Welcome to WMST2004 Sex, Violence and Transgression
Course Overview
Violence is one of the most prevalent themes in popular culture and public discourse today. It fills our newspapers, is beamed into our lounge rooms, and is condemned by activists and politicians alike. From our fascination with TV shows such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under to our widespread fear of terrorism, our exposure to violence is intense. It shapes our lives in all sorts of ways, both real and imagined. But what do we really know about violence? How is violence represented? What assumptions are embedded in the concepts through which we know violence or seek to understand it? Why are we so obsessed with violence and why do we find representations of violence both compelling and confronting? How are the categories of sex and violence interconnected within culture?
Incorporating methodologies and readings from gender studies and cultural studies as well as other disciplines such as philosophy, legal studies and literary studies, this course will address these questions by examining historical and contemporary representations and constructions of violence. It will focus upon violence that emerges in relation to notions of power and difference, in particular the way that violence is related to gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality. We will also discuss the role of negative affect (fear and disgust) in narratives and discourses of sex and violence as well as our fascination with, and widespread consumption of violent images and narratives – in film and TV, in everyday popular culture and in the news media.
The course is divided into four thematic blocks. Each block explores a particular aspect of cultural violence in order to develop comparative critical thinking around the different themes and issues connected with violence. However, connections will also be made across these thematic blocks through the use of key concepts such as difference, power, transgression, risk, fear, fantasy and consent. In this way we will explore not only individual examples of violence but develop an expansive knowledge of how particular kinds of identities and subjects are constructed through categories of sexuality as well as crime and violence.
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