Schedule

Last updated: Mon, Jan 19, 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 Eros I
  • Plato, Symposium, up to 194e (just before the start of Agathon’s speech) [CourseWorks > Files]
2026-01-28 Part I: Love Eros II
  • Plato, 195a–212c (till the end of Socrates’ speech)
2026-02-02 Part I: Love Eros III
  • Plato, 212c to the end
2026-02-04 Part I: Love Eros IV
2026-02-09 Part I: Love Politics I
  • Collected in Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle [CW: rape]:
    • “ ‘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
  • Martha Shelley, “Gay Is Good” (1970), in RAT 2.28 [CourseWorks]
  • Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (1968), in Notes from the First Year (“Notes I”), p. 11
  • Shulamith Firestone, “Love” (1970), in Notes II, pp. 16–27
  • Kate Millet, “Sexual Politics: A Manifesto for Revolution” (1968), also in Notes II, pp. 111–12
  • Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970), in Notes III, pp. 81–84
2026-02-11 Part I: Love Politics II
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 (2025), pp. i–ix, 98–103, 3–38
2026-02-23 Part I: Love Politics V
  • Auto Anon, pp. 38–74 [CW: rape] & some of the poems TBD
Author visits on Zoom!
2026-02-25 Part II: Gender The Beauvoirian Revolution I
  • Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex ([1949] 2011), pp. xviii–xx, 3–17, 21–26, 44–48, 71–75 [CourseWorks]
2026-02-27 Part II: Gender BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 1)
2026-02-28 Part II: Gender BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 2)
2026-03-02 Part II: Gender The Beauvoirian Revolution II
  • Beauvoir, pp. 683–708, 432–36, 420–22 (in this order) [CourseWorks]
2026-03-04 Part II: Gender Gendering Sex I
  • Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body (2000), chap. 3
  • Optional: Every Body (2023), directed by Julie Cohen, 93 min
2026-03-09 Part II: Gender Gendering Sex II
  • Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, “Ovulation,” in Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography (2019)
2026-03-11 Part II: Gender Gendering Sex III
  • Nancy Tuana, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance” (2004), 194–219, 219–224 (skim), 224–26
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 (movie night assignment—no class)
  • Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders, Sixth Version (2001)
  • “Homosexuality” in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (“DSM”), Second Edition (1968)
  • “Gender Dysphoria” and “Transvestic Fetishism” in DSM-V (2013)
  • Jamey Jesperson, “Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-membering Trans Feminine Llife and Death in New Spain, 1604–1821” (2023), selections TBD
  • Host your own screening: Framing Agnes (2022), directed by Chase Joynt, 75 min
2026-03-25 Part II: Gender Sexing Gender II
  • Sandy Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto” (1991)
  • Florence Ashley, selections from Gender/Fucking (2024)
 Movie night assignment due by the beginning of class
2026-03-30 Part II: Gender Sexing Gender III
  • Susan Stryker, “Dungeon Intimacies: The Poetics of Transsexual Sadomasochism” (2008)
Guest lecture by Ry?
2026-04-01 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Conference I
  • Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975), pp. 11–30 [CW: rape]
  • Sharon Olds, “Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change Doctor” (1983) [CW: transmisogyny]
  • torrin a. greathouse, “In an Operating Room outside of the Cis Woman’s Imagination” (2019)
2026-04-06 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Conference II
  • Catharine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence” (1983) [CW: rape]
2026-04-08 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Conference III
  • Ida B. Wells, “Lynching, Our National Crime” (1909)
  • Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting” (1978)
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 Conference IV
  • Lorna Bracewell, “Beyond Barnard: Liberalism, Antipornography Feminism, and the Sex Wars” (2016)
Field trip to the Barnard Archives?
2026-04-15 Part III: Sex The 1982 Barnard Conference V
  • Joss Greene, “The Insurgent Agency of Incarcerated Trans Women of Color” (2023)
2026-04-22 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex I
  • Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980), selections TBD
  • Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (1992), selectons TBD
2026-04-27 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex II
  • Selections from Gendertrash from Hell (1993–95, republished 2025)
Leah Tigers visits?
2026-04-29 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex III
  • Florence Ashley, selections from Gender/Fucking; Mira Bellwether, selections from Fucking Trans Women (2010)
2026-05-04 Part III: Sex Between Love, Gender, and Sex IV
  • Ding, “On Our Own Terms: Trans Women Crafting the Meaning of ‘Woman’ ” (manuscript)
2026-05-06 Part III: Sex Reading day (no class)