Representations of women and gender in Australian society
Rose Lucas, Bronwyn Naylor, Georgina Tsolidis and Vicki Kirby
8 points * 3 hours per week * First semester * Clayton * Prerequisites: A first-year sequence
The focus of this subject is upon the ways in which gender has been produced, reinforced and/or critiqued within various aspects of Australian society - in the past as well as in contemporary culture. We will thus be ranging across a diversity of disciplinary approaches to a series of questions surrounding gender representation. For example how have women (and indeed men) been perceived in varying social contexts? What are some of the discourses which have been formulated to explain the workings of patriarchy? What is the relationship between modes of representation - be they discourses of capitalism, the law, education, ethnicity, or language - and the experiences of women within the wide range of Australian cultural contexts? Do these representations describe an external reality, and/or to what extent do they function to construct roles and stereotypes for women's behaviour and identity?
Assessment
Written (4500 words): 75% * Examinations (1 hour): 25%
Recommended texts
Summers A Damned whores and god's police: The colonisation of women in Australia Penguin, 1975
Schaffer K Women and the bush: Forces of desire in the Australian cultural context CUP, 1988