Sexualities

Semester and Year Offered: 1st Semester

Course Coordinator and Team: TBD

Email of course coordinator: TBD

Pre-requisites: Students should be registered for MA Gender Studies Course Objectives/Description: The aim of the course is to perform a genealogy of the word “sexuality”? When does sexuality and the formation of human subject and identity become interlinked with each other? How does identity uproot itself from the sphere of nation, class and other placeholders to join itself with an identity through sexuality? Moreover, what kind of politics therefore sexuality/sexualities inaugurate? How does sexuality therefore bleed into structures of rights, governmentality and more importantly, how do structures of power reshape it to make it governable? The purpose of the course with a larger political bend in mind and an argument against a politics of identity. Rather than proposing counter-publics, marginalized solidarities, the course moves away from recognization and solidarity through identities, forcefully articulating its pitfalls and proposes a politics where identity is absolved from a political sphere. It moves from a politics of representation to a politics of immanence.

Course Outcomes: On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1. Identify key aspects of Sexualities in theory and practice.
2. Demonstrate ability to engage with diverse sexualities.
3. Learn to develop critical questions and link this with the question of sexualities.
4. Demonstrate a knowledge of skills required to read a range of perspectives on sexualities.
5. Capability to understand the idea of alternative sexualities.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules

1. The first part of the course unpacks the word “sexuality” through several lenses. When did talking about sex gain prominence? And what ways was it talked about? Exculpating the contours through medicine, psychiatry, demography studies, the first part of the course punctuates with the emergence of homosexual as a “sexual identity”.
2. In the second part of the module, the course begins the journey through this queer identity. Predicated on two words “to be in a closet” and “ kinships outside marriage”, the course probes the question of when , how and what does it mean by “coming out” or in a different vein “ should one make this identity recognizable.
3. The third part of the course shifts to this politics of intimacy and with it the problematization of public and private. Beginning with a history of dating, the course looks at production and governing of families through sex.
4. Finally the last part of the course fleshes it politics, a departure from „resentiment‟ articulated in identity politics towards different ways of navigation and collectivization.

Assessment Details with weights:

• 40% for presentation
• 40% for written submission
• 20% class attendance and participation

Reading List: Foucault, M. :History of Sexuality Volume 1 Donzelot, J. :The policing of Families Sedgewick, E : Epistemology of the Closet Butler, J. : Is kinship always already heterosexual? Weigel, Moira : History of Dating Deleuze G. and Guattari Felix. Anti-Oedipus : Preface and Introduction Deleuze G. and Guattari Felix. A Thousand Plateaus : Selection of Plateaus to be taught Halberstam, J. In a Queer time and place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: NYU Press. Chapter 1 Dinshaw, Carolyn, et al. "Theorizing queer temporalities: A roundtable discussion." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13.2 (2007): 177-195. January 24 Bodies Foucault, Michel. The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Springer, 2008. Chapter One. Repo, Jemima. "The life function: The biopolitics of sexuality and race revisited." Theory & Event 16.3 (2013). Butler, Judith. "I: Critically Queer." glq 1 (2000): 17-32. Butler, Judith. "Sexual politics, torture, and secular time." The British journal of sociology 59.1 (2008): 1-23. Names Bhan, Gautam. "Seeking Chaos: The Birth and Intentions of Queer Politics." Sarai Reader 6 (2006): 401-406. Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of other spaces." diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22-27. Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. "Sex in public." Critical inquiry 24.2 (1998): 547-566. 4 Phadke, Shilpa. "„You Can Be Lonely in a Crowd‟ The Production of Safety in Mumbai." Indian Journal of Gender Studies 12.1 (2005): 41-62. Puar, Jasbir. "Citation and censorship: The politics of talking about the sexual politics of Israel." Feminist Legal Studies 19.2 (2011): 133-142. Ahmed, Sara. "Orientations: Toward a queer phenomenology." GLQ: A journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12.4 (2006): 543-574. Narrain, Arvind. "The articulation of rights around sexuality and health: Subaltern queer cultures in India in the era of Hindutva." Health and Human Rights (2004): 142-164. April 4 Music Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Vol. 2. U of Minnesota Press, 1999. Chapter 1, 2 Halberstam, J. Jack. Gaga feminism: Sex, gender, and the end of normal. Vol. 7. Beacon Press, 2012. Introduction. Shange, Savannah. "A king named Nicki: strategic queerness and the black femmecee." Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 24.1 (2014): 29-45. Pabón, Jessica N., and Shanté Paradigm Smalls. "Critical intimacies: hip hop as queer feminist pedagogy." Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 24.1 (2014): 1-7. Venkit, Varun Ramnarayan, Anand Sharad Godse, and Amruta Anand Godse. "Case study: the value of group drumming for women in sex work in Mumbai, India." Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing: International Perspectives on Practice, Policy and Research (2015): 325. April 11 Art Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Vol. 2. U of Minnesota Press, 1999. Chapter 3,4. Satpathy, Sumanyu. "Ethics of represeNtATION: media and the Indian queer." (2005). Cullity, Jocelyn, and Prakash Younger. "Sex appeal and cultural liberty: A feminist inquiry into MTV India." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 25.2 (2004): 96-122. Moffatt, Ken. "Dancing without a Floor: The Artists Politic of Queer Club Space." Canadian Online Journal of Queer Studies in Education 2.1 (2006). 5

Zizek. Slavoj. “The Sexual is Political.” The Salon Magazine. Philosophicalsalon.com. 1 Aug 2016. Web. 2 Nov. 2016 Dave, Naisargi N. "Activism as ethical practice: Queer politics in contemporary India." Cultural Dynamics 23.1 (2011): 3-20. Narrain, Arvind. "Rethinking Citizenship A Queer Journey." Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14.1 (2007): 61-71