ANTH 315:  Sex and Gender (3 units)

Machos:  Latin American Masculinities

Professor:  Jeffrey Tobin

UH catalogue copy:  Cross-cultural theories and perceptions of sexual differences; linkage between biology and cultural constructions of gender; relationship of gender ideology to women’s status. Pre: 200 or consent. (Cross-listed as WS 315)

Course Description:  This course encourages students to think critically about the concept of machismo by reviewing a variety of ways of being manly throughout Latin America with a focus on Buenos Aires. Case studies include Octavio Paz’ classic essay on Mexican machismo and recent responses to Paz, sexual joking among working-class Mexican-American men in South Texas, same-sex sexual behavior in Nicaragua, transvestite prostitutes in Brasil, and sexual accusations traded among Argentine soccer fans.

Texts:  Photocopies of all of the assigned texts will be distributed each week.

Requirements:  Students are required to attend class prepared and willing to participate in class discussion.  Students are also required to participate in all of the excursions).  In addition, each student is required to submit 20 pages of writing.  The writing can take any of the following forms or a combination of those forms:

• 1-page responses to the assigned scholarly texts, to be submitted at the beginning of the class session for which the text is assigned.
• 2- to 3-page fieldnote entries, to be submitted within a week of  the fieldwork or fieldtrip on which the fieldnotes are based
• an essay on the topic of your choice, to be submitted on August 3

Syllabus

Week One:  Machismo

Monday, July 2, 2:00-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read Octavio Paz, “Sons of Malinche”

Monday, July 2, 9:45-11:45 p.m.:  fieldwork

• watch Argentina-Colombia soccer game or game on Thursday, July 5

Thursday, July 5, 2:00-5:00 p.m.:  class

• read Américo Paredes, “The United States, Mexico, and Machismo” [1971], in Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border, edited by Richard Bauman (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), pp. 215-234.
• read Matthew C. Gutmann, “Machismo,” in The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 221-242.

Thursday, July 5, 9:45-11:45 p.m.:  fieldwork

• watch Argentina-Paraguay soccer game or game on Monday, July 2

Friday, July 6, 9:00 p.m.-midnight:  fieldtrip

• Drag Kings
• dinner with director (to be confirmed)

Week Two:  Asado

Monday, 9 de Julio:  11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.:  fieldtrip

• Feria de Mataderos

Tuesday, July 10, 1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read José E. Limón, “Carne, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque:  Bakhtinian ‘Batos’ Disorder, and Narrative Discourses,” American Ethnologist 16(3) (1989):  471-486.
• read Jeffrey Tobin, “The Performance of Porteño Masculinity in Asado” [translation of “A Performance da Masculinidade Portenha no Churrasco,” Cadernos PAGU (Center of Gender Studies, University of Campinas) 12 (1999): 301-329)].

Thursday, July 12, 2:00-5:00 p.m.:  class

• read Echeverría, Esteban, “The Slaughterhouse” [1837] translated by John Incledon, in The Spanish American Short Story: A Critical Anthology, edited by Seymour Menton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 3-21.
• read Homero Manzi, "Juan Manuel," translated by Jeffrey Tobin.
• read Frank Graziano, “In the Name of the Father,” in Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality and Radical Christianity in the Argentine “Dirty War” (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 147-190.
• read Jeffrey Tobin, Penetrating Questions,” ms.

Saturday, July 14, 1:00-4:00 p.m.:  fieldtrip

• Día del Campo

Week Three:  Fútbol

Monday, July 16, 1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read Eduardo P. Archetti, “Masculine National Virtues and Moralities in Football,” in Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 161-179.
• read Pablo Alabarces, “Aguante,”
• guest speaker:  Pablo Alabarces

Thursday, July 19, 1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, “A Study of Argentine Soccer: The Dynamics of Its Fans and Their Folklore,” Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology 5(1) (1982): 7-28.
• read Jeffrey Tobin, “A Question of Balls: Sexual Politics of Argentine Soccer,” in Decomposition, edited by Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 111-134.

Saturday, July 21, TBA:  fieldtrip

• Soccer game

Week Four:  Tango

Monday, July 23, 1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read Marta E. Savigliano, “Tango as a Spectacle of Sex, Race, and Class,” in Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder:  Westview, 1995), pp. 30-72.

Wednesday, July 25, 8:30 p.m.-midnight:  fieldtrip

• Práctica/Milonga, La Marshall, Maipú 444

Thursday, July 26, 1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read Jorge Luis Borges, “The Interloper,” in Collected Fictions (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 348-351.
• read Julio Cortázar, “Gates of Heaven,” in Blow-Up and Other Stories (New York: Pantheon Books, ), pp. 97-113.
• read Jorge Salessi, “Medics, Crooks, and Tango Queens: The National Appropriation of a Gay Tango,” translated by Celeste Fraser Delgado, in Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latino/a America, edited by Celeste Fraser Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 141-174.
• Jeffrey Tobin, “Tango and the Scandal of Homosocial Desire,” in The Passion of Music and Dance: Body, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by William Washabaugh, pp. 79-102. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1998.
• guest speakers:  Roxana Gargano and Mariana Docampo

Week Five:  Homosexuality

Monday, July 30, 1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• read Ana María Alonso and María Teresa Koreck, “Silences:  ‘Hispanics,’ AIDS, and Sexual Practices,” Differences:  A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (1989):  101-124.
• read Roger N. Lancaster, “Subject/Honor, Object/Shame,” in Life is Hard:  Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1992), pp. ….
• guest speaker:  Luis Amaya

Thursday, August 2:  1:30-4:00 p.m.:  class

• Stephen O. Murray, “Machismo, Male Homosexuality, and Latino Culture,” in Latin American Male Homosexualities (city:  University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. pn-pn.
• Don Kulick, “The Gender of Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes” American Anthropologist