Schedule

Last updated: Fri, Apr 24, 2026

Date Module Readings Due Dates
2026-01-21 Introduction Course overview
 Please complete this “Getting to Know You” survey by 7:30pm the day before our first day of class (or as soon as possible if you are joining late)
2026-01-26 Part I: Love Remote snow day (on Zoom)
  • In-class screening: Every Body (2023), directed by Julie Cohen, 93 min
2026-01-28 Part I: Love Eros I
  • Plato, Symposium, up to 194e (just before the start of Agathon’s speech) [CourseWorks > Files]
2026-02-02 Part I: Love Eros II
  • Plato, 195a–212c (till the end of Socrates’ speech)
2026-02-04 Part I: Love Eros III
  • Plato, 212c to the end
  • Sappho, fragments 1–2, 16, 26, 31, 41, 47–48, 54, 57, 94, 102, 106, 108, 122, 126, 129–31, 138, 147, 153, 156, 160, 185
2026-02-09 Part I: Love Politics I
  • Collected in Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle (Untorelli, 2013) [CW: rape, police brutality]:
    • “ ‘I’m Glad I Was in the Stonewall Riot’: An interview with Sylvia Rivera,” pp. 12–14
    • “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary: An Interview with Marsha P. Johnson,” pp. 21–29
    • “Y’all Better Quiet Down: Sylvia Rivera’s Speech at the 1973 Liberation Day Rally,” pp. 30–31 [recording]
  • Martha Shelley, “Gay Is Good,” RAT 2.28 (1970) [CourseWorks]
  • Collected in Notes from the Second Year (“Notes II”) (1970):
    • Shulamith Firestone, “Love,” pp. 16–27
    • Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” pp. 37–41
    • Kate Millet, “Sexual Politics: A Manifesto for Revolution,” pp. 111–12
  • Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970), in Notes III, pp. 81–84
  • Marilyn Frye, “Do You Have to Be a Lesbian to Be a Feminist?” (1990) [CourseWorks]
2026-02-11 Part I: Love Politics II
N.B. I’ve also uploaded the first two to CourseWorks in case the Internet Archive links are unreliable.
2026-02-16 Part I: Love Politics III
  • Peters, pp. 40–71
2026-02-18 Part I: Love Politics IV
  • Auto Anon, Reverse Tomboy: A Novel (pub. by author, 2025), pp. i–ix, 98–103, 3–38 [CW: sexual assult]
2026-02-23 Part I: Love Politics V
  • Auto Anon, pp. 38–74 [CW: sexual assult]
Author visits on Zoom! 		Response paper #1 assigned
2026-02-25 Part I: Love Class canceled
2026-02-27 Part I: Love BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 2)
2026-02-28 Part I: Love BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 1)
2026-03-02 Part II: Gender The Beauvoirian Revolution I
  • Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949; new trans., Vintage Books, 2011), pp. xviii–xx, 3–17, 21–26, 44–48, 71–75 [CourseWorks]
2026-03-04 Part II: Gender The Beauvoirian Revolution II
  • Fred M. Hechinger, “Sex and the Single College Girl,” New York Times, April 21, 1968 [CourseWorks]
  • Beauvoir, pp. 283, 721–25, 683–708, 432–36, 420–22 (in this order) [CourseWorks]
2026-03-09 Part II: Gender Gendering Sex I
2026-03-11 Part II: Gender Gendering Sex II
  • Nancy Tuana, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance,” Hypatia 19.1 (2004), 194–219, 219–224 (skim), 224–26 [CourseWorks]
2026-03-16 Part II: Gender Spring recess (no class)
2026-03-18 Part II: Gender Spring recess (no class)
2026-03-23 Part II: Gender Sexing Gender I [CW: homo-/transphobia, transmisogyny]
2026-03-25 Part II: Gender Gendering Sex III
 Movie night assignment due by midnight
2026-03-30 Part II: Gender Sexing Gender II
2026-04-01 Part II: Gender Sexing Gender III
2026-04-06 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Sex Conference I [CW: rape, transmisogyny]
  • Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (Simon & Schuster, 1975), pp. 11–30
  • Carole Vance, preface and acknowledgements (skim), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (“P&D”) (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984) [CourseWorks]
  • Sharon Olds, “Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change Doctor” (1980), in P&D, p. 428 [CourseWorks]
  • torrin a. greathouse, “In an Operating Room outside of the Cis Woman’s Imagination” (Radical Paper, 2019)
  • Count Chocula III, “The VICE Guide to Partying,” Vice, May 28, 2005
2026-04-08 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Sex Conference II [CW: rape, domestic violence, incest, genital mutilation]
  • Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5.4 (1980), pp. 631–42 (skim pp. 633–36, 638–40), 647–48
  • Catharine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory” (“FMMS-I”), Signs 7.3 (1982), pp. 528–41 [CourseWorks]
  • MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence” (“FMMS-II”), Signs 8.4 (1983), pp. 644–55 [CourseWorks]
  • MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (HUP, 1989), pp. 135–36, 154 [CourseWorks]
2026-04-11 Part III: Sex Being Trans in Philosophy Zine Reading + Launch Party (room TBD, 3–5pm)
2026-04-13 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Sex Conference III
  • Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Beacon, 1992), pp. 13–16, 20–21, 25–32 [CourseWorks]
  • Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex” (1984), in P&D, pp. 275–84, 288–89 [CourseWorks]
 Final project assigned
2026-04-15 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Sex Conference IV
  • No new readings—Olivia Newsome and Liam Adler from the Barnard Archives visit class!
2026-04-20 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Sex Conference V
 Response paper #2 assigned
2026-04-22 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Sex Conference VI [CW: rape, transmisogyny]
2026-04-27 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex I
Guest lecture by Ry! 		If you are interested in pursuing your own final project, please meet with either of us by this day
2026-04-29 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex II
  • Marilyn Frye, “To Be and Be Seen: The Politics of Reality” (1983), pp. 152–55, 170–3 [CourseWorks]
  • Tala Brandeis, “Dyke with a Dick” (1996), 52, 56–60 [CourseWorks]
  • Mira Bellwether, Fucking Trans Women (pub. by author, 2010), skim selections on [CourseWorks]
  • Gabe Moses, “How To Make Love to a Trans Person” (2011)
  • Florence Ashley, Gender/Fucking, “Sexually Transmissible Transitude,” “Trespass on the Fox” (only pp. 33–39), “Wonderfully Monstrous Bodies,” A Law Clerk Comes in Ottawa” (only pp. 148–51), and “Daydreams of an Apocalypse”
  • In-class screening: Gender Troublemakers (1997), directed by Mirha-Soleil Ross, 27 min
2026-05-04 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex III
  • Ding, “On Our Own Terms: Trans Women Crafting the Meaning of ‘Woman’ ” (manuscript) [CourseWorks]
2026-05-06 Part III: Sex Reading day (no class)
2026-03-13 Part II: Gender Response paper #1 Response paper #1 due to CourseWorks by midnight
2026-05-08 Part III: Sex Response paper #2 Response paper #2 due to CourseWorks by midnight
2026-05-13 Part III: Sex Final project Final project due to CourseWorks by midnight