CMLT 250 - Gender and Identity

What do the words “male,” “female,” “man,” and “woman” mean? Are “man” and “woman” simply nouns or (as eminent feminist theorist Judith Butler argues) are they also verbs, implying a performance of gender? Growing awareness of transgendered identities complicates simple binaries such as “man” and “woman” even further. Do these words refer to any natural bodily reality, or are they socially-constructed concepts? And what is “identity” anyway? Is it possible to “know thyself,” as the ancient Greeks exhorted us? Does a “true self ” even exist, or is the self, too, a social construction? In this class we will explore such challenging questions via the study of literature, theory, film, and other art forms from around the world, and we will examine how conceptions of gender and identity have changed over time and place. This course also counts for the Women and Gender Studies major/minor. WGS 226 (Group III) (Diversity)(Writing Option)