WST 2611:
Humanities Perspectives on
Gender and Sexuality
Spring 2013 - Section 02E2/16H3

with Dr. Picart

Home Description Syllabus Course Materials Requirements Policies

 

Required Texts:

For this course, you will access texts from the following sources:

  1. Required paperback texts you can purchase through Amazon or any online book vendor;
  2. Readings made available online through Sakai for free;
  3. Optional supplementary texts are also available through the UF Library, through Ares and on reserve, when possible.

I have striven to make sure this course is as inexpensive as possible for you. For more details, see the Course Schedule below. You will be asked to watch a readily available commercial film as an assignment to be paired with a reading; as necessary, more obscure films or documentaries, whole or excerpted, will be shown in class at no cost.

List of Required Paperback Texts that Must be Purchased:

  1. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism), Johanna M. Smith, ed., 2nd ed., (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000). ISBN-13: 978-0312191269

    Book Description:  This revision of a widely adopted critical edition presents the 1831 text of Mary Shelley’s English Romantic novel along with critical essays that introduce students to Frankenstein from contemporary psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, gender, and cultural studies perspectives. An additional essay demonstrates how various critical perspectives can be combined. In the second edition, 3 of the 6 essays are new. The text and essays are complemented by contextual documents, introductions (with bibliographies), and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms.

  2. Anne Rice, The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, No. 3) (Ballantine Books, 1989).  ISBN:  978-0345351524

    Book Description: In a feat of virtuoso storytelling, Anne Rice unleashes Akasha, the queen of the damned, who has risen from a six-thousand-year sleep to let loose the powers of the night. Akasha has a marvelously devious plan to “save” mankind and destroy the vampire Lestat — in this extraordinarily sensual novel of the complex, erotic, electrifying world of the undead.

  3. Thomas Harris, Hannibal (Delta, 2005).  ISBN:  978-0385339483

    Book Description:  You remember Hannibal Lecter: gentleman, genius, cannibal. Seven years have passed since Dr. Lecter escaped from custody. And for seven years he's been at large, free to savor the scents, the essences, of an unguarded world.

    But intruders have entered Dr. Lecter's world, piercing his new identity, sensing the evil that surrounds him. For the multimillionaire Hannibal left maimed, for a corrupt Italian policeman, and for FBI agent Clarice Starling, who once stood before Lecter and who has never been the same, the final hunt for Hannibal Lecter has begun. All of them, in their separate ways, want to find Dr. Lecter. And all three will get their wish. But only one will live long enough to savor the reward....


  4. Julie Taylor, Paper Tangos (Public Planet Books) (Duke University Press, 1998).  ISBN:  978-0822321910

    Book Description:  Tango. A multidimensional expression of Argentine identity, one that speaks to that nation’s sense of disorientation, loss, and terror. Yet the tango mesmerizes dancers and audiences alike throughout the world. In Paper Tangos, Julie Taylor — a classically trained dancer and anthropologist — examines the poetics of the tango while describing her own quest to dance this most dramatic of paired dances.

    Taylor, born in the United States, has lived much of her adult life in Latin America. She has spent years studying the tango in Buenos Aires, dancing during and after the terror of military dictatorships. This book is at once an account of a life lived crossing the borders of two distinct and complex cultures and an exploration of the conflicting meanings of tango for women who love the poetry of its movement yet feel uneasy with the roles it bestows on the male and female dancers. Drawing parallels among the violences of the Argentine Junta, the play with power inherent in tango dancing, and her own experiences with violence both inside and outside the intriguing tango culture, Taylor weaves the line between engaging memoir and insightful cultural critique. Within the contexts of tango’s creative birth and contemporary presentations, this book welcomes us directly into the tango subculture and reveals the ways that personal, political, and historical violence operate in our lives.

    The book’s experimental design includes photographs on every page, which form a flip-book sequence of a tango. Not simply a book for tango dancers and fans, Paper Tangos will reward students of Latin American studies, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, dance studies, and the art of critical memoir.

 

 

Humanities Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality