What is the relation between sex and gender? Does it fall along the natural-cultural, or biological-social divisions we generally use as explanation? This course will not only address these questions, but it will also interrogate the relevance and potential limitations of these divisions (viz, natural-cultural and biological-social) for a constructive analysis of the existential meaning we associate to the articulation of sex and gender. In doing this, this course will start from the premise that both sex and gender are inherently ideological terms that cannot be taken for granted but must instead be meticulously interrogated, and that their examination can only be properly accomplished through an engagement with the parameters set up by patriarchy as well as Feminist and Queer theory. While many courses begin with sex in order to undermine the ways in which sexuality is deemed biological, we will instead focus on an interrogation of gender in order to understand and question what it means to claim that “gender is a social construct.” Having considered the social, political, and cultural aspects of the construction of gender, we will then turn to material, embodied realities of sex to consider intersexuality, transgender history, race/class/ability, and motherhood as specific sources of experience from which to approach sex and sexuality. In doing this we will highlight the extent to which these particular positions expose the fact that there are aspects of the lived experience of sex and sexuality that cannot solely be explained through allusions to “social construction.” This will allow us to problematize the uses of “nature” and “biology” but also “cultural” and “social” from marginalized rather than dominant positions. Throughout the course our analysis will always take an intersectional, praxis-oriented approach to reconsidering the meaning(s) and application(s) of the sex-gender and nature-culture divide. This course counts toward the Gender Studies minor. [Track C]