WGSS 262
Language, Gender, and Sexuality Spring 2015
Division II
Cross-listed WGSS 262 / ANTH 262
This is not the current course catalog

Social scientists have long argued that gendered identities are “voiced” or performed. This insight draws our attention to the tremendous role that language and spoken interaction play in the reproduction and transformation of gendered relations and systems of sexuality. This class analyzes gendered and sexual difference through the lens of language and communicative practice. On one hand, we use the tools of linguistic anthropology to ask about how systems of gender and sexuality are reproduced through everyday interactions. On the other hand, we examine how interactive norms regarding gender and sexuality then shape political, economic, and social processes beyond face-to-face interactions. In doing so, we will read a range of ethnographic material, both from the US and beyond, that examines how gender shapes interactions, whether in the context of a basketball game, a medical training course, a courtroom, a religious revival movement, or an international crisis. We will put this material in critical conversation with theorists of gender and sexuality who have argued for the interactive, discursive nature of these categories, such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, asking what linguistic anthropology, in particular, can tell us about the connections between language, gender, and sexuality.