Women’s

Feminist Theories of Embodiment

Elizabeth Boyle // boyle30@purdue.edu and Gender
Course Description:
Studies 200
In this course, we will examine feminist theories of embodiment. We will focus especially on
the body’s function as a socially, historically, and ideologically entrenched text. Our
discussions will emphasize the historically contingent values and beliefs embedded in and
inscribed upon the human body as well as how these values and beliefs develop over time.
Our discussions of these concerns will lead us to explore a number of different questions
related to gender and sexuality in literature: what is embodiment? what does it mean to think
about the human body as a social text? how do racialized, classed, and gendered human
bodies operate in popular culture? what do these theoretical and popular texts teach us
embodied human experience? what about our contemporary society can we learn from
reading these theoretical texts and applying them to popular culture?

Course Objectives:
– Read, discuss, and analyze feminist theories of
embodiment;
– Discuss foundational theoretical texts about
embodiment;
– Trace connections between theoretical texts
about embodiment and depictions of bodies in
popular culture;
– Hone the skills of critical reading, discussion,
analysis, and expository writing.

Required Materials:
– Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a
Corporeal Feminism (Indiana UP, 1994);
– A working, reliable internet connection;
– Printing funds and/or a personal printer.

Evaluation:
– Exams (50%): Each of the exams we take this semester is worth 15% of your final
grade. The exams will mark the end of each unit, which are organized as follows: Unit
1 (weeks 1-4); Unit 2, (weeks 5-9); Unit 3, (weeks 10-14). The first two exams will take
place during our regularly scheduled class meetings (during week 5 and week 10,
respectively) and the last exam will be held during finals week (time and location to
follow). If enough of the class is interested, we can schedule review sessions outside of
our regular class time.
– Class Discussion Prompts (15%): Once a week (with the exception of the first week),
you will submit a brief discussion board post (by 5pm the night before we meet)
listing two aspects of the reading you’d like us to address during that class or our
subsequent classes that week. You are free to choose the day you’d like to submit a
discussion prompt, but you should post once per week; this means that on exam
weeks you will have only two options for posting. In these prompts, you can ask a
question about a scene, theme, or historical detail, make an argument about a
connection between two readings, and/or call our attention to similarities/differences
between the present readings and past readings. We will draw on these discussion
board posts when conducting class discussion, so try to read your peers’ posts before
we meet.

– PEACH Reading Responses (20%): This semester, you will complete three “PEACH
Reading Responses” close reading assignments—one for each course unit. For each of
these assignments, select a 250-word passage from one of our assigned theoretical
readings we completed during that unit (you may select one we have discussed as
well as one we have not yet discussed in that unit). Then, write a 3-4-page response to
the ideas, concerns, and frameworks outlined in that work. For instance, you can use
these responses to practice using terms and concepts that are central to responding
to literary theory and understanding feminist theories of embodiment. You can also
apply these theories to a popular culture text that we have not discussed in class or
compare a particular theory to another one we’ve read. Ultimately, following the
PEACH (Passage, Explication, Analysis, Connection, and Hook) format, you will analyze
and respond to one theoretical text. Your post should quote a particularly pertinent
passage in a theoretical work; explain how it fits into the broader text; develop an idea
or comment you have about this passage; trace connections between this reading
and other readings we’ve already completed; and articulate how and why examining
this passage provides vital information about a particular concern commonly
addressed by feminist theories of embodiment.

– Worksheets (10%): We will complete worksheets each time we watch a film in class.
These worksheets will ask straightforward questions about plot, character
development, and literary devices. They are intended as a way for you to identify and
reflect on major narrative moments as well as trace connections to the feminist
theories of embodiment we discuss in class. You might draw on these worksheets
when writing your essays. You should be able to complete these worksheets by the
time we finish watching the film in class.
Course Calendar:
* All readings marked “web” are available via links on our course website. Sources listed with
citation information (author, essay title, journal, volume and issue number, date, and page
range) are available through the university library’s website. Grosz’s essays are available in
the copy of Volatile Bodies you purchased for this course.

week Topic: Course Introductions + What is a normal body?

Monday Wednesday Friday

1 Introduction to Course Threadcraft,

“Embodiment,” Oxford
Grosz, “Refiguring
Bodies,” Volatile Bodies
Handbook of Feminist
Theory (web) Davis, “Introduction:
Normal, Power, Culture,”
Cooper, The Disability Studies
“Intersectionality,” Reader (web)
Handbook of Feminist
Theory (web)

week Topic: Disciplining the Body

Monday Wednesday Friday

2 Foucault, “Panopticism”
and “Docile Bodies” (web)
Bordo, “The Body and
the Reproduction of
Viewing:
Harry Potter and the
Femininity,” Unbearable Prisoner of Azkaban
Weight (web)

week Topic: Gender and the Body

Monday Wednesday Friday

3 Viewing and Discussion:

Harry Potter and the
de Beauvoir, Introduction
to The Second Sex (web)
Waling, “Rethinking
Masculinity Studies:
Prisoner of Azkaban Feminism, Masculinity,
Butler, “Performative Acts and Postructural Accounts
and Gender Constitution: of Agency and Emotional
An Essay in Reflexivity,” Journal of
Worksheet Due Phenomenology and Men’s Studies (2018): 1-
Feminist Theory,” Theatre 19.
Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-
31.

