Languages of Gender
Jan Mieszkowski
Fall 2009
This seminar explores the relationships between language, sexuality, and desire. We will be interested in idealizations of the masculine and the feminine and in the differences between the lustful gaze and the reader’s gaze. In the first part of the course, we will focus on challenges to the classical conception of male authorship and sexual authority. In the second part, we will consider the understandings of female sexuality that emerge in psychoanalysis, reflecting on their implications through interpretations of twentieth-century literature and film. In the final section, we will look at recent theories of the relationship between gender and linguistic performance.
Requirements
There will be two short papers and one final essay. In addition, each conference participant will give a brief presentation about one of the readings. Your task will be to open the class in the most productive way possible. Within a week of the presentation, you should turn in a two-page summary of the session that explains how you planned to direct our discussion, what issues (expected or unexpected) proved central to the conversation, and what you might do differently if you were to introduce the same material again. Students taking the course for German credit will have extra meetings and assignments, including a translation project, which will form the basis for the seminar in Week 12.
Evaluation
| Essays | 50% |
| Presentation and write-up | 25% |
| Class participation | 25% |
Reading Schedule
Part I – The Body and The Letter
Week 1
8/31 The Discourse of Sexuality/Sexual Discourses
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (excerpt)
Jorie Graham, “Self-Portrait as Hurry and Delay”
9/2 Controlling Language
J. W. von Goethe, Faust I
Week 2
9/7 Labor Day – No Class
9/9 Death and Desire: Faust continued
Week 3
9/14 The Language of Interpretation
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
9/16 Three Essays continued; Leo Bersani, “Sexuality and Aesthetics”
Week 4
9/21 Lust and Violence
Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea
9/23 Bodies and Words: Penthesilea continued
Week 5
9/28 Desire and Contingency
Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds
9/30 The Birds continued; Raymond Bellour, “System of a Fragment”
Paper 1 – Due Friday, October 2
Part II – Female Sexuality
Week 6
10/5 Transference and Translation
Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
10/7 Dora continued; Jacques Lacan, “Intervention on Transference”
Jane Gallop, “Keys to Dora”
Week 7
10/12 Reading, Writing, and Performing the Analytic Session
Ingmar Bergman, Persona
10/14 Male Fantasies of Female Fantasies: Persona continued
Fall Break
Week 8
10/26 Symphonies of Pleasure and Pain
Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher
10/28 The Piano Teacher continued
Week 9
11/2 Psychoanalysis: Friend or Foe?
Jacqueline Rose, “Introduction II”
Moustafa Safouan, “Feminine Sexuality in Psychoanalytic Doctrine”
11/4 Reference and Signification
Jacques Lacan, “The Meaning of the Phallus”
Paper 2 – Due Friday, November 6
Part III – Gender and Performance
Week 10
11/9 Bodies that Mutter
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
11/11 Butler continued
Week 11
11/16 Pumping Up
George Butler & Robert Fiore, Pumping Iron
Jonathan Goldberg, “Recalling Totalities”
11/18 Dressing Bodies, Building Bodies, Morphing Bodies
Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”
Paul Verhoeven, Total Recall (excerpts)
James Cameron, Terminator 2 (excerpts)
Week 12
11/23 Sexuality at the Level of the Letter
selected poems
11/25 Selected poems continued
Week 13
11/30 To be decided by the class
12/2 To be decided by the class
Week 14
12/7 Conclusions
Final Paper – Due Monday, December 14