Gay & Lesbian Philosophy

Class Meeting Place and Time

Tuesday and Thursday, 3:30-4:45 p.m.

 1115 Skinner

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Instructor: David Barber, graduate student in philosophy

Office: 1107D Skinner

Office phone: 301-405-5746

Email: dbarber@wam.umd.edu . This is the best way to contact me outside of class.

Office Hours:  Monday and Tuesday, 2:30-3:20

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Catalog Description:

An examination in historical and social context of personal, cultural and political aspects of gay and lesbian life, paying particular attention to conceptual, ontological, epistemological, and social justice issues.

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CORE Diversity Credit:

PHIL 407 is approved as a CORE Human Cultural Diversity Course. CORE Diversity Courses have been requested to incorporate the following notice into course syllabuses:

You [may] have chosen this course as   part of your CORE Liberal Arts and Sciences Studies Program, the general  education portion of your degree program. CORE Human Cultural Diversity courses  are designed to ensure that you will examine experiences, perspectives, and  values different from those that are dominant in the United States or Europe.  A faculty and student committee approved this CORE Human Cultural Diversity   course because it will introduce you to ideas and human experiences often   overlooked in the curriculum. Please take advantage of the opportunities  this course offers you.

Course Content:

This course will explore the history and culture of lesbian and gay male subcultures in 20th century America. This history raises issues in value theory (ethics, aesthetics, and political theory) and brings up the ontological issue of social constructionism: Is sexual identity a biological essence or a social construct? Throughout the course, queer history and culture will serve as jumping-off places for exploring further philosophical questions, issues at the heart of how contemporary society deals with gender, sex, and culture.

The course has three main objectives: (1) To expose students to the history, culture, experience, values, and status of lesbian and gay subcultures in 20th century America, including how these subcultures relate and contribute to the dominant heterosexual culture. (2) To explore philosophical issues related to homosexuality, including the ontological status of sexual identities, the epistemologies of stereotyping and of the closet, philosophies of sexual dissidence, social dimensions of knowledge including the role of subcultures, the objectivity of psychiatric classifications of sexual disorders, issues of social justice raised by gay liberation and AIDS, and the extent to which the gay/lesbian subculture can serve as a role model for the moral and aesthetic improvement of the dominant heterosexual culture. (3) To begin to apply these historical and philosophical perspectives to discussions about social organizations generally, including ideologies of the family, sexual ethics, gender roles, and the division between public and private life.
 

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Disclaimer

Gays and lesbians are sexual minorities stigmatized for their sexual behaviors and orientations and for their nonconformity to gender-role stereotypes. Minority subcultures tend to be defined around the basis for stigmatization and discrimination, and many of the characteristic features of stigmatized subcultures center around the focus of stigmatization. This is so in the case of gays and lesbians: both subcultures are concerned, with different priorities, with sexuality and gender.

This means that any course on gay and lesbian culture and history must focus extensively on issues of sex and gender. As Andrew Holleran says, "Gay life without the sex is just a themepark." Any attempt to minimize these two aspects does violence to the gay and lesbian subcultures and is inappropriate in a CORE Diversity course whose focus is understanding the history and culture of gays and lesbians.

Some of the readings for the course contain sexually explicit material, and sexual behavior will be discussed in class. On occasion sexually explicit materials may be used in class sessions. In all such cases, the use is never gratuitous and I attempt to be explicit about what the educational motive and purpose of the material is. Also, following the practice of the academic discipline of queer studies, sexually explicit terms for sex acts will be used, rather than euphemisms or clinical terminology (for example, "cocksucking" rather than "fellatio"). One reason for this is that the gay subculture itself has called into question the heterosexual notions of a link between sex acts and love, emotions, etc. Another is that clinical sexual terminology has been used by the psychiatric profession to stigmatize gay sex practices and gays themselves. A third reason is that, as the Lewinsky depositions showed, talk about sex can lapse quickly into murkiness without the willingness to speak plainly.

