DSSA-100 Gender and the Body   Tags: dialogues  

If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.
—Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric, 1855

"Body & Looks." Rawson's Dictionary of American Quotations. Chicago: Hugh Rawson, 1997. Credo Reference. Web. 19 October 2011.

Students will learn how to narrow their topics and determine the terms needed to search for information on that topic.

Students will learn how to find Students will learn what make a source scholarly.

Students will learn how to find the scholarly sources for their paper.

Students will become aware of the basic elements of an MLA citation.

Based on our readings and discussions in class, write an essay that that supports or refutes the following statement: “Violence/Violent behavior is normalized in our society.” There are no right answers here, only your position.  The goal for this assignment is for you to contemplate one/some of these questions:  How do we define violence against women’s bodies in our society? Do the disciplinary practices that construct femininity/masculinity normalize violent men? Does the society recognize and work toward stopping violence against women and/or violent masculinity?  You should use information from readings to support your position.  You may also use examples from your embodied experiences.  But the key here is make a clear statement about what you think it means to be embodied and explain it using support from your life and from the readings and at least one academic journal article.

Expository/Analytical Essay  - This course is rooted in the assumption that our identity, our understanding of our selves, is connected to cultural, social, and personal conceptions of our bodies.  If this is true, then we must ask in what capacity we can “re-write” the body as a means to redefine the self.  With that in mind, make a claim about a particular body practice/experience as a way to claim or reclaim a sense of self.  You should use course readings to support your claim, as well as two outside scholarly sources.  The goal of this essay is to clearly argue that a particular bodily experience/practice can be empowering for self-identity, and to provide support for that argument.