History 4090-Fall2021.pdf

History 4090

Sexuality in the Americas:

Genders and Sexualities in Latin America

 

Fall 2021                                                                                                         Enrique C. Ochoa (they/them)

T TH 12:15-1:30                                                                                             Office Hours:

Simpson Tower F912                                                                                          In Person (KH C4077a):TR 1130-12:00;

                                                                                                                                                R 5-6 PM; by apt.

                                                                                                                                    Zoom:                                                                                                                                                                           W 12PM-2PM and by apt.                                                                                                                                     https://calstatela.zoom.us/j/95538573390                                                                                                                             eochoa3@calstatela.edu

 

This course examines the constructions of genders and sexualities in Latin American history. Throughout the course we explore what gender, sex, and sexualities have meant to different groups, sectors, and states across time and space. Using decolonial and intersectional feminist approaches, we will interrogate the ways that coloniality shapes the constructions of cis-heteropatriarchy in societies marked by race and class inequalities.  We will explore the various ways that different Latin Americans have sought to control their bodies in the face of state and church power and the extent to which these struggles have been linked to broader liberation movements.

 

Throughout our chronologically organized course, we will examine the construction of gender and sexuality in different periods, the role of the state and church in these constructions, people’s distinct lived-experiences, and individual and collective efforts to challenge hegemonic gender and sexual identities.

 

We will use critical and collective pedagogical approaches influenced by popular educational praxis in Latin America to draw on our collective knowledges, experiences and ways of knowing. We will work together collectively to develop research and community projects highlighting how many Latin Americans have struggled for gender justice. In the process, we will critically examine and how historians and scholars have studied genders and sexualities in Latin American and draw connections between knowledge constructions and power relations.

 

Student Learning Outcomes

      Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand the basic themes and issues of the histories of genders and sexualities in Latin America.
• Identify the main historical arguments in the study of genders and sexualities.
• Understand the connections between power, coloniality, knowledge constructions, and their embodied manifestations
• Analyze primary sources.
• Develop collective and community building skills and collective knowledge production and historical research.
• Develop skills of presenting and leading workshops.
• Develop writing skills.
• Develop oral communication skills.

 

Required Reading

The books listed below are required reading for this course. They are available in the campus bookstore, as ebooks on the library site, and/or on CANVAS. The assigned articles are listed in the course outline below and are all posted on CANVAS. 

1.     Sonya Lipsett Rivera, The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico (UNM, 2019).

2.     Patricia Galvão, The Industrial Park [1933]. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1993.

3.     Pedro Lemebel, My Tender Matador [1986]. Grove, 2003

4.     Margaret Randall, Haydeé Santamaria Cuban Revolutionary (Duke, 2015)

5.     Macarena Gómez-Barris, Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas. U.C. Press 2018.

 

 

Suggested Reading (ebooks on library website)

1.     William French and Katherine Bliss eds. Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). (GSP)

2.     Nora Jaffary. Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905. (UNC Press, 2016).

 

Course Requirements, Expectations, and Grading Policy

The final course grade will be calculated based on the following components:

 

1. Attendance, Class Participation, and Class Facilitation (20%). Community building and active critical participation by all is a crucial aspect of an effective class and society. Participation includes coming to class with the readings completed and prepared to discuss them and being actively engaged in the class. Occasionally, short thought pieces will be written in class and graded on a credit/no credit basis. The breakdown for this grade will be evenly distributed between attendance, daily participation, and in class assignments. Each student will work collectively with other students to facilitate one class discussion based on a class reading. Groups should plan for discussions to last approximately 45 minutes. On the day of your facilitation, you will each submit a 2 page write up of goals and major points of your facilitation. Your paper should discuss both the content and the pedagogy of the facilitation.

 

2. Critical and Creative Reflective Essays (CCRE) (40%). Throughout the course there will be 5 CCRE’s assigned. These are aimed at helping you to critically link the various course materials and themes together for a given section. Each reflection/response with be 3 double-spaced pages in length. Students will receive a specific prompt for the assignment two weeks before it is due. You are only responsible for 4 of the 5 assigned CCREs. If you do all 5, your highest 4 grades will be recorded.

Due Dates: 9/9; 9/28; 10/28; 11/16; 12/2.

