LBST 528 - Body Politics

This course explores the politics of embodiment in relation to gender, race, class, sexuality, and dis/ability. We will examine the ways that bodies are objectified and commodified, marked as deviant or abnormal, and explore where processes of sexed, raced, gendered, and able-bodied normalization intersect and diverge. We will consider practices of resistance to and through these categories and how people or movements take up, contest, resignify, or refuse them. We will also look at conceptual and normative debates surrounding controversial bodily practices (autonomy and alienation in sex work; biocapital in surrogacy and organ donation; the self and genetic ancestry testing) from a range of perspectives: liberal humanist, radical and phenomenological, intersectional and black feminism, and queer theory. Topics range from the marriage contract and reproductive justice to turn-of-the-century sexology and the modern freak show to the science of homosexuality, the pleasures of trans and queer embodiment, and the biopolitics of HIV/AIDS.

Unit(s): 0.5
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Graduate course. Offered fall 2023.