Welcome to Women's Studies 205: Gender and Globalization!

So, this is the first time I'm using blogger.com in a class - let's see how it works out! I would love to hear from those of you who have used it in other courses. My hope is that this will be a much more dynamic forum than the forum setting in Titanium. Let's give it a try:

You'll notice that Week 2 starts off with a music video, "International Love," by Pitbull, featuring Chris Brown. "An odd choice for a Women's Studies class," you may be thinking to yourself (particularly if you've seen the video or are familiar with Pitbull's... ahem... work). But wait! It is completely relevant, I promise. From the very first shot of the earth hurdling through space, to the flashes of the American and Puerto Rican flags emblazoned on its computer generated terrain, to - finally - Pitbull on stage surrounded by a bevy of lovely, scantily clad anonymous ladies, it is all a fantasy of globalization.

It is a very specific kind of diasporic, male, capitalist fantasy in which heterosexual male bodies emerge triumphant from inside fast cars in order to (literally) dance in victory on the earth's terrain and on top of its technological vistas, their recognizable likenesses projected onto skyscrapers. Where are the women? Certainly, they are in the video as well, but it would behoove us to take a moment to ask how, where, and ultimately why they are being represented. 

As we will see this semester, since at least the fifteenth century (the beginning of the age of colonialism), men came to be associated with travel, mobility, progress, and power, while women came to be associated with land, nature, nation, and earth.

Theodor Galle after Jan van der Straet (c. 1571-1633), The Discovery of America, from New Discoveries, detail, c. 1580 / 1590, Engraving, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection.

Man was an active agent, while woman was passive, inert, a symbol waiting to be made meaningful. To what extent does this type of symbolic language still hold meaning in our current popular cultural representations of globalization? What, if any, "real-life" consequences does this have?

We'll start off each week with a video. I would suggest watching the video first and just thinking about what relationship it might have to the week's reading and topics. This aspect of the course works best when you send in musical suggestions, so please do! You can either send me suggestions by email, or - better yet - write up a post on this blog that includes your own analysis of the cultural text. It doesn't have to be very long, but it should get all of us thinking!