PHIL 295 - Seminar on Philosophical Topics

FDR: HU
Credits: 3 credits in Fall or Winter; 4 credits in Spring
Planned Offering: Fall, Winter

Winter 2014 topic:

PHIL 295: Seminar: Queer Theory (4). No prerequisite. In this seminar, we analyze conceptions of gender and sexuality, with a special focus on the efforts societies make in creating and enforcing conditions that are supposed by those societies to be “natural.” We make a first go of analyzing the gendering project by examining the ways in which both men and women are the product of robustly normative systems. Subsequently, we examine the role that sexuality plays in the gendering process, highlighting the normative privilege that heterosexual identity brings with it. In the final meetings, we consider how the lives of transgender and intersex persons complicate theories of sex, gender, and sexuality, and examine what might constitute the proper moral and political responses to deeply ingrained practices based upon compulsory heterosexuality. Due to the subject matter of the course, we considering, in addition to philosophical texts, work in biology, sociology, history, and psychology. Additionally, we draw on the resources of mass culture, including television and film, as source materials for inquiry and discussion. (HU) Burstein.