Sexuality and Gender in Anthropology
Sarah Lawrence College (ANTH-3121-R)
Fall 2001
Instructor: David Valentine Class location:Tweed 12, Wednesday. 2:00-5:00pm
Office: Sheffield 05 Class dates: September 12-December 19, 2001
Phone: 395-2363 email: [email protected]
Course Description:
At least since Gayle Rubin's Thinking Sex (1984), anthropologists and others have conceived of sexuality and gender as
two distinct realms of human experience, a distinction which has had a profound impact on gender and sexuality studies.
But, do contemporary Western theories of "sex," "sexuality" and "gender" help us understand the lives of Omani xaniths,
Brazilian travestis, early twentieth century "fairies" or 1960s drag queens in the U.S., contemporary Japanese sex workers
and their clients, or even gay and lesbian kinship in the U.S.?
This course will explore anthropological 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 gender and sexuality have intersected with traditional anthropological concerns about
personhood, kinship, family, and community, and the ways that Western theories of sexuality and gender are both useful
and problematic in describing non-Western cultures. We will especially 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 consider how shifts in feminist and queer politics have
also required anthropologists to focus on other social 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:
You are, naturally, expected to attend all classes and conferences associated with this class. It is expected that if you have
to miss a class for a valid reason (such as illness or family emergency), you inform me as soon as possible prior to the
class, or as soon after as is possible.
Class work for the semester will consist of the following formal projects:
1. 4 5-6 page reaction papers
2. 2 short research projects to be prepared for class discussion, the first due on October 17.
Required Texts:
The following books are required for this course:
1. Allison, Anne (1994) Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2. Butler, Judith (1990) Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
3. Foucault, Michel (1978) The history of sexuality. Volume 1: an introduction. New York: Vintage.
4. Newton, Esther (1979 [1972]) Mother camp: female impersonators in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5. Shokeid, Moshe (1995) A gay synagogue in New York. New York: Columbia University Press.
These books and the course reading packet are on reserve in the librarya; the books are also available for purchase in the
bookstore, and I will also have a copy of the course packet for your use.
COURSE OUTLINE
PART 1: HISTORIES AND PARADIGMS
Week 1: Introduction to the Course and the Field (9/12/01)
Week 2: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (I): Placing Sexuality in Anthropology (9/19/01)
Readings:
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.
Katz, Jonathan Ned 1990 The invention of heterosexuality. Socialist Review 20(1):7-34.
Week 3: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (II): Sex for the Ancestors (9/26/01)
Readings:
Löfström, Jan 1992 Sexuality at stake: the essentialist and constructionist approaches to sexuality in anthropology. Suomen Antropologi 17(3):13-27.
Mead, Margaret _____[1928] Coming of age in Samoa: a psychological study of primitive youth for Western civilisation. New York: W. Morrow & Company. (selections)
Malinowski, Bronislaw ____[1929] The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia: an ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea. New York, Eugenics Pub. Co. (selections)
Edgerton, Robert B. 1964 Pokot intersexuality: an East African example of the resolution of sexual incongruity.
American Anthropologist 66(6)
Week 4: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (III): Repression and Production (10/3/01)
Readings:
Foucault, Michel 1978 The history of sexuality. Volume 1: an introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York:
Vintage.
Week 5: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (IV): Gender, Sexuality, and Anthropology... and the "sex wars"
(10/10/01)
Readings:
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.
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)
Recommended:
Freedman, Estelle and Barrie Thorne 1984 Introduction to the feminist sexuality debates. Signs 10(11):102-06.
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.
Week 6: Histories of Sexuality and Gender (V):Essentialism and Constructionism (10/17/01)
Readings:
Butler, Judith 1990 Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
PART 2: THEMES AND ISSUES
Week 7: Cross-Cultural Approaches (I): The Power of Three: Third Gender Roles (10/24/01)
Readings:
Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Language. 1997 Introduction in Two-spirit people: Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Urbana: University of Illinois 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.
Wikan, Unni 1991 The Xanith: a third gender role? in Behind the veil in Arabia: women in Oman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kulick, Don. 1997 Gender of Brazilian transgendered prostitutes. American Anthropologist 99(3):574-585.
Week 8: Cross-Cultural Approaches (II): It looks like Homosexuality, it smells like homosexuality, but is it
homosexuality? (10/31/01)
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.
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)
Week 9: Extending the Analysis (I): Race, Nation, Difference (11/7/01)
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, Chp. 1)
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. (Chp. 1)
Walley, Christine 1997 Searching for "voices": feminism, anthropology, and the global debate over female genital
operations. Cultural Anthropology 12(3):405-438.
Week 10: Extending the Analysis (II): Post-Colonial Subjects, Undress!(11/14/01)
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.
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.
**November 21: Thanksgiving Break**
Week 11:The Man in the Iron John: Deconstructing Heterosexualities and Masculinities (11/28/01)
Readings:
Allison, Anne 1994 Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press.
Review Katz from week 1
Week 12: Rights and Privileges (I): Kinship, Family, and Community (12/5/01)
Readings:
Shokeid, Moshe 1995 A gay synagogue in New York. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schneider, David M. 1997 Power of culture: notes on some aspects of gay and lesbian kinship in America today.
Cultural Anthropology 12(2):270-274.
Week 13: Rights and Privileges (II): Public Sex and Pornography (12/12/01)
Readings:
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.
Kempadoo, Kamala 1996 Introduction: globalizing sex workers' rights. In Global sex workers. Kamala Kempadoo and
Jo Doezema (eds). Pp. 1-28. [publisher]
Week 14: Paris is Spawning: Transgender Bodies, Transgender Theory or What's sexuality, and what's gender? (12/19/01)
Readings:
Livingstone, Jennie 1991 Paris is Burning. Video Recording.
Newton, Esther 1979 [1972] Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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.