The main course meetings with be Mondays, 3-5:30pm, in Alumnae Hall 212.
There will also be film screenings associated with the course, in the evenings, during the week (e.g., one might be on a Tuesday at 7pm). Very tentative dates and times for these are indicated on the course schedule; we'll discuss as a class what times work best for the most people. There will be three screenings, one of which will involve a visit from a prominent woman director (not Stormy Daniels). There will also be other films (or parts thereof) that students will be asked to watch on their own. And short clips of sexually explicit material may occasionally be shown in class, so that it can be discussed.
Students will have the option to view the publicly screened films privately or to `opt out' of the public and private screenings altogether. However, such students will be required to do substitute work (of a similar scale), and they may find it difficult to follow some of the in-class discussions. More generally, such students will miss out on an important aspect of the course. Students who expect to be uncomfortable with this aspect of the course are encouraged to speak to the instructor before enrolling.
This course is a graduate research seminar in philosophy, so the target audience is primarily graduate students in philosophy and advanced philosophy concentrators. Students from other disciplines who have significant prior experience with philosophy will also be welcome. Some students may have other relevant experience (e.g, in feminist theory or film studies) that can compensate for their lack of prior experience with philosophy. Such students should indicate their background on the relevant portion of the Override Request Form, which will be distributed in class on the first day.
Students wishing to enroll will also be asked, when submitting that form, to indicate, though their signature, that they understand (i) that the course involves the study of sexually explicit content, (ii) that participation in the course will require students to view and discuss such content, and (iii) that sexually explicit content may sometimes be displayed in class so that it can be discussed.
Some auditors will also be welcome, though how many will depend upon the number of students who enroll in the course. Auditors will be expected, however, also to sign the Override Request Form.
There is one required book for the course, Linda Williams's Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the `Frenzy of the Visible'. It should be available at Brown Bookstore and is, of course, also available from other sources. List price is $31.95. We will also be reading a number of essays from Beyond Speech: Pornography and Analytic Feminist Philosophy, edited by Mari Mikkola. Students may wish also to purchase a copy of it, and it should also be available at Brown Bookstore, but it is not required. List price is $36.95.
All other readings are accessible from the course website. For many of these, you will have digital access through the Brown library. For others, you will need a username and password that will be distributed in class.
To view the PDFs, you will of course need a PDF reader, which you probably already have.
Some of the files are only available in DjVu, however. Why DjVu? Because DjVu is a file format specifically designed for scanned text: The DjVu encoder produces files that are typically much smaller than the corresponding PDFs, typically about one tenth the size, when dealing with scanned text.
To view the PDFs, you will of course need a
PDF reader. For the DjVu files, you will need a DjVu reader. Linux users can likely just install the djviewlibre package using their distro's package management system. There are also free (as in beer and as in speech) readers for
Windows and
Mac OSX.
If you follow those links, you will see a list of files you can download. Just download the most recent one. (Do not download the file mentioned above the list of files as the "latest version". That is source code.) And there is a
browser plugin for Google Chrome
that should work on any OS.
Another option is Okular, which was originally written for Linux's KDE Desktop Environment but which can now be run, experimentally, on Windows and OSX, as well. A list of other DjVu resources is maintained at djvu.org. There are also DjVu readers available for Android and whatever proprietary garbage other folks are peddling these days. Go to Play Store or whatever to find them.
The program I've used to convert PDFs to DjVu is
a simple Bash script, pdf2djvu. It relies upon other programs to do the real work and should run on most varieties of Unix.
NOTE: If you want to print these files, make sure you print them in the correct mode: "landscape" or "portrait". In particular, two-to-a-page scanned pages should be printed in landscape mode, so that they come out the way they were photocopied. You will get very small text and a lot of blank paper if you print them portrait.
So far as possible, the seminar will be run as a discussion. Notes and questions concerning the various readings will be posted to the course forum,1 and all enrolled students will be expected to post thoughts about the readings to the forum by 10am the day of class. Students should plan to write at least a paragraph about each of the readings for that week. (There will usually be three to four readings.) The goal is not to summarize the readings, nor even necessarily to criticize them, but to raise some questions, exegetical or substantive, about what we have read for the week. I will use the comments on the forum both to determine what parts of the readings people understood and what parts need more clarification, and also to shape the discussion around the questions in which people showed most interest.