Topic: Racialized Bodies

week Monday Wednesday Friday
Jackson, “Origins of Black Ahmed, “A Wiegman, “The Anatomy

4 Body Politics,” Scripting

the Black Masculine Body
Phenomenology of
Whiteness,” Feminist
of Lynching,” Journal of
the History of Sexuality 3.3
(web) Theory 8.2 (2007): 149- (1993): 445-67.
68.
hooks, “Eating the Other: Wright, “Between the
Desire and Resistance,” Hobson, “Body as World and Me” (web)
Black Looks (web) Evidence: The Facts of
Blackness, the Fictions of
Whiteness,” Body as
Evidence (web)

week Topic: Embodiment and Sexual Difference: A Dialogue

Monday Wednesday Friday

5 Irigaray, “This Sex Which

Is Not One” (web)
Butler, Introduction from
Bodies that Matter (web)
EXAM #1
Wittig, “One is Not Born Grosz, “Sexed Bodies,”
a Woman” (web) Volatile Bodies

week Topic: Queer Embodiment

Monday Wednesday Friday

6 Wittig, “The Straight

Mind” (web)
Goldie, “Dragging Out
the Queen: Male
Viewing and Discussion:
Ru Paul’s Drag Race
Femaling and Male
Ahmed, “Sexual Feminism,” Revealing
Orientation,” Queer Male Bodies (web)
Phenomenology (web)
Halberstam, “An
Introduction to Female
Worksheet Due
Masculinity: Masculinity
without Men,” Female
Masculinity (web)

Topic: Trans Bodies

Monday Wednesday Friday
week Elliot and Roen, Sullivan, Salamon, “Transfeminism
“Transgenderism and the “Transmogrification: and the Future of

7 Question of Embodiment:
Promising Queer
Politics?” GLQ 4.2 (1998):
(Un)Becoming Other(s),”
Transgender Studies
Reader (web)
Gender,” Assuming a
Body (web)

231-61).
Leung, “Unsung Heroes:
Reading Trans Subjects
in Hong Kong Action
Cinema,” Transgender
Studies Reader (web)

week Topic: Biology and the Body

Monday Wednesday Friday

8 Fausto-Sterling,” Of
Spirals and Layers”
Connell, “Men’s Bodies,”
Masculinities (web)
Hird, “Thinking about
‘Sex’ in Education,” Sex
Sex/Gender: Biology in a Education 3.3 (2003):
Social World (web) 187-200.

Fausto-Sterling, “Dueling Passage Interrogation

Dualisms,” Sexing the Due
Body (web)

week Topic: Disability and Embodiment

Monday Wednesday Friday

9 Garland-Thomson,
“Feminist Theory, the
Body, and the Disabled
Davis, “Visualizing the
Disabled Body,”
Enforcing Normalcy
Sui Sin Far, “The Chinese
Lily,” Mrs. Spring
Fragrance and Other
Figure,” Extraordinary (web) Stories (web)
Bodies (web)

Topic: Bodies in Pain

Monday Wednesday Friday
week Scarry, “Pain and Damasio, “Emotion and
EXAM #2 Imagining,” The Body in Feeling,” The Feeling of

10 Pain (web) What Happens (web)

week Topic: Lived Bodies

Monday Wednesday Friday

11 Viewing:
Inside Out
Viewing and Discussion:
Inside Out
Grosz, “The Body as
Inscriptive Surface,”
Volatile Bodies

Worksheet Due

week Topic: Lived Bodies, continued

Monday Wednesday Friday

12 Fraser, “The Inner Corset:

A Brief History of Fat in
Davis, “My Body Is My
Art: Cosmetic Surgery as
Frank, “The Body’s
Problem with Illness,” The
the United States,” Fat Feminist Utopia?” Wounded Storyteller
Studies Reader (web) European Journal of (web)
Women’s Studies 4.1
Bass, “On Being a Fat (1997): 23-37. Butler, “The Evening and
Black Girl in a Fat-Hating the Morning and the
Culture,” Recovering the Night” (web)
Black Female Body (web)

week Topic: Pregnant Bodies

Monday Wednesday Friday

13 Betterton, “Promising
Monsters: Pregnant
Viewing:
Children of Men
Viewing and Discussion:
Children of Men
Bodies, Artistic
Subjectivity, and Maternal
Imagination,” Hypatia
21.1 (2006): 80-100.
 Carter, “Beyond Control: Worksheet Due
Body and Self in Women’s
Childbearing Narratives,”
Sociology of Health and
Illness 32.7 (2010): 993-
1009.

week Topic: Future Bodies + Course Wrap-Up

14
Monday Wednesday Friday
Haraway, “A Cyborg Balsamo, “Forms of Viewing and Discussion:
Manifesto: Science, Technological Psycho-Pass
Technology, and Socialist- Embodiment: Reading
Feminism in the Late the Body in
Twentieth Century,” Contemporary Culture,”
Simians, Cyborgs and Body & Society 1.3-4
Women (web) (1995): 215-37.

Worksheet Due

finals
week EXAM #3: Date and Time TBA