Trans: Dangerous border violations
This course explores the media and technologies of identity, with emphasis on transgender and transsexuality across cultures and throughout history. We will: conduct a global historical survey of the practices of transsexual and transgendered people from antiquity to the present; review changes in scientific perspectives on the design and significance of the male/female body as well as intersexed and transsexual bodies; discuss gender, prosthetics, cyborgs, and the relation of the posthuman to media production; and explore the function of the transsexual figure in films, pulp fiction, and popular culture. You will produce physical and/ or digital projects, including video and film, as well as research papers, in line with the ACTLab emphasis on making.
Class is in studio and discussion format. This means that your active participation is a requirement of the course. During the semester we expect you to contribute your own ideas and arguments to the discussions, and to be willing to take the responsibilities and risks such contributions imply.
There are no written exams. Instead you will use the theories and tools you acquire during the semester to MAKE STUFF! about some aspect of postmodern gothic. What you make can be in any form: sound, installation, video, computer animation, collage, sculpture, assemblage, performance -- you name it. You will do this in stages, starting with simple projects and moving to more complex ones, using humor, irony, uncommon approaches, and bizarre techniques.
The syllabus for this course is available for your viewing.
Also here are the reading PDFs
The readings' table of contents
Biopolitics of postmodern bodies
And the Becoming Woman PDF reading
