Crucial Differences in the 21st Century

Volledige vakbeschrijving

This course considers a variety of contemporary configurations of gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and class. You will learn to examine the way in which these ‘crucial differences’ are constituted in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, as well as to analyze the ways in which they function on sociocultural, political, and symbolic levels. The emergence of the various social movements during the 1960s and 1970s, such as the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, and gay and lesbian liberation, and their lasting impact on society today, serves as a starting point of the course. We will examine how these diverse movements have shaped and reshaped the form and content of the identity of various minorities on individual and collective levels. Special attention will be directed to theories of intersectionality, which examine how the interactions between multiple inequalities and social hierarchies shape personal and social experiences, as well as political strategies and policies. Subsequently, we will take a closer look at the complexity of such multiple inequalities, by tracing the entangled workings of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity through a variety of topical cases and questions. What was the role of social and embodied differences in the late twentieth century ‘ethnic conflicts’ in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia? How does the interaction of norms of gender and sexuality structure contemporary performances of identity? In what ways are current practices of terrorism and counterterrorism inflected by dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality? How do advanced technologies such as cosmetic surgery and new reproductive techniques impact the human body, and how do such practices function as ‘technologies’ of gender, race, and class? How is intersexuality viewed in the Western world, and why is it medicalized? How do constructions of whiteness function in a globalized world? How can we analyze and evaluate the emergence of sexual nationalisms across Europe today? Why do women’s sexual liberation and gay rights occupy such a prominent place in contemporary debates about Islam and multicultural citizenship? As these cases indicate, the course draws on a variety of geographical and cultural locations and contexts. Diversity is also exemplified in the interdisciplinary approach that characterizes gender and diversity studies as an academic field. The texts used in this course draw on theories and methods from disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, as well as from the fields of feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and queer studies. Through critical inquiry into concrete cases as well as major texts - including modern classics in the field such as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Joan Scott’s The Politics of the Veil - this course offers you dynamic ways to think through the complexities of our times, and to examine the multiple ways in which processes of identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality are produced and reproduced in ongoing flows of negotiation and transformation.