LARTS 468 Bio-Culture: Nature, Gender & Sexuality
This course examines three recent trends in Cultural Studies: Green Cultural Studies, Gender Theory, and Queer Theory. These fields investigate what is “natural” and what is socially constructed about nature, gender, and sexuality, respectively, working toward more complex understandings of binaries including nature/culture, nature/nurture, and the biological/cultural. In addition to asking what nature, gender, and sexuality are, we will explore what they mean in contemporary culture. How do our understandings of these terms affect our interactions with human and nonhuman others; our social structures and ecological values; and our sense of identity, performance of identity, and self-expression? What does it mean to live in an era of ecological crisis, gender-bending, and polarized public discourse on sexuality? What are the implications of the ways we represent nature, gender, and sexuality in the arts and popular culture?