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CS92PROD
Transgender Theory


AMST 344
Spring 2016 not offered
Crosslisting: FGSS 344
Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory
Course Cluster: Queer Studies

This seminar will consider theoretical, political, and social understandings of what has been broadly defined as "transgender" identities. We will begin by interrogating the concept of gender itself, probing the centrality of Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and questioning modes of gender compulsoriness and inevitability. We will consider the relationship between the study of gender and scholarly disciplines including queer theory and feminist theory as well as American studies. The course will then focus more centrally on transnarratives of self and fights within queer and feminist communities over emerging trans articulations of personhood. Finally, the class will consider the diverse ways in which trans subjects struggle over the meaning(s) of trans narratives and the ways in which political rights and cultural legibility may be accessible or at times nonexistent for transpeople.

In understanding transgender theory as a scholarly field, this course will focus on the following questions: What does it mean to be transgender? How can we (or can we?) delineate different modes of trans being (e.g., transsexual identity, genderqueer, and so on) in a meaningful way? What does it mean to transform a central tenet of one's core self? Or, does the process of transgender existence consist more of a concretion of the real rather than a transformation of the self? How can trans narratives become legible to social and political articulations of personhood?
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS AMST
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AMST)(CSCT)

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
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