Gender, Sexuality and Diversity: Past and Present

Weekly schedule:
WEEK 1
Session 1. Introduction and Main Concepts.
Course description, syllabus explanation, and definition of main concepts (gender, sex, sexuality, masculinity, femininity, feminism, heteropatriarchy, etc.) used in gender studies. We will see in class an excerpt of documentary Judith Butler. Gender and Sexuality for Teenagers. 
Session 2. Feminisms and Feminist Genealogies.
This session will present the main feminist genealogies that have nurtured gender studies, with a special emphasis on the most current ones (intersectionality, decolonial feminism, ecofeminism, transfeminism, queer theory, cyber-feminism, etc.).
Required reading
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-thirdfourth

WEEK 2
Session 3. Where does it all begin? (I). A socio-historical perspective.
This session will present the main contemporary theories that explain the origins and reasons of gender inequalities and patriarchy.
Required reading
Gayle RUBIN, 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Rayna R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an anthropology of women. New York: Monthly Review Press, 157-210.
Session 4. Where does it all begin? (II). A socio-historical perspective.
This session will continue discussing the main contemporary theories that explain the origins and reasons of gender inequalities and patriarchy.
Required reading
Nancy FOLBRE, 2021. The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy. London & New York: Verso Books, Chapter 7.

WEEK 3
Session 5. Patriarchal Violence from a (Trans)Historical Perspective
In this class we will address the physical and symbolic violence related to gender and sexuality in patriarchal societies. From a historical perspective, we will explore the perception of certain practices and aggressions such as gender-based violence, sexual violence, and LGTBIQ-phobia on the part of society and institutions.
Required Reading
Rita Laura SEGATO, 2018. “A Manifesto in Four Themes,” Critical Times 1(1): 198-211.
Session 6. Gender, Caring Practices and Life-Sustaining
Feminist movements warn about the importance of care and the need to position life and its sustenance at the center of political and economic agendas. In this class we will discuss the social, historical and political relevance of caring practices, and their relationships with gender and feminisms.
Required Reading
Carol GILLIGAN, 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2.

WEEK 4
Session 7. Prostitution or Sex Work?
This session will present current debates regarding this phenomenon, including names allocated to it. So-called “sexual assistance” and functional diversity will be also discussed.
Required reading
Giulia GAROFALO GEYMONAT, 2019. “Disability Rights Meet Sex Workers’ Rights: The Making of Sexual Assistance in Europe,” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 16, 214-26.
Session 8. The Social Representations of Gender I
In this session we will analyze how gender is represented in different media in our society: advertising, cinema, literature and comics, school textbooks, fashion, pornography, social media, etc. From theoretical approaches such as Judith Butler's “gender performativity”, we will explore how different gender standards are produced, reproduced and legitimized through these media.
Required reading
Liesbet VAN ZOONEN, 1994. Feminist Media Studies. London: Sage (Chapter 6. Spectatorship and the Gaze).

WEEK 5
Session 9. The Social Representations of Gender II. Case examples and debate.
This session will discuss case examples in gender representation chosen by students to be discussed in class.
Required reading
Ann J. CAHILL, 2003. “Feminist Pleasure and Feminine Beautification,” Hypatia, 18 (4): 42-64.
Session 10. Mid-term exam.

WEEK 6
Session 11. Colonialism and Gender
This session will be devoted to exploring the interrelations between gender, sexuality and other axes of oppression such as race or ethnicity in colonial situations. Departing from authors that hold anti-racist and feminist perspectives (ascribed to Black, Islamic, postcolonial or decolonial feminisms), we will present the main methodological tools used in feminist studies on colonialism, such as intersectionality, matrices of domination, ethnosexuality, and border thinking.
Required reading
María LUGONES, 2008. “The Coloniality of Gender,” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise 2: 1-17.
Session 12. Colonialism and Gender II. A case example from the Mariana Islands.
Through the case example of the Mariana Islands, we will exemplify the patriarchal turn that affected the whole world during early Modern colonial globalization.
Required reading
Sandy O’SULLIVAN, 2021. “The Colonial Project of Gender (and Everything Else),” Genealogy 5: 2-9.

