TuTh, 1:00 PM-2:15 PM, Location: TBA
Enrollment limited to 25 students
Carries COLL Intensive Writing Credit

Instructor: Phaedra C. Pezzullo
E-Mail: pezzullo@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier 206
Phone: 855-2106
Webpage: www.indiana.edu/~envtrhet

There are no simple answers about sex, gender, and sexuality today.
But, the questions remain as serious as ever before.  If your child
is born intersex (with both male and female sex organs), will you
operate immediately or not?  Why do assumptions about gender
continue to shape perceptions about what you should—or should not—do
for pleasure or for a living?  How does our culture both talk about
sex perhaps more than ever before in history and yet still struggle
with basic rights about sexuality, including sex education, safe
contraceptives, and the right to marriage?  This course is designed
with the belief that anything that ever has or ever will change our
cultural perceptions about sex, gender, and sexuality is grounded in
communication.  Whether it is the way we “send signals” with what we
wear or the way we vote for politicians that enforce silence or
debate the merits of the “War on Terror,” communication is vital.
In fact, without it, we would not even have words such
as “sex,” “gender,” and “sexuality.”

To ground our discussions in these times, we will focus on two main
arenas of public culture where communication practices of and about
sex, gender, and sexuality are negotiated: popular media and
policy.  First, we will explore the ways the popular media portray
everyday people and celebrities to come to terms with the way our
culture disciplines and punishes those of us who do not easily fit
into neat categories.  Second, we will focus on U.S. President
George W. Bush’s national and global policy decisions that impact
the lives of people every day.  Finally, we will focus on emergent
tactics of resistance used in the media and to change policy.
Informed by a rhetorical perspective, this class will require you to
develop your own voice in relation to these media discourses and
policy decisions by honing your written and oral argument skills.

Required texts:
* John M. Sloop (2004) Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex
Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture

* Laura Flanders, Editor (2004) The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women

* E-Reserves

As an Intensive Writing Course, course assignments include:
* 10% Engaged, informed, and thoughtful participation

* 15% Critical Media Paper (5 pages + works cited) on the rhetorical
construction of sex, sexuality, and/or gender in a specific media
text

* 20% Group Presentation on a policy debate impacting sex,
sexuality, and/or gender

* 25% Critical Policy Paper (5 pages + works cited) on the
rhetorical constructions of a specific policy about sex, gender,
and/or sexuality domestically or globally

* 30% Final Critical Paper (10 pages + works cited) a revision and
extension of one of the previous papers