The Cultural Politics of Sexuality
At this point in the semester (i.e., at its end), we’ve seen authors use a variety of analytical
strategies and tools to tease out assumptions about sexuality and ideologies of sexuality in their
various “research objects,” i.e., Meese Commission hearings (Vance 1997), family values
campaigns (Stacey 1997), travesti prostitution (Kulick 1998), representations of genitals (Laqueur
1997), narratives of biological reproduction (Martin 1991), studies of the Hottentot Venus
(Somerville 1997), and many others.
The point of this final Short Assignment #2 is to give you some practice at identifying cultural
assumptions and ideologies about sexuality that circulate on the underbelly of U.S. American
popular culture today (i.e., beneath the surface features), and to give you some practice at
making those – our – assumptions visible (i.e., articulating them) since they are normally hidden
from view. In anticipation of this, Id encourage you to do a thought experiment in which you come
up with examples for each of Rubin’s (1984) axioms.
For this Short Assignment, your “research object” needs to be a specific kind of cultural text: a
recent article that focuses on U.S. American society and that was published in print in a
mainstream newspaper (such as: The New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco
Chronicle, L.A. Times, USA Today or other major daily newspaper) or major news magazine
(Time, Newsweek, The Nation, etc.) and published, specifically, published between
January 1, 2018 and now.
After carefully choosing your research object, your task is to tease out the assumptions about
sexuality that inform, animate, or otherwise underpin the story that the article’s author is either
telling or on which s/he is reporting. Note you will need to carefully choose a research object
that is amenable to such an analysis; that requires some thought and selectivity. Note too that
your research object (the article) and your analysis (your Short Assignment write-up) must focus
on sexuality – be very careful you do not get confused and mistakenly focus on gender.
You might think of the assumptions about sexuality as particular ideological positions on or buried
claims about some aspect of sexuality. Usually, such positions or claims are being assumed by
the author and being treated as the ‘natural backdrop’ to the positions the author takes up on the
surface of the text (or reports on the surface of the text). It is that ‘natural backdrop’ that you want
to identify and analyze.
Your primary task, then, is to identify and discuss the assumptions about sexuality that inform the
article. It is NOT enough to name the cultural assumptions or axioms (Rubin 1984) buried in the
logic of the article you choose. Rather, when I say you are to “discuss the assumptions” I mean
that your task in this Short Assignment is not only to identify the cultural assumptions but to
explain how those particular cultural assumptions, ideologies or axioms are informing and
shaping the subject matter of the article. Thus, in addition to
(1) identifying the cultural assumptions/axioms, it is also necessary that you
(2) explain and analyze how they are being used in relation to the specific subject of the article
you’ve chosen.
Please see the document (attached to this Short Assignment posting) entitled, “SA02Addendum”
for a listing of many of the conceptual tools we’ve been identifying and working with throughout
the course. Lastly, note that you must choose an article about the U.S. because the conceptual
tools we have been focusing on most recently (including Rubin [1984], Stacey [1997], and Vance
[1997]) were explicitly (and only) developed for American society: these tools are not intended for
cross-cultural use.
One of the key parts of your work for this assignment is to pick a newspaper or news magazine
article that is amenable to this kind of analysis: some articles are easier objects for the teasing
out project than are others; some articles are very difficult as research objects. Choose well. You
will be graded in part on your ability to choose an amenable research object.
Finally, this assignment will require that you provide a brief introductory summary of the article
(generally, a summary of what its about) at the outset of your write-up before you move on to
your main task of teasing out and explaining the articles assumptions about sexuality. In other
words, you need to provide an opening introduction so that your reader (hello) has a sense of the
ground youll be digging under.
LENGTH/FORMAT: 550 words (+/- 25 words without penalties)
DUE: Thursday (12/6/2018)
GRADE VALUE: 100 points
SUBMISSION: Your Short Assignment #2 (including Bibliography) is due in hardcopy form at
beginning of class on 12/6/2018; the e-copy of that hardcopy must be submitted no later than
11:59 p.m. that same date to the Turnitin Submission Site for SA#2 which will appear directly
below.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: As with your first Short Assignment, you must provide the full source
bibliographic reference for the article you choose as your research object as well as full
references for any readings on which you draw to analyze it (including course readings). Use the
Social Science Citation and Reference Formats document (in the Syllabus &c folder) as the
authority for formatting your in-text citations as well as the references in your bibliography and
take stock of feedback you may have received on SA#1 on poorly formatted citations. As part of
this, while your primary source must have been published in print form, I anticipate most of you
will use internet reprints or cross-prints: in your bibliography be sure to provide a properly
formatted full reference for the print version, followed by the active URL for the article (and
the date you accessed it, per the Citation Guidelines). Again, the specific guidelines for how to
cite and reference articles you find reprinted on the internet are available in the Social Science
Citation and Reference Formats document.
OTHER RULES: Your source article must be drawn from mainstream print news media:
news stories in newspapers (The New York Times, Washington Post, other major dailies), in
mainstream news magazines (Time, Newsweek, other mainstream national newsmagazines). Op
ed. pieces published in such major print media are also acceptable. Films, TV news reports, and
any other visual media are NOT acceptable sources. Internet-only publications are also NOT
acceptable sources. Lastly, be attentive to the timeframe Ive stipulated: the article you choose
must have been published 1/1/2018 or later.
