Course Description: What does it mean to "be a man" or "a woman"? This course explores (through literature) the traditional and non-traditional gender roles by tracking the course from rites of passage through issues of sexuality, competition, relationships, and the pressures of responsibility to old age and mortality. Students will scrutinize issues of single-sex education, paternity, and gender-based "movements" and cultures. Students will read and study works about gender issues from gender perspectives. Texts include Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" (from As You Like It) and The Taming of the Shrew, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, Junichiro Tanazaki's Diary of a Mad Old Man, and Susan Faludi's Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, among others.
Comments: Senior elective.
UC / CSU Approved