Welcome back
In this session, I’m going to give you your assignment briefing for your final assignment. Then we’re going to finish off talking about the paper by Andaya.
Assignment Briefing
Your final assignment is to write a paper. The assignment briefing will be on Canvas (to avoid replication). We’ll talk it through in today’s class.
Gender Ideology
One of the important theoretical sections of this paper is the section on gender ideology. So we’re going to start with a close reading of this section.
In your groups:
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Identify what you think are the most important sections of the reading.
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Summarise in your own words what the author is saying in these sections.
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Explain why these sections are important to the author’s argument.
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Give a practical example that can help us understand the argument.
We’ll feed back at the end of the discussion.
Sacredness, Identity Politics and More
The other interesting question is that of sacredness. This is an entirely different discourse about gender than the Westernised discourses of identity politics.
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Andaya writes, “The direct link between sacred powers and a ‘third’ sex/gender is well established in many cultures, including several in Southeast Asia.” What, on your reading, is this link?
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What other examples are there of the relationship between ideas of sacredness and third genders, or other gender identities?
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How do these ideas differ from those of contemporary Westernised notions of gender, and what may they have to tell us about gender?
Homework
We have one more papers to read for this section of the course. This is a terrific paper about gender in Myanmar’s post-coup context.