Class dates: Thursdays, September 17, 24, October 1, 8, 15 (5 weeks)

Class time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm

Location: Assumption, Kennedy 119

This cultural anthropology course plunges students into three cultural worlds that perceive gender and gendered persons in ways very different from our own. These three worldviews are: 1). Zuni understandings of the two-spirit person, the lhamana, a high status and beloved religious role; 2.) views of women as polluting and dangerous from Gimi society, Eastern Highland, Papua New Guinea; 3.) Indonesian ideas about the banci, a man-woman person once thought to be close to the spirit world. We’ll end the course by seeing how this cross-cultural material helps us to better discern what is going on with the current-day U.S. moral panic about trans persons. The class includes ethnographic readings; lecture/discussion format. We’ll ask: why such gender diversity in the human imagination across cultures?

Required reading: (Links to this material will be made available each week)

Week 2: The Zuni Man-Woman , by Will Roscoe; Chapters 1 and 2

Week 3: She Speaks Her Anger: Myths and Conversations of Gimi Women by Gillian Gillison; Chapter 3

Week 4: The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia by Tom Boellstorff, Chapter 1 and either Chapter 4 or 7

Instructor: Susan Rodgers is a sociocultural anthropologist (Ph.D. U of Chicago, anthropology, 1978) with years of teaching anthro of gender at Holy Cross (now emerita professor, anthropology). Her fieldwork concerns the Angkola Batak people of Sumatra, seen through their literatures and arts (numerous grants, including Fulbright research grant, Natl Endowment for Humanities). Susan has taught 3 WISE anthro courses, lives in Worcester, and does research on forced migrants in the city.