Sex and the City: Gender & Body Politics in Buenos Aires Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Program Fall 2019 Semester - Early Start - Buenos Aires

This course addresses gender and sexuality in Argentina from the late nineteenth century until today. Using a wide range of visual, audio, and scholarly sources we will explore different topics within gender studies, placing special emphasis on the construction of sexual identities in modern Argentina. After an initial theoretical introduction and overview of sexual and gender politics in scholarly literature, we will focus specifically on how these issues have been expressed, contested, and debated in Argentina.

We will begin by looking at turn-of-the-century Buenos Aires and the impact of large scale immigration on porteño society and culture. We will examine the role of the state and of the medical establishment in order to understand how categories of sexual deviancy were established. We will also look at Argentina's largest cultural exports, the tango and football (soccer), in order to understand how normative femininity and masculinity were constructed and how early twentieth century prostitution and homosexuality challenged these constructions.

We will then move forward in time to the mid-20th century to understand the controversies around the figure of Eva Peron and explore the multiple manners in which she has contributed to define gender normativity. Hailed by popular sectors as a saint and denounced by the upper classes as a harlot, the debates around the figure of Evita will allow us to expand our understanding of gender by looking at political power, popular culture, and religion.

As we move towards the second half of the century, we will explore the rise of a youth culture and the multiple constructions around sexuality, politics, and violence that marked the dictatorships during this turbulent and authoritarian period in Argentina. We will then look at the return of democracy and the new social movements of the late 20th century, focusing on the politicization of gender and the body and the emergence of a new activism that has helped to express and shape novel sexualities and identities.

Cross-listed as GEN331