Syllabus for Gendered Bodies: Theories and Challenges

Gendered Bodies: Theories and Challenges

Syllabus

  • 7.5 credits
  • Course code: 5GN022
  • Education cycle: Second cycle
  • Main field(s) of study and in-depth level: Gender Research A1N
  • Grading system: Fail (U), Pass (G), Pass with distinction (VG)
  • Established: 2008-04-01
  • Established by: The Faculty Board of Arts
  • Revised: 2018-08-23
  • Revised by: The Faculty Board of Arts
  • Applies from: week 02, 2019
  • Entry requirements: A Bachelor's degree, equivalent to a Swedish Kandidatexamen, from an internationally recognised university.
  • Responsible department: Centre for Gender Research

Decisions and guidelines

The Centre for Gender Research is responsible for the course. The course is part of the two-year Master programme given by Centre for Gender Research.

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course students will:

  • Have acquired advanced insight into different feminist theoretical perspectives on the body.
  • Have gained a deeper level of understanding regarding the constitution of bodies, their boundaries, and possibilities in relation to their spatio-temporal context.
  • Be able to trace historical conceptualisations of bodies and to recognise social, cultural, and political dimensions of how bodily limits of normality and abnormality have been constituted.
  • Enhance their capacity to critical thinking, problem identification and solving, as well as developing their communication skills, research and knowledge positioning, and concern for quality.

Content

The aim of this course is to provide a comprehensive overview of the vast field of theory of the body within gender and feminist research. Looking at various different ways in which the body and embodiment are approached and conceptualised, we will discuss issues concerning both the stability and the fluidity of bodies, focusing on the force of the sexually marked body for the stabilisation of conventional gender identities as well as the body as a subversive force and the carrier of changing temporal and spatial inscriptions.

Instruction

The course is concentrated around seminars.

Assessment

Examination includes oral presentations and a written paper on a theme of the course and compulsory attendance and participation in the seminars. All essays will undergo a plagiarism check. 

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University´s disability coordinator.
 

Syllabus Revisions

Reading list

Reading list

Applies from: week 27, 2020

Literature

The reading list will be updated every year, at the latest 5 weeks before the course starts.

Reading list

  • Ah-King, Malin; Hayward, Eva Toxic Sexes: Perventing Pollution and Queering Hormone Disruption

    O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies, 2013

    link to article

    1:1-14 (15 p.)

  • Ahmed, Sara Orientations : Towards a Queer Phenomenology

    Part of:

    GLQ : a journal of lesbian and gay studies

    vol. 12 (2007) nr. 4 s. 543-574

    (29 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Ahmed, Sara Some Preliminary Remarks on the Founding Gestures of the "New Materialism"

    Part of:

    The European journal of women's studies.

    vol. 15 (2008) nr. 1 s. 23-39

    (16 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Ahmed, Sara Strange encounters [Elektronisk resurs] : embodied others in post-coloniality

    London: Routledge, 2000

    Chapter 1. pp 21-37 (16 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Ahuja, Neel Gender: Metter: Colonialism

    Part of:

    Gender : Matter

    Macmillan Reference USA,

    (2017) s. 237-253

    (16 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Barad, Karen Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter

    Part of:

    Signs : journal of women in culture and society

    vol. 28 (2003) nr. 3 s. 801-831

    (30 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Birke, Lynda Feminism and the biological body

    New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2000

    Chapter 1, 2 and 4 (60 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Bond, Emma Writing Migration through the Body

    1st ed. 2018.: Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018

    Chapter 1-4, pp 1-148 (148 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Bordo, Susan Cassie's Hair

    Part of:

    Hekman, Susan J.; Alaimo, Stacy Material feminisms

    Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008

    (2008) s. 400-424

    (25 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Bremer, Signe Penis as risk: A Queer Phenomenology of two Swedish transgender women's narratives on gender correction

    Part of:

    Somatechnics

    2011-

    vol. 3 (2013) nr. 2 s. 329-350

    (22 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Butler, Judith Bodies that matter : on the discursive limits of "sex"

    New York: Routledge, 1993

    pp. 1-16 (16 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Davis, Kathy "My Body is My Art": Cosmetic Surgery as Feminist Utopia

    Part of:

    Price, Janet; Shildrick, Margrit Feminist theory and the body : a reader

    New York: Routledge, c1999.

    (1999) s. 454-465

    (12 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Dworkin, Shari L.; Wachs, Faye Linda Body panic : gender, health, and the selling of fitness

    New York: New York University Press, cop. 2009

    Chapter 3, 4 and 5 (94 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Gale, Maggie B. Resolute Presence, Fugitive Moments, and the Body in Women’s Protest Performance

    Part of:

    Contemporary theatre review.

    Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992-

    vol. 25 (2015) nr. 3 s. 313-326

    (13 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Grosz, E. A. Becoming undone : Darwinian reflections on life, politics, and art

    Durham: Duke University Press, 2011

    Chapter 7, 8 and 9. pp. 99-143 (45 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Grosz, Elizabeth Volatile bodies : toward a corporeal feminism

    Bloomington: Indiana University Press, cop. 1994

    Chapter 1, pp. 3-26 (23 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Hird, M.J. Digesting Difference: Metabolism and the Question of Sexual Difference

    Part of:

    Configurations

    vol. 20 (2012) s. 213-238

    (25 p.)

    Find in the library

  • hooks, bell Eating the Other

    Part of:

    Gilmartin, Christina; Lydenberg, Robin; Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy Feminist approaches to theory and methodology : an interdisciplinary reader

    New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999

    (1999) s. 179-194

    (15 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Kalof, Linda Animal blood sport : a ritual display of masculinity and sexual virility

    Part of:

    Sociology of sport journal

    Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc., 1984-

    vol. 31 (2014) nr. 4 s. 438-454

    (16 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Kier, Bailey Interdependent ecological transsex: Notes on re/production, "transgender" fish, and the management of populations, species, and resources

    Part of:

    Women & performance : a journal of feminist theory

    New York, N.Y.: Women & Performance Project at the Dept. of Performance Studies, New York University/Tisch School of the Arts, 1983-

    vol. 20 (2010) nr. 3 s. 299-319

    (21 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Kimura, Aya Hirata Hidden hunger : gender and the politics of smarter foods

    Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2013.

    Chapter 3, pp. 39-61 (22 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Langston, Nancy Toxic bodies : hormone disruptors and the legacy of DES

    New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011

    Chapters 1,3,4,6,8 (totally 87 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Lorde, Audre Age, race, class, and sex: women redefining difference

    Part of:

    Lorde, Audre Sister outsider : essays and speeches

    Berkeley, Calif.: Crossing Press, c2007.,

    (2007) s. 114-124

    (10 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Luke, Brian Violent Love : Hunting, Heterosexuality, and the Erotics of Men's Predation

    Part of:

    Feminist studies

    New York: 1972-

    vol. 24 (1998) nr. 3 s. 627-655

    (28 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Moi, Toril What is a woman? : and other essays

    Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999

    pp. 3-120 (118 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Neimanis, Astrild Posthuman Phenomenologies for Planetary Bodies of Water

    Part of:

    Åsberg, Cecilia; Braidotti, Rosi A feminist companion to the posthumanities

    Cham: Springer, [2018]

    Artikel i PDF

    (2018) s. s. 55-66

    (11 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Phelan, Peggy Unmarked : the politics of performance

    London: Routledge, 1993

    pp. 1-110 and 146-166 (129 p.) NB: is also available 2003 ed.

    Find in the library

  • Schneider, Rebecca New Materialisms and Performance Studies

    Part of:

    TDR : the drama review

    Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986-

    vol. 59 (2015) nr. 4 s. 7-17

    (10 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Sullivan, Nikki; Stryker, Susan King's Member, Queen's Body: Transsexual Surgery, Self-Demand Amputation and the Somatechnics of Sovereign Power

    Part of:

    Sullivan, Nikki; Murray, Samantha Somatechnics : queering the technologisation of bodies

    Farnham: Ashgate, cop. 2009

    (2009) s. 49-64

    (15 p.)

    Find in the library

  • TallBear, Kim Genomic Articulations of Indigeneity

    Part of:

    Social studies of science.

    [London]: SAGE Publications, 1999-

    vol. 43 (2013) nr. 4 s. 509-534

    (25 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Tuana, Nancy Viscous porosity: witnessing Katrina

    Part of:

    Hekman, Susan J.; Alaimo, Stacy Material feminisms

    Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008

    (2008) s. 85-120

    (26 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Weaver, Harlan “Becoming in Kind” : Race, Class, Gender, and Nation in Cultures of Dog Rescue and Dogfighting

    Part of:

    American quarterly

    Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1949-

    Artikel i Project MUSE

    vol. 65 (2013) nr. 3 s. 689-709

    (20 p.)

    Find in the library

  • Young, Iris Marion Throwing like a girl : a phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility and spatiality

    Part of:

    Human studies : a journal for philosophy and the social sciences

    Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1978-

    (20 p.)

    3(1980):2, s. 137-156

    Find in the library

Reading list revisions

Print syllabus and reading list
Print