Women,Gender,Sexuality Studies 492G - S- Gender and U.S. Empire

There is an old debate among historians of the United States over whether to consider the US an empire; the answer turns, basically, on how you define "empire." This course is not very interested in that question. Rather, it begins with the problem of how to collapse two very different faces of the analysis of US imperialism. One is public/boy/policy/official: the military, diplomacy, NGOs, and medicine and science. The other is private/girl/racialized/marginal: questions of gender, children, race, indigeneity, sexuality. The course, asks, then: how has the United States gained influence globally through settler colonialism, territorial government, military interventions, counterinsurgency, the rule of experts, military bases, and U.S. global markets? What is the relationship of enslavement and debt in the context of the Americas? How have scholars in a variety of fields, including particularly history, anthropology, and interdisciplinary queer, feminist, ethnic, and American Studies, shed light on how gender, racialization, and sexuality are configured and reconfigured in relationship to US empire? This seminar will be reading-intensive.