(please note this text was modified and mangled from www.sandystone.com, old actlab sites and unknown sources that showed up late one night.)
Trans:
Dangerous border violations
This course explores the media and technologies of identity and discourses of transition, with special emphasis on transgender across cultures and throughout history. We will: conduct a global historical survey of the practices of transgender 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 transgendered bodies; discuss identity, prosthetic, cyborg, mestiza, and the relation of the posthuman to media production; and explore the function of the Trans-embodied 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.
The course is in ACTLab studio format. This means we teach that thinking doesn't only take place in the head, but that our entire bodies are involved in learning (action methods), so besides making stuff you will have reading and listening assignments and movement exercises. For the first part of class we will discuss assigned readings. For the remainder of the time (i.e., most of class time) you will make stuff. What you make and how you make it will emerge from our interactions in class. You will produce a project every month -- a simple one, a more complex one, and a final project that sums up what you have learned during the semester. Projects can be in any form: sound, installation, video, computer animation, collage, sculpture, assemblage, performance -- you name it. You will use humor, irony, uncommon approaches, and bizarre techniques.
To download a sample syllabus in .pdf format Click Here
Links to downloadable course material:
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (excerpts)