課程說明

This is a course that aims to read into available documents that may help shed light on the social construction of gender/sexuality and the cultural forces that work to maintian its stability. We will focus on selected key texts which have opened up the territory for further research. My purpose is, as always, to build up some understanding of the key lines of argument as well as their implications for the larger issues of essentialism and social constructionism. The course requirement will include heavy weekly reading, scheduled class presentations, a 3-page mid-term paper analyzing significant cross-dressing phenomena in the Taiwan context, and a 6-page final paper detailing and theorizing one area of gender/sexuality construction along with its discontents.

Readings:

• Dollimore, Jonathan. Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991.
• Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on Sexuality. Standard Edition. Trans. by James Strachey. Vol. VII. London: Hogarth P, 1953.
• Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. Harper Perennial Edition. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1992, 1993.
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "Divinity: A Dossier, A Performance Piece, A Little-Understood Emotion." Written with Michael Moon. Tendencies. London: Routledge, 1994. 215-251.
• (And some things in Chinese. You may also want to consider:)
• Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer." Bodies That Matter: On the Discoursive Limits of "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993. 223-242.
• Osborne, Peter & Lynn Segal. "Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler." Radical Philosophy 67 (Summer 1994): 32-39.