Course Syllabus

Click here for a pdf of the syllabus

Instructor Information

Instructor: Dr. Kori Pacyniak
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
Email: kpacyniak@sdsu.edu (I try to respond w/in 24 hours M-F)

Office Location: Arts & Letters 342
Office Hours: Wednesdays 12:30pm - 1:30pm or by appointment 

Course Information

Class Day/Time: Mondays and Wednesdays 2:00pm - 3:15pm (in-person)
Class Location: Physics 149 (P 149) 

What Is This Class About?

This course focuses on the diversity of queer/trans identities in history and now. We will focus on trans lives and cultures, paying particular attention to intersections of ability, age, class, color, and sexuality with trans identities. Through a combination of first person narratives, theory, and popular culture, we'll look at stories and experiences of trans folks, including questions of oppression, joy, resistance, and navigating a cis normative world. 

Trans people have used their experiences to create theories about the world, using trans as a verb, as in “trans”-ing. This class will explore some of the conversations within the field that has come to be known as Trans Studies, including conversations about the relationship between race, gender and sexuality and the distinct contributions of trans culture.  

Catalog Description: Diversity of queer/trans identities in history and now. Trans lives and cultures to include oppression and resistance. Cis privilege and alliances. Intersections of ability, age, class, color, and sexuality with trans identities. 

What will you learn?

By the end of this this course you will be able to:

  • Define Trans Studies as a form of theorizing, activism, and cultural production. Identify key terms, concepts, and ideas in the field of Trans Studies.
  • Describe the construction of the sex and gender binary in the Americas during European imperialism and beyond.
  • Describe the history of gender non-normative, gender transgressive, non-binary and transgender people in the United States and beyond, including the criminalization, medicalization, and administration of gender variance.
  • Evaluate the possibilities and limitations of trans as a social identity.
  • Identify the contributions of trans culture to dominant culture and other marginalized cultures, including queer culture. Analyze trans cultural productions.

This course satisfies the General Education graduation requirements for Explorations in the Humanities and Fine Arts. Goals for GE Courses in the Humanities and Fine Arts:

  • Analyze written, visual, or performed texts in the humanities and fine arts with sensitivity to their diverse cultural contexts and historical moments.
  • Develop a familiarity with various aesthetic and other value systems and the ways they are communicated across time and cultures.
  • Argue from multiple perspectives about issues in the humanities that have personal and global relevance.
  • Demonstrate the ability to approach complex problems and ask complex questions drawing upon knowledge of the humanities.

What will you read?

Required Books: These are books that we’ll be reading all or most of. It’s useful for you to have access to them for that reason. 

Optional Books: These are either books that I think are a useful resource or that we’ll be reading selections from. Any readings from these books will be posted on canvas, but maybe you’re the type of person who wants to have all the books.  

Other required readings will be made available digitally on Canvas. 

n.b. - If there’s something you think would be interesting for us to read/watch together as a class, don’t hesitate to let me know! 

IMPORTANT: Day1Ready Program Day1Ready is a digital-first flat rate course materials program for all undergraduate students. This program provides each student access to all of their required course materials by the first day of class for one flat rate of $21.75 per unit/credit. The SDSU Bookstore has negotiated with the top publishers to get the lowest pricing on textbooks and is passing those savings to all undergraduate students. Yes, you can opt out of the program on or before the add/drop deadline. You will be opting out of Day1Ready for all of your classes, not on a class-by-class basis. For those opting out, you will need to secure your own course materials. Digital and print materials will be available at the Bookstore and through EZ Books (https://ezbooks.sdsu.edu).” 

 

Course Schedule

A syllabus is a living document and the schedule is subject to change with fair warning. Any changes will be made through an announcement in class, and also posted and distributed through the messaging system on Canvas.



course reading schedule

Week/Date

Readings

Deadlines & Due Dates

Introductions, Overview, and Language:
Core Concepts, Terminology, Vocabulary & Why it Matters

Week 1
Mon Aug 25

Week 1 

Wed, Aug 27

Jen Manion, "The Performance of Transgender Inclusion: The Pronoun Go-Round and the New Gender Binary"

Dean Spade, "We Still Need Pronoun Go-Rounds"

Intro slide due 

Week 2

Mon, Sep 1 

Labor Day - NO CLASS 

Week 2

Wed, Sep 3 

Susan Stryker, "Chapter 1: Contexts, Concepts, and Terms" in Transgender History (2017)

Week 3
Mon, Sep 8

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 1:  Sex and Gender: Stories and Definitions” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

Week 3
Wed, Sept 10

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 2: Sexual Orientation: Stories and Definitions,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

DeConstructing & DeColonizing Gender:
Global Gender Diversities

Week 4
Mon, Sept 15

Ardel  Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 7:  Global Gender Diversity

throughout the Ages

We Have Always Been

with You,” in  Introduction to Transgender Studies. 