Some students initially may be uncomfortable with the extent to which sex is considered in the course or to the use of sexually-explicit terminology (including words some view as vulgar) in class discussions. Most students quickly become comfortable as they see that the subject matter demands it and that one cannot understand gay history and culture otherwise. This is very much in keeping with the goals of the CORE Diversity program, which are to "examine experiences, perspectives, and values different from those that are dominant in the United States or Europe" (see "Core Diversity Credit" above). However, occasionally, enrolled students are not able to make the accommodation. Such students probably should not take the course.

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Textbooks:

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Male Gay World 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994)

Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy & Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Penguin, 1993)

Andrew Sullivan, ed., Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con (New York: Vintage, 1997) 

Richard Dyer, The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations (London: Routledge, 1993)

Additional selections are from materials on reserve in the philosophy department lounge, materials available via computer, and some handouts. Films are available at Non-Print Media Services in Hornbake Library, 4th floor.

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Course work:
 

• Timely reading of assignments. It is essential that everyone read the week's material before class--otherwise, you're wasting your own time as well as mine.
• Regular attendance and participation in class discussions. In particular, there is very extensive use of film clips and audio visuals during class. These often serve as the basis for class discussions. Although my lecture notes are archived on the web site, the film clips used in class cannot readily be made up.
• Possible pop quizzes. I reserve the right to institute pop quizzes to encourage people to read the assignments. If we start having quizzes, they will be very easy for people who have done the reading and almost impossible for people who have not. Quizzes may not be made up.
• Film reports. There is one film that will be viewed in class which you must view on your own if you miss that class:
  • Before Stonewall
  There are two films all students must view outside of class:
  • The Celluloid Closet
  • The Gang's All Here
In addition, you are required to view four other films of your own choosing outside of class: 
• a film focusing on gay men
• a film focusing on lesbians
• a film focusing on minority gays or lesbians
• a film focusing on the gay/lesbian AIDS experience.

You are to write brief summaries of  each film you watch and discuss the relevance of the film to course themes  and content. (Maximum 500 words per entry.) One of the reports is to be given  as a 5 minute oral report, the rest to be handed in.

For more information about this assignment, click here.

• Midterm exam--open-book, open-note, take-home.
 
• One 10 page term paper. The term paper is an opportunity for you to explore some aspect of the course or gay and lesbian culture that you are especially interested in. You should consult with the instructor (in person or via e-mail) about your topic well in advance of the due date. We will discuss the term paper assignment in more detail partway through the semester.

You must turn in your term paper on the due date. However, you may revise your paper and hand it in on the last day of class for another grade. If you choose to do this, the second mark will be averaged with the first when computing your final grade for the course.

 
• Final examination--open book, open note, take-home.
 
• Extra Credit: A paper analyzing a book on gays/lesbians/bisexuals or by a gay or lesbian or bisexual person. Your analysis should summarize the main foci and themes of the book and discuss how it relates to the main themes in PHIL 407. Suggested length: 1000 words.

The course has been planned on the standard collegiate assumption that in 400 level coursesstudents with average reading abilities should expect to spend 2-3 hours out of class for each credit hour per week. Viewing/listening to audio-visuals are likely to increase the time required for the course.

A note on the exams: Since all exams are take-home,   open-note, open-neighbor, memorizing material is unimportant. Also, the exams  will be designed as study-review vehicles for helping you synthesize and understand course material. Thus, if you are up on the readings and assignments,  there is no need to prepare additionally for the exam.

Click here for assignment deadlines.

Click here for detailed instructions for optional and required written course assignments.

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Computers and E-mail:

Some course materials will be available on this website. It also contains links to various gay and lesbian archives and websites around the world. If you do not have a computer of your own that connects to the Internet, make use of the university's WAM labs located around campus.

All students are required to have e-mail accounts and are eligible for a free account with the university. Instructions for obtaining a free WAM account are at http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/faqs/unix/wam/wam-acct-signup.shtml . Alternatively, take a photo-ID and proof of current connection to the university (registration card) to room 1400 in the Computer and Space Sciences Building on a weekday between 8 and 6.

