Winter 2019 - ANTH 350 - Dr. Seçil Daǧtaș 

Course Description 

What does gender mean in different cultural and historical settings? What role does it play in the organization of familial and social relationships, religious identities, symbolic systems, political movements and economic processes? How does it intersect with other markers of identity and difference such as class, religion, race, ethnicity and sexuality? Engaging with these questions in a comparative ethnographic framework, this course will examine why, when and how gender becomes an anthropological concern and how gendered bodies have been objects of study in anthropology. 

We will start with key theoretical texts that will help us reflect on our familiar models of gender and their usefulness in making sense of various social, affective and sexual practices across time and space. We will read about and discuss how gender is discursively and materially constructed in medical, scientific, religious, and social environments. We will then move on to identifying how gender norms, roles and systems are integral to the functioning of power and agency in the context of marriage, modernity, nationalism, colonialism, violence, religion, masculinity, intersex, and transgender. We will conclude the course with an ethnographic study on masculinity through the experiences of Egyptian men and women. 

Course Objectives 

By the end of this course, students will, 

• Develop and learn to apply knowledge of the ways in which gender roles, representations of the body, and normative prescriptions regarding sexual behavior are embedded in particular historical dynamics. 

• Develop tools to analyze and explain the ways in which normative ideas about gender intersect with other structures of power and difference. 

• Acquire intellectual familiarity with different theoretical points of view, including feminism, performativity, and queer perspectives, and learn to apply this knowledge in their own work. 

• Practice and improve their communications skills in written assignments and in verbal expression during class presentations and guided discussions about the reading materials.