GSWS 1130 - GENDERED BODIES

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Long Description For centuries, the biological sciences have embraced the human body as a product of nature in need of study, measurement, and treatment. Much of this knowledge has contributed to discourses of "normal" and "healthy" bodies. However, contemporary social science and feminist perspectives offer alternative readings of the human body as a social construction based upon cultural conventions and perceptions of gender, race, class, and sexuality. As Lorber and others have argued, "the result is a gendered body, produced for a gendered social world." This class will examine a wide variety of gendered social constructions of the human body at work, in sports, and in media images that reflect standards and ideals of "beauty," "health" and "deviance." We will also consider the meaning of gendered bodies in light of contemporary technologies - such as plastic surgery, steroids, infertility treatments - that help to reveal the ways in which males, females, and "others" become "men" and "women."
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis

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