Midterm Review

To help you prepare for next week’s take-home midterm essay exam, I’d like you to spend the rest of class working in small groups reviewing our course reading thus far. For each of the essays or excerpts that we’ve read, I’d like you to write a paragraph (or so) in which you summarize the main claim or central argument of the piece, briefly describe how the scholar supports or explains his or her argument, and the explain why you think this piece is significant or meaningful.

Each group should pick 4 or 5 of the pieces listed below and complete these summaries before the end of class. Then, before class on Tuesday, I would like you individually to post one or two of your summaries to our course blog as a way to help the rest of class review our readings in preparation for the midterm. Here are the readings we’ve completed thus far:

• Judith Lorber, “The Social Construction of Gender”
• Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex”
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Should There Only Be Two Sexes?”
• Thomas Laqueur, “The Discovery of the Sexes”
• Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
• David Halperin, “Is There a History of Sexuality?”
• Will Roscoe, “Was We’wha a Homosexual?”
• Paula Gunn Allen, “How the West Was Really Won”
• Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual”
• Judith Halberstam, “Perverse Presentism”

After reading Monday’s articles, feel free to include a summary of one of them if you’re feeling ambitious.

• Ellen Carol DuBois, “The Nineteenth-Century Woman Suffrage Movement and the Analysis of Women’s Oppression”
• Lillian Faderman, “Acting ‘Woman,’ Thinking ‘Man’”
• Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race”

Reflecting on two-spirit peoples, looking ahead to female worlds

Before class on Thursday, I'd like you to reflect on Tuesday's class and what we've learned about American Indian sex/gender systems. How would you define or describe what a two-spirit person is? What's distinct (now and historically) about sex/gender within the context of Native American cultures? How have they informed European and Anglo-American notions of sexuality?

Second, after you complete the reading for Thursday, I'd like you pose a question or two about the reading that you think would generate an interesting discussion for the rest of class. Make sure it's an open-ended question (one that can't be answered with a yes or no) and responds to the reading in engaging ways.

Identifying Laqueur's main claim about sex

Before we discuss today’s readings as entire class, I would like you to take a few minutes to reflect on the first article we read, Thomas Laqueuer’s “The Discovery of the Sexes.” In your own words, what would you say is the most important point that he makes in this article? (For example, you might answer the question “What was discovered about the sexes in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?” Or, “What relationship was forged between cultural understanding between a woman’s ovaries and her sex/gender?”) Then, I’d like you to identify a brief passage that you think represents Laqueur’s main claim. Why do you think this point is so important for understanding the history of sex/gender?

Reflecting on Audre Lorde and the issue of difference

To conclude today’s class, I’d like you to reflect on Audre Lorde’s essay “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” For some of you, the ideas of this article might be very new and might even feel uncomfortable to think or talk about. For others, your lived experience might match Lorde’s in significant ways. Regardless of how familiar or foreign her words might feel, I’d like you to reflect on one of her concluding comments, where she writes, “It is not our differences which separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from the ignoring and misnaming of those differences” (122). Given our discussion today, what does this passage mean to you? How do you make sense of it? What will you take away from today’s discussion that you think is significant when it comes to understanding difference and oppression?

Just a reminder: Please post your responses as a comment to my post

To help us keep our discussions organized and easy to follow, please make sure and post your responses to my original posts as comments. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! -- Geoffrey

Introduce yourself, respond to our first reading

For your first post to our course blog, I would like to do two things: First, introduce yourself more fully to the rest of our class. You might begin by telling us more about where you’re from, what brought you to DU, and what you’re hoping to accomplish while you’re here. You could also tell us more about your background with regard to gender and women’s studies, feminism, or LGBTQ issues. Why did you take this course? What do you hope to gain from it? Are their issues in particular that you’re interested in studying? Ultimately, what will make this course a rewarding experience for you?

Second, after you complete the reading for Thursday’s class, I would like you to tell us which narrative you found the most interesting, surprising, or challenging. Once you identify the piece, explain what you found engaging about it. What did you learn about gender, feminism, or sexuality by reading it?

You can post your response as a comment to this post. Aim for 250-350 words. I look forward to reading your response!