Sections offered SPRING 2024:
#33490 |
BRENDA WEBER |
MW 3:00-4:15pm (GNDR-G 225) Th 11:30am-12:20pm (HON-H 299) |
GA 0001 LH 201H |
***PLEASE NOTE: HON-BM 299 (4 cr) is a placeholder course number. It represents a combination of GNDR-G 225 (3 cr)and a 1-credit, HON-H 299 discussion section that meets separately. To earn honors credit for GNDR-G 225, you MUST enroll in HON-BM 299. At the end of the first week of classes, HON-BM 299 will dissolve, and you will automatically be placed on the rosters for GNDR-G 225 (32685) and HON-H 299 (33491), and you will receive a grade for each of these courses.***
GNDR-G 225 description:
From television to radio to magazines, we are surrounded by messages that influence how we understand and relate to concepts of sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and other identity categories. Images and sounds tell the story of what it means to be gendered: man or woman, Black or white, gay or straight, cis and trans, and increasingly, the nuanced positions within these binaries. Popular culture also teaches us whose work and opinions are considered powerful within the larger culture and whose are not. By analyzing the messages conveyed in popular culture texts, we become sensitive to the ways that media influences our understanding of the world and people around us, including how we might play an active role in shaping media culture.
Within this dynamic, the body functions as a critical register, both of our lived experience and of cultural values, and nowhere are the body’s many meanings more prevalent than in US media, from J-Lo’s curves to Prince’s willowy silhouette. In thinking through popular cultural messages about embodiment, particularly as related to gender and sexuality, this class will open other forms of cultural critique. One of the basic premises of this class is that cultural values do not arise from nowhere. Instead, they offer very precise information about power, privilege, and transformation. When we begin to think in a more complicated way about how and why gender and sexuality are written on the body, we gain a greater understanding of what a culture both values and fears.
HON-H 299 discussion section description:
Can you sing a rainbow? Can you ever really trust another person? What might a museum of failure look like? What makes for a meaningful life? Is Dolly Parton an American Saint?
At their core, the study of both science and the humanities is fueled by curiosity and the desire to communicate. This course is built around the combined works of an American pioneer in podcasting and sound design, Jad Abumrad, the founder and creative mind behind Radio Lab, Dolly Parton’s America, UnErased, and More Perfect. In 2011, Abumrad was awarded the MacArthur Genius Award, the foundation citing his “engaging audio explorations of scientific and philosophical questions” that “captivate listeners and bring to broadcast journalism a distinctive new aesthetic,” while using “his background as a composer to orchestrate dialogue, music, and sound effects into compelling documentaries that draw listeners into investigations of otherwise intimidating topics.”
Abumrad will also be a distinguished guest on the IU-Bloomington Campus April 1-5, 2024, an event sponsored by CAHI (The College Arts and Humanities Institute) and the Patten Foundation, and this course offers the opportunity both to meet personally with Abumrad and to delve into the cultural politics around gender and genius that underscore his many contributions.