How do institutions, and the categories of gender they promote, shape our understandings of identity? How do law and medicine intersect with race and class to shape the way we express our sense of our gender? In the US, legal and healthcare systems work together to enforce gender conformity; how do transgender, nonbinary, and two-spirit people confront these institutions? This course explores the history of US laws, psychiatric treatment, and other rules and regulations pertaining to gender identity and expression, while tracking queer and trans resistance. Weekly readings draw from historical documents, theoretical analyses, psychological articles, cultural criticism, and autobiographical accounts. Students will write papers and give class presentations based on original research.

Visit Workday to view this information.