GLBT4415: Transnational Body Politics

Our bodies are always already modified. How we shape our bodies can express our deepest feelings about who we are. Body modification can also represent cultural and subcultural identifications or expectations based on gender, race, class, and sexuality. But what we do with our bodies is never separate from the politics of cultural difference and fluctuating ideas of what is acceptable or unacceptable, civilized or uncivilized. These ideas are historically and culturally specific. This course looks at body modification on a transnational scale to ask how we come to know what differentiates "mutilation" from "correction." We ask how feminist, queer and critical race theories illuminate these debates, reading across historical, anthropological, medical, and literary texts. Weekly topics include gender, race, and cosmetic surgery; skin whitening technologies; transnational gender reassignment; surgical tourism; female genital cutting; piercing, tattooing and scarification; the cultural politics of hair; and body modification in the context of transnational feminized labor.

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