Feminists and anthropologists have produced voluminous work on the body as a site of gendered and sexualized practices. Building on this rich corpus of literature, the course uses the body as a point of entry to examine the constructions and meanings of gender, health and reproduction, and their constitution of social differentiation. By using various cross-cultural examples, we will discuss how gender, racial, and class differences are enacted and manifested in the divisions of social spaces and in bodily conduct, function, hygiene, and sickness. In its entirety, the course attempts to introduce students to the complexity of the local and global processes underlying the cultural production of gender identities and social differentiation.

Course Requirements:

Requirements include active participation, a mid-term paper, and a final group project.