 

3. Gender Justice Critical Public History Project (20%). Students will work collectively in groups of 4-5 to develop a research-based project on a particular gender justice movement or struggle in Latinoamérica/Abya Yala. You will research the movement or struggle that you choose and explore its goals, history and context, trajectory, organization, approaches to gender and sexuality, the extent to which it is holistic and intersectional (addresses issues of race, class, gender, and otros saberes), and its connection to other social movements in the country and internationally. You should develop a project related to the class aimed to reach a general audience. You can do this through social media, videos, newsletter, graphic booklet, zine, etc. You should determine the kind of project to create and where to stage it based on the ethos of the movement you are researching. The project must be completed week 15. DUE: 12/9.

 

4. Gender Justice Critical Public History Essay (20%). DUE 12/16. You will then each write a 5-page paperdiscussing your project and its relationship to the course.

 

 

COVID-19 Campus Information

Returning to campus and in-person instruction will be a transition for all of us, but we will navigate it together. Please know that your safety and your learning are a priority.

 

The CSU requires all faculty, staff and students who are accessing University facilities to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 30, 2021, unless you have an approved exemption. Masks are required at Cal State LA while indoors. Accordingly, all students are required to wear an appropriate mask that covers the nose and mouth in order to participate in this course. Wearing a mask outdoors when in a group or populated area is also recommended.

 

Find more details about campus COVID-19 protocols and answers to frequently asked questions on Health Watch. Policies and requirements regarding COVID-19 may change based on campus, local, state and/or federal guidelines; the Health Watch page is the best resource for current Cal State LA information.  

Course Policies

• All assignments will be uploaded through the course’s canvas site.
• Unless you have special permission from me, all assignments are due on the date indicated. Late essays will be penalized 1/3 grade per every two days late up to a maximum of one full grade.
• Statement of Reasonable Accommodation-The faculty fully support the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The members of the faculty will provide reasonable accommodation to any student with a disability who is registered with the Office of Students with Disabilities (OSD) who needs and requests accommodation. The OSD will arrange and provide for the accommodation.  Reasonable accommodation may involve allowing a student to use an interpreter, note taker, or reader; accommodation may be needed during class sessions and for administration of examinations.  The intent of the ADA in requiring consideration of reasonable accommodation is to allow a student with a disability an equal opportunity to be successful.
• If you are unable to complete the course requirements, you must request an incomplete. If you do not, I will submit a grade of a “U.”

 

 

Course Outline

Week 1

8/24                 Introduction to Genders and Sexualities in Latin America

Song: Ana Tijoux, “Antipatriarca”

 

8/26                 Studying the Histories of Genders and Sexualities

Read: Gender, Education and Power Quotes; Berta Caceres, “Goldman Prize Acceptance Speech (2015).”

Song: Maya Jupiter, “I Am.”

View: Kimberley Crenshaw, “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” TED Talk (2016).

https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en

 

Week 2

8/31                 Approaches to Studying Genders and Sexualities

Read: 1. Bamby Salcedo. “Aquí Estoy.” Diálogo 18:2 (2015): 183-184;

2. Nancy Morejon, “Mujer Negra.”
3. Aurora Levins Morales, “Child of the Americas.”
4.   Mikeas Sánchez, “Jesus Never Understood My Grandmother’s Prayers”

 

View: Gender in Theory (12min).

         https://www.coursera.org/lecture/gender-sexuality/gender-in-theory-DSV5k

 

9/2                   Studying the History of Sexuality in Latin American

 Read:  Aurora Levins Morales, “The Historian as Curandera” in Medicine Stories (South End Press, 1998).

 

Week 3

9/7                   Historiography of Gender and Sexuality in Latin America

Read:  1. Pete Sigal, “Latin America and the Challenge of Globalizing the History of Sexuality,” American Historical Review 114, no. 5 (December 2009): pp. 1340-1353.

2. Heidi Tinsman, “A Paradigm of Our Own: Joan Scott in Latin American History,” American Historical Review (December 2008).

 

9/9                   Gender in Americas on the Eve of Colonization

Read: Susan Kellogg, “Of Warriors and Working Women: Gender in later Prehispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes,” chapter 2 of Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America’s Indigenous Women (Oxford 2005).

                                    Due: CCRE #1.

 

Week 4 

9/14                 Church and Gender and Sexuality

Read: Zeb Tortorici, “’Heran Todos Putos’: Sodomitical Subcultures and Disordered Derise in Early Colonial Mexico,” Ethnohistory 54:1 (Winter 2007).

 

9/16                 Colonizing Gender

Read: 1. Lipsett Rivera, The Origins of Macho, chapter 1;

2. Nora Jaffary, “The Evolution of Virginity,” in Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905. (UNC Press, 2016), chap 1.