An e-mail reflector for PHIL 407 has been established.      This will allow students in the class an opportunity to exchange ideas   about   course material, have discussions, seek help, etc. It functions very  much   like an Internet newsgroup or electronic bulletin board, although  it is restricted  to just members of this class. You will receive all posts  to the list as e-mail, and when you post (send e-mail) to the list address  all members of the class will receive your post as e-mail. The reflector is updated automatically  to include only those students who are registered for the class and have e-mail accounts listed with Testudo. (You can update your e-mail information at www.testudo.umd.edu .) The address to post to the list is phil407-0101-spr02@coursemail.umd.edu .

Important course information will be disseminated via the e-mail list. Thus, students are responsible for regularly reading its messages. You will find the list especially valuable when I am out of town and during take-home exams.

Finally, you can use e-mail to contact the instructor with questions, etc. pertaining to the course or course materials, outside of class and office hours.

At UMCP there is an undergraduate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) student organization. Information is available athttp://www.inform.umd.edu/StudentOrg/lgba. Contact them to learn how to get on their listserv. Information about the UMCP Graduate Lambda Coalition (GLC) is available at http://www.inform.umd.edu/Student/Campus_Activities/StudentOrg/glc/ . They, too, have a listserv that can be joined.

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Some Comments on Educational Philosophy and Grading.

Learning is an odd phenomenon. While some things, such as the multiplication tables or driving, can be taught using standardized techniques that nearly always work, teaching someone to think critically is never that easy. I believe that successfully learning something in a philosophy course requires two things. First is a kind of foundation, a baseline of facts that you simply have to read, absorb, become familiar with. This is why I assign readings--in a course on gay and lesbian philosophy, you have to learn something about queer history and culture and read some of the arguments and theoretical approaches before you yourself can hope to have any interesting thoughts on the matter. The second part of learning is the odd part, the serendipitous part. Hopefully, several times during the semester, you will make a connection between two or three things we've been discussing in class, or between a reading and some part of your life or of another subject you're studying. You can then try to articulate this connection, to discuss it with others and test your ideas against their conceptions of the same issues.

The first kind of learning you can do all alone  in your dorm room or in carrel in the library. But the second kind almost  always requires people. That is why I would rather not spend class time lecturing,  but rather joining in a discussion that connects the raw facts that we've  read in preparation for class meetings. As the instructor, I will do what I can to promote discussion, to allow students to air their views and test ideas without worrying about consequences. Academic inquiry cannot proceed without an environment of free thought and free expression. But maybe the most valuable help in facilitating the second stage of learning is your fellow  students. I've noticed that, for some reason, most of what you learn (in the second sense) you learn in the company of interested and engaged class members. I hope that the discussion-oriented nature of the course and the e-mail discussion  will facilitate the informal sharing of ideas that makes for real learning.   

The course assignments and exams have been crafted not just to measure your mastery of the material but to give you additional opportunities to learn. In particular, the take-home tests should be an opportunity to reflect on course material and discussion and make new connections between the themes of the course. If you have kept up with the readings and discussion, you should not have to put in extra time studying for these tests.

I do not grade on a curve. Hopefully, everyone in the class will receive high grades--showing dedication on the part of the students and good teaching on the part of the instructor. To receive an "A," you must demonstrate excellent mastery of course material. A grade of "B" indicates good mastery, "C" average, "D" marginal, and "F" no mastery. The final grade is based on an average of your midterm, term paper, and final exam grades, weighted equally, with some consideration given to film reports, attendance and participation, and extra credit assignments. However, if your final exam shows great improvement over previous efforts, I will give it greater weight in computing you course grade.

Finally, if you feel that you need extra help understanding some part of the course material, don't hesitate to ask me for help. I'm not in this business for the high salaries and stock options; I like helping people learn.

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