Spring 2025 - GSWS 204 D100
Sex and the City (3)
Class Number: 1709
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 6 – Apr 9, 2025: Thu, 2:30–5:20 p.m.
Burnaby -
Exam Times + Location:
Apr 26, 2025
Sat, 12:00–3:00 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Niall Mackenzie
nma45@sfu.ca
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Selected topics on the sexual politics of urban space. May be organized by region, critical approach, or genre. Students who have completed WS 204 may not complete this course for further credit.
COURSE DETAILS:
No city has done more to shape modern attitudes around sexuality and gender, in such a concentrated period of time, than Berlin during the decade and a half (1918-33) between the First World War and the Nazi dictatorship. To a city already crowded with traumatized military veterans and orphans, and women experiencing their first tastes of economic independence and political enfranchisement, Germany’s weak currency attracted a floating multinational population of artists, bohemians, activists, fame-seekers, drag performers, refugees, cult leaders, revolutionaries, and sex tourists. Unique features of Berlin’s natural and built environments conspired with these social conditions to evolve a diverse array of sexual subcultures – experimental, liberatory, and exploitive – whose influence radiated internationally through the press, through Berlin’s film industry (the most innovative in Europe), and through the pioneering scientific contributions of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexology which allowed Berlin briefly to rival Freud’s Vienna as a centre for research in the human sciences.
The edgy glamour of Weimar Era Berlin has passed into the realm of popular myth. Students in GSWS 204 will examine both the underlying historical reality, and the dissemination of distorted images in media such as the film Cabaret (1972) and the television program Babylon Berlin (2017—). Painting, photography, graphic design, popular music, film, architecture, and cartography will supply our raw materials, along with literary texts including novels and memoirs. Students will develop skills in applying queer and feminist theory to illuminate each of these cultural domains.
In the words of one historian, “Weimar Culture was the creation of outsiders” – including queer and trans people, Jews, and immigrants – who were “propelled by history into the inside, for a short, dizzying, fragile moment.” Then as now, hostility towards such outsiders aroused moral panics that played a key role in defining and promoting fascist ideology. This is an aspect of political modernity on which students in GSWS 204 will acquire a deep historical perspective.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
For more detailed information please see the GSWS website: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/undergraduate/courses/goals.html
Grading
- Attendance and participation 10%
- Reading quizzes 15%
- Cinematic sidebars 15%
- Critical essay 15%
- Creative project 20%
- Final exam 25%
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
Required: Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, trans. Philip Boehm (Picador, 2005). ISBN 9780312426118
Further readings and media sources will be made available on Canvas.
RECOMMENDED READING:
Recommended: Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (New Directions, 2008). ISBN 9780811218047
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html
RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION
Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.