997 Introduction in Two-spirit people: Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Nanda, Serena 1990 Neither man nor woman: the Hijras of India. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (Intro, chps. 1-4)
Wikan, Unni 1991 The Xanith: a third gender role? in Behind the veil in Arabia: women in Oman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Epple, Carolyn 1997 A Navajo worldview and nádleehi: implications for Western categories. In Two-spirit people: Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Language (eds.) pp. 174-191. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
March 13: SPRING BREAK
March 20: Cross-Cultural Approaches (II): It looks like Homosexuality, it smells like homosexuality, but is it homosexuality?
Readings:
Herdt, Gilbert (ed) 1984 Introduction in Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Elliston, Deborah A. 1995 Erotic Anthropology: 'Ritualized Homosexuality' in Melanesia and Beyond. American Ethnologist 22(4):848-867.
Kulick, Don. 1997 Gender of Brazilian transgendered prostitutes. American Anthropologist 99(3):574-585.
Tan, Michael L. 1995 From Bakla to gay: shifting gender identities and sexual behaviors in the Southern Philippines. In Conceiving sexuality: approaches to sex research in a postmodern world. Richard G. Parker and John H. Gagnon (eds). pp. 85-96. London: Routledge.
Levine, Martin P. 1998 Gay macho: the life and death of the homosexual clone. New York: New York University Press. (Chp. 3)
March 27: Extending the Analysis (I): Race, Nation, Difference
Readings:
Stoller, Ann Laura 1995 Race and the education of desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (Preface, Chps. 1&2)
Lutz, Catharine A. and Jane L. Collins 1993 Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Chp. 6)
Enloe, Cynthia 1989 Bananas, beaches, and bases: making feminist sense of international politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Chps. 1-3)
Walley, Christine 1997 Searching for "voices": feminism, anthropology, and the global debate over female genital operations. Cultural Anthropology 12(3):405-438.
April 3: Extending the Analysis (II): Post-Colonial Subjects, Undress!
Readings:
Jolly, Margaret and Lenore Manderson 1997 Introduction: sites of desire/economies of pleasure in Asia and the Pacific. In Sites of desire, economies of pleasure: sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly (eds). Pp. 1-26. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ortner, Sherry B. 1996 Borderland politics and erotics: gender and sexuality in Himalayan mountaineering. In Making gender: the politics and erotics of culture. Pp. 181-212. Boston: Beacon.
Lancaster, Roger N. 1995 "That we should all turn queer?" Homosexual stigma in the making of manhood and the breaking of a revolution in Nicaragua. in Conceiving sexuality: approaches to sex research in a postmodern world. John H. Gagnon and Richard G. Parker (eds). London: Routledge
Donham, Don 1998 Freeing South Africa: the "modernization" of male-male sexuality in Soweto. Cultural Anthropology 13(1):3-21
Aarmo, Margrete 1999 How homosexuality became "un-African": the case of Zimbabwe. In Female desires: same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia Wieringa (eds.) Pp. 255-280. New York: Columbia University Press.
April 10: The Man in the Iron John: Deconstructing Heterosexualities and Masculinities
Readings:
Tuzin, Donald 1997 The Cassowary's revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gutmann, Matthew C. 1997 Trafficking in men: the anthropology of masculinity. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:385-409.
Katz, Jonathan Ned 1995 The invention of heterosexuality. New York: Dutton. (Chp.1)
April 17: Sex Work and Pornography
Readings:
Allison, Anne 1994 Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Vance, Carole 1990 Negotiating sex and gender in the attorney general's commission on pornography.In Sex exposed: sexuality and the pornography debate. Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh (eds.) Pp. 29-49. New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Frank, Katherine 1998 The production of identity and the negotiation of intimacy in a "gentleman's club." Sexualities 1(2):175-201.
April 24: Paris is Spawning:Transgender Bodies, Transgender Theory
Readings:
Livingstone, Jennie 1991 Paris is Burning. Video Recording.
Johnson, Mark 1997 Beauty and power: transgendering and cultural transformation in the Southern Philippines. New York: Berg.
Wilchins, Riki Anne 1997 Read my lips: sexual subversion and the end of gender. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.
(Pp. 1-58,79-89,115-136,141-172)
May 1: So, What's Gender and What's Sexuality?
Readings:
Valentine, David In Press "We're not about gender": how an emerging transgender movement challenges gay and lesbian theory to put the "gender" back into "sexuality." Forthcoming in Anthropology comes out. Bill Leap and Ellen Lewin (eds.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Rubin, Gayle 1992 Of catamites and kings: reflections on butch, gender, and boundaries. in The persistent desire: a femme-butch reader. Joan Nestle (ed). Boston: Alyson.
Halberstam, Judith 1998 Transgender butch: butch/FTM border wars and the masculine continuum. GLQ 4(2):287-310.
Final Paper Due May 7th