“Both courses directly related to my internship as well as to my experience in the city. They allowed me to better understand what was going on around me.”
Sara Goldstein, Kalamazoo College
Fall 2005
Women Organized Against Rape, Court Advocate
Electives
Exploring Relationships in Fiction and Film: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
Mark Andrew Clark, Ph.D.
This course examines our understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality and how they play a part in our developing relations with others. We will use fiction and film as our subject matter and specifically look at the perspectives an individual writer/director demonstrates around gender and sexual representations. With a critical attention to the ways people are culturally classified (heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, feminist, transgender, queer, etc.), we will investigate the meanings and effects these labels have on individuals and groups, as well as on relationships, generally. Also, we will discuss other topics connected with sex, gender, and sexuality: desire, obsession, possession, objectification, the erotic, exploitation, abuse, subjugation, rape, intimacy, commitment, friendship, and responsibility. Our explorations of these fiction and film texts will attempt to uncover, analyze, and critique our own assumptions, beliefs, behaviors, and practices.