Graduate Exam Reading List
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Please choose 20 from this list of 25.
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Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Bynum, Caroline. Critical Inquiry 22.1: “Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist
Perspective” Pgs. 1-33 (1995)
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
“1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible,” Pgs. 232-309
(2008) (includes discussion of “becoming woman”)
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology Pgs. 141-164 (discussion of Rousseau, nature,
supplementarity, “il n’y a pas de “hors texte”)
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive
Fanon, Frantz. Veil: Veiling, Representation, and Contemporary Art “Algeria Unveiled”
Pgs. 73-87
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality (volume one)
Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis “Femininity”
Haraway, Donna. The Haraway Reader “Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman Pgs. 11-73
Irigaray, Luce. “La Mysterique” in Speculum of the Other Woman Pgs. 191-202
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in The Life of A Slave Girl
Lacan, Jacques, Mitchell, Juliet and Rose, Jacqueline. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan
and the École Freudienne
Loraux, Nicole. The Children of Athena. Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the
Division between the Sexes
Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminisim “Under
Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”
Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
Rubin, Gayle. Feminism and History “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political
Economy’ of Sex” (ed) Joan Wallach Scott
Sedgwick, Eve Kosovsky. Epistemology of the Closet
Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and
Culture. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the
Vanishing Present. Ch. 3
Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14.2 “Black
Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage” Pgs. 191–215
Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One's Own” (1929)
Further reading also suggested by current CLS faculty teaching in GSS areas. Students
may also substitute 5 works from the below without special permission but the
examination committee must be notified one month before the exam date.
Butler, Judith. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (ed) D. Fuss. New York and London,
Routledge “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” Pgs.13-31
Cixous, Hélène. The Essential Feminist Reader “The Laugh of the Medusa” (ed) Estelle B Freedman
Pgs. 318-324
Cixous, Hélène. Reveries of the Wild Woman: Primal Scenes Evanston: Northwestern University
Press
Cohen, Cathy. GLO: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens:
The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” Pgs. 437-465
Connell, R.W. Masculinities (sec. ed.)
Edelman, Lee. Bad Education: Queerness and Radical Evil “Queering Being” forthcoming
Ferguson, Roderick. Aberrations In Black: Toward A Queer Of Color Critique
Freud, Sigmund. Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud) (New
York: Touchstone / Simon and Schuster Pgs. 1-113
Sigmund Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Betty Friedan. Feminine Mystique
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory, ed. Robyn Warhol
and Diane Herndl, “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship”
Pgs. 21-33
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth
Century Imagination (first chapter: “The Queen’s Looking Glass”) Pgs. 3-44
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
Holland, Sharon. Erotic Life of Racism
Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One “This Sex Which Is Not One” in trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press Pgs. 23-34
Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One "Les marchandises entre elles"/"Commodities Among
Themselves” in trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press Pgs. 192-197
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, eds. M Jacqui
Alexander and C T Mohanty "Erotic autonomy as a politics of decolonization: An anatomy of feminist
and state practice" Pgs. 63–100 (Routledge 1997)
Katz, Jonathan. The Invention of Heterosexuality
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and
Knowledge (Encore)
Love, Heather. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (2009m)
McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality
Mikell, Gwendolyn. African Feminism: The Politics of Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa (1997)
Moraga Cherrie et al.(ed) This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color State
(2015) SUNY (revised edition)
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics
Muñoz, Jose Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Ortner, Sherry. Feminist Studies 1-2. "Is Female to Male as Nature to Culture?" Pgs. 5-31
Park, Katharine. Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation and the Origins of Human, Dissertation
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Collected Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Emile book five (“Sophie’),
Dartmouth: Dartmouth College Press.
Smith, Andrea. GLQ : A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16 “Queer Theory and Native Studies:
The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism” Pgs. 42-68
Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto
Valerie Traub, Valerie. Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (2002)
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Pgs. 231-244
Weheliye, Alex. Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics and Black Feminist Theories of
the Human
Wilson, Elizabeth. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies "Gut Feminism” Pgs. 66-94
Wittig, Monique. Feminist Issues 5.2 “The Mark of Gender" Chp, 3 thru 12 (1985) Also in The
Poetics of Gender (ed) Nancy Miller New York: Columbia UP Pgs. 63-73
Wittig, Monique. The Essential Feminist Reader "One Is Not Born a Woman" (responding to
Beauvoir ed. Estelle B Freedman. New York: Modern Library Pgs. 359-366
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Wolf, Christa. Cassandra : A Novel and Four Essays , New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas (1938)
Zeitlin, Froma. Woman and the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers "The Dynamics of Misogyny:
Myth and Mythmaking in Oresteia” ed. John Peradotto and J.P . Sullivan, Albany: SUNY Pgs.159-194
(1983)