WGSS 4026 - Female Trouble: The Pathologies of Femininity, Femininity as Pathology

Hours: 4
Mad, sick, and unpredictable women: they seem to be stock trade in narrative, film and media, the arts, and cultural mythology. As a result, it is hard not to conclude that there seems to be something unwell about femininity itself. In this course, we will examine the disordered and diseased women that both symbolize and stand in for the excesses and deficits of femaleness: the hysteric, the anorexic, the agoraphobic, the depressive, the cutter, the invalid, the sexually promiscuous, and the sexually averse. In the course of the semester, we will consider the way that these “troubled women” are represented and contained within a wide range of texts and artifacts: personal memoir, the narrative arts, psychological tracts, performance art, film and media, and popular cultural references. Feminist critical scholarship will inform our study and help shape the questions we ask about the easy and seemingly inevitable relationship between pathology and femininity.
Notes: This course fulfills the dyad requirement when paired with one course from among ARTH 3300, COMM 4100, FMST 3281, INST 3501, INST 3504, INST 4011, WGSS 3010.

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WGSS 4026 - Female Trouble: The Pathologies of Femininity, Femininity as Pathology