James Cook University Subject Handbook - 2003

AN2014:03

Gender, Body and Culture *

Townsville, Cairns HECS Band 1

26 hours lectures, 12 hours tutorials. Semester 2.

Staff: Dr R Henry (Townsville campus); Dr M Fuary (Cairns campus).

The subject focuses on the centrality of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in anthropology, both for anthropologists themselves as practitioners as well as for the subjects/objects of the anthropological gaze. Gender as an analytical category and as lived experience is explored.

Learning Objectives:

  1. be able to understand the essential role played by gender in all human societies;
  2. come to critically view the multiple ways in which gender is elaborated in a variety of social and cultural contexts;
  3. demonstrate a critical ability to understand and engage in on-going theoretical debates about gender and the body;
  4. see gender as a construct that anthropologists study, as well as a construct within which anthropologists themselves operate;
  5. appreciate the diversity of theoretical approaches to the anthropological study of gender and the body;
  6. become very familiar with how gender as a social construct intersects with other forms and structures of social differentiation.

Assessment by tutorial participation and presentation (20%); class test (30%); major essay (50%).


* Offered in even-numbered years