Anglistik

Anglistik

Heike Mißler

Übung "Cultural Studies II UK and Ireland: Introduction to Gender Studies"
(Basismodul)
Mi 16-18 Uhr
C 5 3, Raum 408

Erste Sitzung: 26. Oktober 2016

Die Anmeldung findet im Rahmen des allgemeinen Verfahrens der Fachrichtung 4.3 statt. Bitte beachten Sie die Mitteilungen auf der Website der Fachrichtung und die Aushänge.

"Gender is a much contested concept, as slippery as it is indispensable, but a site of unease rather than agreement." (David Glover and Cora Kaplan, Genders ix)

Gender Studies are a field of research that has developed out of Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, and Gay and Lesbian Studies in the 1990s. One of its key aims, simply put, is to show why and how gender matters in our day-to-day existence and why a binary gender order is not only limiting but also discriminatory. This course will provide a historical overview of how our perceptions of sex and gender have changed over centuries, and how they have shaped our constructions of (sexual) identity. We are going to discuss selected ground-breaking texts of gender studies and combine these theoretical approaches with practical examples taken from our every-day lives (e.g., the bathroom issue, the gender pay gap, gendered marketing), and from literature and culture (e.g., the gendering of literary genres, the male gaze and the celluloid ceiling, the gender-bending performances of selected popstars). In our discussions, we are going to pay particular attention to the issue of intersectionality, i.e. how gender interacts with other identity categories such as race, class or ability.

You are expected to prepare a reading/viewing for each session.

Texts:
A course reader will be made available to you on Moodle at the beginning of the semester.

Proseminar "Queer Britain: Sexual Identities in Contemporary British Fiction and Film"
(Aufbaumodul 2: Aktuelle Fragestellungen der Genderforschung)
Do 14-16 Uhr
C 5 3, Raum U13

Erste Sitzung: 27. Oktober 2016

Die Anmeldung findet im Rahmen des allgemeinen Verfahrens der Fachrichtung 4.3 statt. Bitte beachten Sie die Mitteilungen auf der Website der Fachrichtung und die Aushänge.

"I cannot recall a time when I did not know that I was special." (Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 4)

In this course we are going to look at constructions of queer identities in Great Britain during the Thatcher years. Queer, as Annamarie Jagose puts it, "is very much a category in the process of formation," but it is generally understood either as "an umbrella term for a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications" or "a nascent theoretical model which has developed out of more traditional lesbian and gay studies". The three texts selected for this course are exemplary for their representations of non-normative sexualities and their intersections with race and class. Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) connects the life stories of two men, one young and one old, and contrasts their experiences of gay life in Britain before and after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexuality. Jeanette Winterson's coming-of-age novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1985) tells the story of a young woman's coming-out in a rural and very religious community in the North of England. Stephen Frears's film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), based on the screenplay by Hanif Kureishi, talks about the romance between a young Pakistani who runs a run-down laundrette and his school friend Johnny, who is involved with a neo-fascist street gang.

Please read Hollinghurst's novel before the start of term.

Texts:
Hollinghurst, Alan. The Swimming-Pool Library. 1988. London: Vintage, 2015. Print.
ISBN-10: 1784870315 / ISBN-13: 978-1784870317

Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. 1985. London: Vintage, 1996. Print.
ISBN: 0 09 993570 8 (if this edition is no longer available, get this one: ISBN-10: 0099598183 / ISBN-13: 978-0099598183)