Sex & Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective investigates and compares
different constructions of sex and gender around the world.  The
course asks how cross-cultural variations force us to rethink
assumptions about bodies, sexuality, gendered social roles, and work
and family.  How do people in different cultures come to consider
and express themselves as "men", "women", or something else?  What
are the social forces that constrain them to act and think as
gendered persons?  Most importantly, what are the potential
consequences of not conforming to those norms?  The course will also
consider how global forces such as militarism and religious
fundamentalism influence sex and gender formations.  This course
will also focus on the development of structures, meanings, and
formations of sex, gender, and sexuality in different historical,
national, geo-cultural, racial and class contexts.  A main focus
will be an assessment of debates in transnational and third world
feminisms and queer diasporas concerning the oppression of women, as
well as the regulation and suppression of various gender and sexual
formations in different cultural sites both within Euro-America and
beyond.