Legacy Course Catalog
ENGL 680G - Gender, Rhetoric And The Body
| Effectivity: | 01/07/2008 - 05/03/2008 @ Purdue West Lafayette Traditional |
|---|---|
| Credits: | 3 |
| Instructional Types: | Lec |
| Usually Offered: | fal spr |
| Short Title: | Gender Rhet & Body |
| Description: | This seminar will investigate theoretical and rhetorical approaches to the gendered body. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of an interdisciplinary field that might be called "body studies," which centers on the impact of the material body on the world. The perceived postmodern neglect of the material body-in the late 1980s and early 1990s especially-produced a backlash from feminists and other cultural materialists who sought to recuperate and theorize the body. The body has always been an important site for the feminist project; what has been termed "patriarchy" has always marked the female body as "other," but feminism in particular has turned that around, highlighting the fact that a) no body is neutral, b) the body has an importance for scholarly inquiry that has long been neglected, and c) that neglect of the body has had consequences that we are only now beginning to realize. Our readings will explore the nexus of embodiment, gender, and rhetorical practice, examining the gendered body in relation to theories of subjectivity, technology, class, race, history, culture, epistemology, methodology, politics, and writing. We will read seminal philosophical works that engage with the body and gender (Freud, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Cixous, Irigaray, Deleuze and Guattari), along with secondary criticism and responses to those texts. Each of these theorists has introduced particular concepts (hysteria, differance, Ecriture feminine, becoming) that have produced critical understandings of the body. More contemporary feminist theorists have extended and complicated these theories, including the work of Susan Faludi, Susan Bordo, Judith Halberstam, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Judith Butler, Elaine Scarry, Elizabeth Grosz, Katherine Hayles, Sandy Stone, and Nancy Tuana, among others. Assignments will include reading notes, participation in electronic discussions, and an extended research project. |
| School: | College Of Liberal Arts |
| Department: | English |
| Credit By Exam: | NO |
| Repeatable Flag: | YES |
| Temporary Flag: | YES |
| Full Time Privilege Flag: | NO |
| Honors Flag: | NO |
| Variable Title Flag: | NO |
Fall 2007 *** indicates the course was still an active course and was transferred to the Banner Catalog effective Spring 2008. This course was not expired Fall 2007.