Students are also expected to engage with one another on the forum, i.e., to respond to each other's comments. Doing so will count as a form of `course participation' that may affect one's grade.
There will similarly be notes and questions about the films students will be asked to watch on their own, and students will be expected to write about their reactions on the course forum, prior to our discussions of those films in class.
After the first couple sessions, teams of (probably two) students will present that week's material to the group and lead the discussion. Each enrolled student will be required to do at least one presentation and then to write a short (3-5 page) paper based upon the presentation, due one week later.
The main written work for the course will be a term paper of about 12-16 pages. If enrollment allows, students will be given the option of doing a second presentation and then writing a shorter paper of about 8-10 pages. The topic is each student's own choice, but it should be cleared with the instructor by no later than 6 May. The paper itself is due on 17 May (the day we would otherwise have the final exam).
The final grade will be based upon the following factors:
For students doing an additional presentation and the shorter final paper, those will count for 10% and 30% of the grade, respectively.
You should expect to spend the following amounts of time on activities for this course.
Your total time commitment should thus be approximately 180 hours.
Most people find it dificult to grasp that whatever they like to do sexually will be thoroughly repulsive to someone else, and that whatever repels them sexually will be the most treasured delight of someone, somewhere. One need not like or perform a particular sex act in order to recognize that someone else will, and that this difference does not indicate a lack of good taste, mental health, or intelligence in either party. (Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex")
Much of the material we will be discussing is `academic' and relatively `dry'.2 But some of it may be emotionally challenging, and any discussion about sexuality has the potential to feel threatening. It will therefore be essential that there be an atmosphere of trust and safety in the classroom. I will attempt to foster an environment in which each member of the course is able to speak freely, and to be heard respectfully, and I will demand that all members of the course show proper respect for one another's views, attitudes, opinions, and feelings. Some of the material we discuss may evoke strong reactions. Please be patient and kind with one another, and do not jump to conclusions. Do not make sweeping generalizations (anyone who finds that erotic must be sick) but use “I” language (that makes me uncomfortable). Expect the best, not the worst, of others. Still, as good as our intentions may be, there may be occasions when someone says or does something that causes discomfort or offense, and that can adversely affect other people's educational experience. I will make it my responsibility to address such issues forthrightly.
Any student who fails to meet these standards will be given one opportunity to correct their behavior. Failure to do so will result in exclusion from the course. Please remember, too, that Brown's Title IX policy applies to all of us.
Should any issues of this sort arise, students will have four options open to them:
I should perhaps add that it is my firm hope and belief that, with proper attention to our own emotional reactions, such problems can be avoided altogether.
Students may use laptops and the like to take notes in class or to access material we are discussing in class, but all other use of computers, tablets, and mobile devices is prohibited during class. This includes but is not limited to checking email, texting, and surfing the web, even if said surfing is ostensibly related to the course. (Actually, given what we're studying, surfing related to the course might be the worst thing to do!)
In a study entitled “Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers” (PDF here), Faria Sana, Tina Weston, and Nichola Cepeda showed exactly that. It is not just that students who "multi-task" during class—check e-mail, text, or whatever—received significantly lower grades in the study than students who did not. This is not surprising, since the human brain simply cannot focus on very many things at one time. (If you're skeptical about this, then watch this video or perhaps some of these ones.) Rather, the surprising conclusion was that students who were sitting near other students who were multi-tasking also received significantly lower grades than students were who not. In fact, they were almost as distracted as the students who were actually doing the multi-tasking!
There is thus evidence that multi-tasking does not only hurt the person doing it. It also harms the people around them. And that is the basis of my request that students not engage in such activities during class. If someone near you is doing so, you should feel free to ask them to stop.
Students seeking accommodations due to a disability or medical condition should contact the Office of Student and Employee Accessibility Services (SEAS). Students in need of short-term academic advice or support can contact one of the deans in the Dean of the College office. Students seeking psychological support services should contact Counseling and Psychological Services.
1 Course members will need a username and password in order to log onto the forum. This will keep our discussions private. The advantage of using the forum is that, unlike with Canvas, people who are not enrolled will also be able to participate. More information about this matter will be provided in class.
2 Some of what follows is adapted from syllabus language due to Lynn Hernandez that is cited by the Sheridan Center.