TR 2:30-3:50 Kauke 244
While it is simple and easy to tell how men and women differ anatomically, it takes some study to know how such biological or physiological differences become signified and elaborated culturally from one historical period to another, or from one society to another. A survey of woman’s diverse experiences as represented in Chinese myth, fable, legend, folk-lore, history, philosophy, religion, poetry, secular narrative fiction, music and film, the course puts under critical scrutiny the aesthetics and ethics used to idealize women, and introduces the concept of the whole woman as a key to understanding the formation of female gender identities. We also study how men and women write differently about such cultural institutions as motherhood, womanhood, concubinage, arranged marriage, female sexuality and chastity, especially as more and more women have begun writing about their own experiences. The theoretical focus is on constructions of the feminine in a patrilineal society.