Week 4
Wed, Sept 17

Deborah Miranda, “Extermination of the Joyas: Gendercide in Spanish California”

Saylesh Wesley, “Two-Spirited Woman”Saylesh Wesley, “Two-Spirited Woman”

both in Transgender Studies Reader Remix 

Week 5
Mon, Sept 22

Kit Heyam, “ ‘The majesty of Him my daughter’ Colonising gender roles in West Africa,” Chapter 1 in Before We Were Trans

Week 5
Wed, Sept 24

Kit Heyam, “ ‘Because of the manifestation of the Spirit’ Gender, spirituality and survival in North America and South Asia,” Chapter 6 in Before We Were Trans

Week 6
Mon, Sept 29

Ardel  Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 10: Gender Diversity in Artifacts, Art, Icons, and Legends from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Classically Trans,” in  Introduction to Transgender Studies. 

Week 6
Wed, Oct 1

Mary Weismantel, “Towards a Transgender Archaeology: A Queer Rampage Through Prehistory,” in Transgender Studies Reader Remix

“Decolonizing Transgender,” in Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ) 

Week 7
Mon, Oct 6

Kit Heyam, “ ‘She liked me in my greatcoat and hat’ Fashion and trans panic in early modern Europe,” Chapter 2 in Before We Were Trans

Week 7
Wed, Oct 8

Kit Heyam, “ ‘I am both man and woman’ Defiant bodies in early America and beyond,” Chapter 5 in Before We Were Trans

Week 8
Mon, Oct 13

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 8: Four Historical Figures Who Cross-Dressed: The Adventurer, the Ambassador, the Surgeon, and the Seamstress,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

Week 8
Wed, Oct 15

Kit Heyam, “ ‘I took especial pleasure in masquerade costumes’ Living and performing as women in First World War internment camps,” Chapter 2 in Before We Were Trans

Legislating Transgender:
Science, Technology, Healthcare, and the Government

Week 9
Mon, Oct 20 

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 3: Modern Sexology: The Science of Objectification, or the Science of Empowerment,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

Week 9
Wed, Oct 22

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, “Case 131: Gyandry,” from Psychopathia Sexualis

Magnus Hirschfeld, “Case 13” from The Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress


Both in Transgender Studies Reader Remix

 

Week 10
Mon, Oct 27

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 5: Navigation Binary Spaces: Bathrooms, Schools, Sports,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

Week 10
Wed, Oct 29

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 6: Navigating Government Documents, Work, and Healthcare: I’ll need to see Some I.D. with that,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

Transgender Histories and Stories (a sampler)

Week 11
Mon, Nov 3

Kit Heyam, “ ‘A feminine soul confined by a masculine body’ The entangled history of gay and trans experience,” Chapter 4 in Before We Were Trans 

Week 11
Wed, Nov 5

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 4: Direct Action, Collective Histories, and Collective Activism: What a Riot!,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

Week 12
Mon, Nov 10

Susan Stryker, “Chapter 3: Trans Liberation,” in Transgender History 

Week 12
Wed, Nov 12

Susan Stryker, “Chapter 4: The Difficult Decades,” in Transgender History 

 

Trans and… Race, Ethnicity, and Religion

Week 13
Mon, Nov 17

Simon Elin Fisher, “Pauli Murray’s Peter Panic  Perspectives from the Margins of Gender and Race in Jim Crow America,” in TSQ

Francisco J. Galarte, “Transgender Chican@ Poetics: Contesting, Interrogating, and Transforming Chicana/o Studies,” in Transgender Studies Reader Remix 

Week 13
Wed, Nov 19

From Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2018)

Melissa M. Wilcox, "Religion Is Already Transed; Religious Studies Is Not (Yet) Listening"

Joy Ladin, "In the Image of God, God Created Them: Toward Trans Theology" 

Week 14
Mon, Nov 24

NO CLASS

Week 14
Wed, Nov 26

NO CLASS 

Trans Creations & Creativity

Week 15
Mon, Dec 1 

Ardel Haefele-Thomas, “Chapter 11: Trans Literature, Performing Arts, Music and Visual Arts: The Art of Resistance/The Art of Empowerment,” in Intro to Transgender Studies. 

 

Week 15
Wed, Dec 3

From The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature, read 2 of the following:

Margaret Galvan, “Comics as Trans Literature”
Tara Etherington, “Manga as Trans Literature”

Michelle Deininger, “Young Adult Literature as Trans Literature”
Dean Leetal, “Fan Fiction as Trans Literature”

 

Trans Studies, the Academy, and the Future

Week 16
Mon, Dec 8

Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” in Transgender Studies Remix

 

Week 16
Wed, Dec 10 

Kit Heyam, “Epilogue: Now We Are Trans,” from Before We Were Trans

Dec 12-18 Finals

No Final Exam