 

Suggested Reading: Asunción Lavrin, “Sexuality in Colonial Latin American,” Oxford Handbook of Latin American History (Oxford, 2010), pp. 132-152;

 

Week 5

9/21                 Colonizing Bodies and Reproduction

Read: Nora Jaffary, “Contraceptions and Abortion,” in Reproduction and Its Discontents, chapter 3.

 

9/23                 Subverting Colonial Gender Regimes

Read: Maria Elena Martínez, “Archives, Bodies, and Imagination: The case of Juana Aguilar and Queer Approaches to History, Sexuality, and Politics” in Radical History Review #120            (Fall 2014).

    

Week 6

9/28                 Constructing Masculinity

Read: Lipsett Rivera, The Origins of Macho, chapters 2 and 3.

                             Due: CCRE #2

 

9/30                 Masculinity, Work, and Public Space

Read: Lipsett Rivera, The Origins of Macho, chapters 4-6.

Facilitation Group #1

                            

Week 7  

10/5                 Gender Justice Project Planning Day

 

10/7                 Gender Performance and Fluidity

    Read: Windler, “Madame Durocher’s Performance,” GSP, chap 2.

 

Week 8

10/12               Reformism, (Pseudo)Science, Eugenics, and Positivism

Read: Bronfman, “Mismeasured Women,” GSP, chap 3 OR Piccato, “Sexuality and Violence in Belem Prison,” GSP, chap 4.

Facilitation Group #2

 

10/14               Capitalist Restructuring and Gendered Labor

Read: 1. Galvão, The Industrial Park, begin.

 

Week 9

10/19               Reading Day

    Read: Galvão, The Industrial Park.

 

10/21               Worker and Revolutionary Organizing

    Read: Galvão, The Industrial Park, complete.

         Facilitation Group #3

 

Week 10

10/26               Gender on the Banana Plantations of Honduras 

Read: Portillo Villeda, “’Life and Labor in the Banana Fincas” chap 3 of Roots of Resistance: A Story of Gender, Race and Labor on the North Coast of Honduras (U Texas Press, 2021).

                       

10/28               Nationalisms and Modernizing Hetero-Patriarchy

Read: 1. Gabriela Cano, “Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles’s (Transgender) Mascuilinity in the Mexican Revolution” in Sex in Revolution (Duke, 2006);

2. Green, “Doctoring the National Body,” GSP, chap 8.

                            Due: CCRE #3

 

Week 11

11/2                 Gender Justice Project Workday

 

11/4                 The State, U.S. Foreign Policy and Sterilization

Read:  Jacquelyn Kovarik, “Why Don’t We Talk About Peru’s Forced Sterilization” The New                                             Republic (October 8, 2018).

Film: “La Operación” (1981; 54min) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpu79i

 

Due: Gender Justice Project 2-page update with project design.

 

Week 12

11/9                 Gender and the Cuban Revolution

Read:  Randall, Haydeé Santamaria, chaps. 1-3.

 

11/11               Fighting Racism and Sexism in Revolution

Read: Randall, Haydeé Santamaria, chaps. 4-6

    Facilitation Group #4.

 

Week 13

11/16               Revolution and the Limits of Sexual Freedom

Read: Randall, Haydeé Santamaria, Chaps 7-8.

Due: CCRE #4.

 

11/18               Modernizing Patriarchal Masculinities

Read: Randall, Haydeé Santamaria, complete.

 

11/23 and 11/26         Fall Break No Classes

 

Week 14

11/30               Authoritarianism and State Terror and Neoliberalism   

Read: Gómez-Barris, Beyond the Pink Tide, Intro and chapter 1.

Facilitation Group #5.

 

12/2                 LGBTQ Movements in Latin America

Read: Gómez-Barris, Beyond the Pink Tide, chapter 2.-3.

Due: CCRE #6.

 

Week 15

12/7                 Gender Diversity Rights

Read: Gómez-Barris, Beyond the Pink Tide, complete

.

12/9                 Reproductive Rights and Intersectional and Decolonial Feminisms in Latin America

Read:

 

Podcast: Argentina’s Fight to Legalize Abortion: Interview with Barbara Sutton https://soundcloud.com/ualbanynewspodcast/argentinas-fight-to-legalize-abortion-with-barbara-sutton

 

 

12/14 or 12/16                        Final Class TBA       

            Due: Gender Justice Project Critical Public History Project Essay.