Critical Social Inquiry 0277 - Deviant Bodies: The Regulation of Race, Sex, and Disability in the US

Since its founding, the US has closely regulated the bodies of Others and punished those that rebel against these socially-constructed designations. Utilizing an interdisciplinary amalgam of Critical Race Theory, Sexuality Studies, Queer Theory, Media Studies, Sociology, American Studies, Performance Studies, and Feminist Theory, this course will explore how the state, the media, and civilian institutions police the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality by pathologizing, criminalizing, and stigmatizing difference. We will also examine how the subjects burdened with these dangerous inscriptions evade and contest them through passing, performativity, and other forms of identity-based resistance. Special attention will be paid to the criminalization of cross-racial and same sex desire; the re-biologization of racial and sexual difference; the dehumanization of immigrants; the racialization of crime; the gendering of mental disorder; the war of neurodivergence; the biopolitics of reproduction; eugenic surveillance; and the role of The Law in constructing and controlling deviant bodies. Keywords:Critical Race Theory, Disability Studies, Queer Studies, Legal Studies, Sociology

In/Justice Students should expect to spend 10 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.