Femininities, Masculinities, and the Politics of Sexual Difference(s)
The 2003-2004 Seminar brought together fourteen faculty and advanced graduate students, visiting scholars from France, India, Korea, and the United States, and other university and community researchers for weekly conversations linked to the seminar theme. This year’s fellows, chosen from an unusually large group of applicants, represented a broad spectrum of departments and disciplines, including anthropology, political science, English, history, educational psychology, music, women’s and gender studies, and Germanic languages and literature.
During the 2003-2004 academic year, faculty and graduate student seminar fellows discussed their work-in-progress as it variously explored the changing forms and representations of femininities and masculinities; the social construction and fluidity of bodies and of sex differences; the ways in which sexual difference sustains and subverts the structures, institutions, and relationships of power; changing scientific understandings of sexual difference; masculinity, nationalism, and state policy; historical and contemporary constructions of sexual difference; and the paradox and politics of sexual difference, equality and parity.
