This
interdisciplinary course explores the concept of migration through narratives
of crossing geographical borders and gender boudaries. By putting novels,
memoirs, short films and graphic novels in conversation with history, sociology
and anthropology, we will consider the ways in which bodies are regulated by
political, legal, and economic forces as they come to occupy and invent new
spaces for themselves. Every 2–3 weeks we will explore a new topic through a
combination of literary narrative (fiction and non-fiction) as well as research
articles, frequently putting them into conversation and looking at how
different disciplines, genres, and mediums produce knowledge about sex, gender,
and sexuality. Topics for this course include: common tropes in transgender
literature and memoir (including the spatial metaphor of “border crossing” in
narratives of gender transition), cultural constructions of sex and gender
identity, the role that gender plays in migration for gender-variant subjects, the
current global paradigm of sexual rights as human rights, challenges to Western
ontologies of the ”transgender”, and the relationship between gender
nonconforming subjects and their families (both chosen and of origin).
- Teacher: Blase Provitola