SPAN 4360 - Fluid States: Thinking Race and Gender in the Iberian World

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: SPAN 2095, SPAN 2180 or permission of instructor.

J. Chang.

Bodily fluids such as blood and breast milk are at once vital and lethal, sacred and profane: saving, sustaining, and producing life as well as menacing, contaminating, polluting it. This course treats these vital fluids as both matter and metaphor, exploring their significance throughout the Iberian world. In addition to examining literature and visual art, students will engage with a diverse body of scholarship from the fields of feminist and queer theory, anthropology, history of medicine.