HL90CK: Beauty and Power: Race and Gender in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Instructor: Genevieve Clutario
Meeting time: Tuesday, 2-4

This course examines processes of defining beauty through both cultural productions and historical works during the 20th and 21st Centuries. We will explore how beauty is used to manage bodies, define social hierarchies, and gain or maintain power. We will also investigate how presentations of beauty could also be used as forms of subversion and resistance. Looking at sites such beauty pageants, cosmetic consumer cultures, drag performances, cosmetic surgery, and the transnational production and consumption of beauty vloggers we will investigate how race, gender, sexuality, and class informs definitions of beauty and how definitions of beauty inform constructions of race, gender, sexuality, and class.