Reading the Technological Queer Body - Seminar in the City Fall 2004

	Starting June 2: Seminar in the City: Queer Migrations

SEMINARS IN THE CITY

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Fall 2004

Reading the Technological Queer Body

With Lisa Jean Moore, PhD, MPH, The College of Staten Island/The Graduate Center

Seminars in the City
Reading the Technological Queer Body

This Fall CLAGS will offer an innovative new Seminar in the City organized and moderated by CLAGS board member and CUNY professor Lisa Jean Moore, PhD, MPH, The College of Staten Island/The Graduate Center.

This seminar will explore the ways in which the human body has been an object of fascination from the beginning of the human species. In art, literature, science and economics, human bodies are represented and manipulated to create certain types of societies and cultures. In this course, we explore the interdisciplinary contributions to social and cultural studies of the human body. From a queer perspective, it is abundantly clear that race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and age are integral components of the human body. We will explore the construction of the perfect (heteronormative) body and how this creation is an exercise of social control. Using social commentary, sociological essays and fiction, we will come to understand the multiple ways the human body can be understood. This course will be heavily geared toward exploring recent technological innovations and their implications normative representations of human bodies.

Seminars will meet in a wheelchair-accessible room at the LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th Street in Room 410, on the following four Monday evenings from 6-8pm: September 20, October 18, November 8, and December 13.

September 20, 6-8pm
Theoretical grounding in queer scholarship from The Sociology of the Body
Social and Cultural Studies of Science, Medicine and Technology

October 18, 6-8pm
Human Anatomy: Case Study of the Clitoris
Rendering of human clitoris in historical anatomical texts and Web-based and CD ROM platforms.

Readings:
Moore, Lisa Jean and Adele E. Clarke. (2001). "The Traffic in Cyberanatomies: Sex/Gender/Sexualities in Local and Global Formations." Body and Society. 7(1): 57-96.

Moore, Lisa Jean and Adele E. Clarke. (1995). "Clitoral Conventions and Transgressions:Graphic Representations of Female Genital Anatomy, c1900-1991." Feminist Studies. 21(2): 255-301.

November 8, 6-8pm
Innovations in Reproduction: Case Study of Human Sperm Rendering of human sperm in children’s books, history of science, and DNA forensics.

Readings:
Moore, Lisa Jean. (2003). "Billy, the Sad Sperm with No Tail: Representations of Sperm in Children's Books. Sexualities. 6(3-4): 279-305.

Moore, Lisa Jean. (2002). "Extracting Men from Semen: Masculinity in Scientific Representations of Sperm." Social Text. 73. 1-46.

Moore, Lisa Jean and Matthew Allen Schmidt. (1999). “On the Construction of Male Differences: Marketing Variations in Technosemen.” Men and Masculinities. 1(4): 331-35.

December 13
Recent Biotechnological Innovations

Readings: To be announced

The Graduate Center . City University of New York . Room 7.115 . 365 Fifth Avenue . New York, NY 10016 . 212.817.1955 . clags@gc.cuny.edu