WEEK 7
Session 13. Women in Science and Academia.
This session will explore gender biases in science and academia. We will see and discuss in class the documentary Picture a Scientist.
Required documentary
Sharon SHATTUCK and Ian CHENEY, 2020. “Picture a Scientist,” 1h 43min.
Session 14. Challenging the Sexual Binary: Transsexuality, Intersex and “Third Sex/Genders”
From a (trans)historical and anthropological perspective, in this class we will explore through archaeological and ethnographic examples the ways in which different human groups have encoded gender fluidity, sex and sexuality over time. We will present the main concepts used to classify such fluidity, as well as to “pigeonhole” those categories that escape the gender and sexual binaries, such as transsexuality, intersexuality, hermaphroditism or third sexes/genders.
Required Reading
Gilbert HERDT, 1996. “Introduction: Third Sexes and Third Genders,” in Gilbert Herdt (ed.)
Third Sex, Third Gender. New York: Zone Books, 21-81.
Required film
Céline SCIAMMA, 2011. “Tomboy,” 82 min., France.

WEEK 8
Session 15. Surrogacy or Pregnancy for Others? Gender and New Family Models Nuclear, heterosexual and monogamous family has recently been challenged by new family models: single-parent, LGBTIQ-parent, multi-parent, childless, etc. However, the spread of these models has sparked debate among current feminist movements, especially regarding practices such as surrogacy. In this session we will explore these new family models, as well as the so-called “subversive” maternities and paternities and the debates that surrogacy originates in terms of gender inequalities, economy, and even nationality and religion.
Required Reading
Susan Martha KAHN, 2000. Reproducing Jews. A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chapter 4, Eggs and Wombs: The Origins of Jewishness. 
Session 16. Historicizing Sexualities
The aim of this class is to present the different problems around sexuality and sexualcategories in today’s society. Through political and academic movements such as queer theory or, in the case of the Spanish State, transfeminism, in this session we will analyse how sexuality is understood and categorized, the rejection of sexual categories by the queer movement, as well as the ways, from an anthropological and historical perspective, in which other human groups live and culturally codify their sexual practices.
Required Reading
Jeffrey WEEKS, 1986. Sexuality. Chapter 2. The Invention of Sexuality. London: Tavistock.

WEEK 9
Session 17. Gender and the Body
In this class we will analyze the role of the body in relation to gender: how the latter is performed through the former, both consciously and unconsciously. Likewise, we will present certain problems regarding gender, the body, and subordination versus individual freedom in today’s society, such as patterns of beauty or health.
Required Reading:
Peter OSBORNE, 1994. "Gender as performance: an interview with Judith Butler," Radical philosophy 67: 32-9.
Session 18. Ecofeminism and Climate Crisis
In this class we will discuss the main proposals of ecofeminism, which states that the devaluation and oppressions experienced by women's bodies and nature in patriarchal societies share common paradigms and historical inequalities. We will delve into the existing relationships between gender and the current climate crisis, addressing issues such as veganism and the work of indigenous women in defending their environments.
Required Documentary
Ernesto CABELLOS DAMIÁN, 2015. “Hija de la laguna” (Daughter of the lake), 87 min., Peru.

WEEK 10
Session 19. Indigenous Women
This session will discuss patriarchal problems that disproportionately affect indigenous women and organized resistance. We will watch and discuss in class the BBC documentary Missing & Murdered: America’s forgotten native girls.
Required Reading
Andrea SMITH, 2015. Conquest. Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Durham: Duke University Press. Introduction & Chapter 7.
Session 20. Undoing Masculinities
In this session we will discuss the construction (and deconstruction) of masculinity in our societies, as well as we will delve into the notion of hegemonic masculinity, challenging it by debating new models of masculinities.
Required Reading
Raewyn CONNELL, 2016. “Masculinities in global perspective: hegemony, contestation, and changing structures of power,” Theory and Society 45 (4): 303-318.

WEEK 11
Session 21. Dissident Pasts. Archaeology and Feminist Discourses.
This session will discuss how and why discourses about the past are performative both in naturalizing and subverting our present gender system.
Required Reading
Almudena HERNANDO, 2013. “Change, Individuality and Reason, or How Archaeology has Legitimized a Patriarchal Modernity,” in Alfredo González-Ruibal (ed.) Reclaiming Archaeology.
Beyond the Tropes of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge, pp.155-167.
Session 22. Final Exam