Sexing the World

Sexing the World PDF Author: Anthony Corbeill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400852463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as "dust" (pulvis) or "tree bark" (cortex). Corbeill then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. He looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. Throughout, Corbeill shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories. Sexing the World contributes to our understanding of the power of language to shape human perception.

Sexing the World

Sexing the World PDF Author: Anthony Corbeill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400852463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book

Book Description
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as "dust" (pulvis) or "tree bark" (cortex). Corbeill then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. He looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. Throughout, Corbeill shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories. Sexing the World contributes to our understanding of the power of language to shape human perception.

Sexing the World

Sexing the World PDF Author: Anthony Corbeill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691202311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as "dust" (pulvis) or "tree bark" (cortex). Corbeill then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. He looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. Throughout, Corbeill shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories. Sexing the World contributes to our understanding of the power of language to shape human perception.

Sex/gender

Sex/gender PDF Author: Anne Fausto-Sterling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415881455
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Anne Fausto-Sterling's Sex/Gender is the only interdisciplinary book for undergraduate courses to explain sex and gender from a biological, social, and cultural perspective.

Sexing the Body

Sexing the Body PDF Author: Anne Fausto-Sterling
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541672909
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 621

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Book Description
Now updated with groundbreaking research, this award-winning classic examines the construction of sexual identity in biology, society, and history. Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced. Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms -- sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed -- and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.

The Sex Is Out of This World

The Sex Is Out of This World PDF Author: Sherry Ginn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786466855
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
"Science fiction" can be translated into "real unreality." More than a genre like fantasy, which creates entirely new realms of possibility, science fiction constructs its possibilities from what is real, from what is, indeed, possible, or conceivably so. This collection, then, looks to understand and explore the "unreal reality," to note ways in which our culture's continually changing and evolving mores of sex and sexuality are reflected in, dissected by, and deconstructed through the genre of science fiction. This book is a collection of new essays, with the general objective of filling a gap in the literature about sex and science fiction (although some work has gone before, none of it is recent). The essays herein explore the myriad ways in which authors--regardless of format (print, film, television, etc.)--envision very different beings expressing this most fundamental of human behaviors.

The World of P.G. Wodehouse

The World of P.G. Wodehouse PDF Author: Herbert Warren Wind
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780099747208
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description


Sexing the Cherry

Sexing the Cherry PDF Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802198708
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
“The marvelous and the horrific, the mythic and the mundane overlap and intermingle in this wonderfully inventive novel.” —The New York Times Winner of the E. M. Forster Award In a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child, Jordan, is rescued by Dog Woman and grows up to travel the globe like Gulliver—though he finds that the most curious oddities come from his own mind. The spiraling tale leads the reader from discussions on the nature of time to Jordan’s fascination with journeys concealed within other journeys, all with a dizzying speed that jumps from epiphany to shimmering epiphany. From the New York Times–bestselling author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Sexing the Cherry is “a mixture of The Arabian Nights touched by the philosophical form of Milan Kundera and told with the grace of Italo Calvino” (San Francisco Chronicle). “Those who care for fiction that is both idiosyncratic and beautiful will want to read anything [Winterson] writes.” —The Washington Post Book World

Sexing the Brain

Sexing the Brain PDF Author: Lesley J. Rogers
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231120111
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
How much of sexual diversity is the result of nature versus nurture? Prevailing theories today lean heavily toward nature. Now a leading researcher in neuroscience and animal behavior shows how, in recent history, scientific claims about sex and gender differences have reflected the culture of the time. Although the conviction that genetics can explain everything is now widespread, the author demonstrates the interaction of culture and environment in the formation of behavioral traits and so provides an important corrective to popular notions of reductionism. Starting with a summary of sex and gender studies, Rogers explains the error of sex biasing, especially the once-assumed inferiority of women. She then addresses several modern studies and investigations, some of which assert that sex and gender differences are the product of genetic inheritance and hormones. Rogers uses laboratory evidence from studies of animals that help illustrate the biologically fluid properties of sex and gender. Sexing the Brain addresses a variety of topical questions: Are there sex differences in how we think and feel? Is language processed in different parts of the brain in men and women? Do social influences have a stronger influence on sexual behavior than sex hormone levels? Rogers concludes that "our biology does not bind us to remain the same.... We have the ability to change, and the future of sex differences belongs to us."

Sex Itself

Sex Itself PDF Author: Sarah S. Richardson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022608471X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Human genomes are 99.9 percent identical—with one prominent exception. Instead of a matching pair of X chromosomes, men carry a single X, coupled with a tiny chromosome called the Y. Tracking the emergence of a new and distinctive way of thinking about sex represented by the unalterable, simple, and visually compelling binary of the X and Y chromosomes, Sex Itself examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, postgenomic age. Using methods from history, philosophy, and gender studies of science, Sarah S. Richardson uncovers how gender has helped to shape the research practices, questions asked, theories and models, and descriptive language used in sex chromosome research. From the earliest theories of chromosomal sex determination, to the mid-century hypothesis of the aggressive XYY supermale, to the debate about Y chromosome degeneration, to the recent claim that male and female genomes are more different than those of humans and chimpanzees, Richardson shows how cultural gender conceptions influence the genetic science of sex. Richardson shows how sexual science of the past continues to resonate, in ways both subtle and explicit, in contemporary research on the genetics of sex and gender. With the completion of the Human Genome Project, genes and chromosomes are moving to the center of the biology of sex. Sex Itself offers a compelling argument for the importance of ongoing critical dialogue on how cultural conceptions of gender operate within the science of sex.

The Sexual History of the Global South

The Sexual History of the Global South PDF Author: Saskia Wieringa
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1780324057
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The Sexual History of the Global South explores the gap between sexuality studies and post-colonial cultural critique. Featuring twelve case studies, based on original historical and ethnographic research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book examines the sexual investments underlying the colonial project and the construction of modern nation-states. Covering issues of heteronormativity, post-colonial amnesia regarding non-normative sexualities, women's sexual agency, the policing of the boundaries between the public and the private realm, sexual citizenship, the connections between LGBTQ activism and processes of state formation, and the emergence of sexuality studies in the global South, this collection is of great geographical, historical, and topical significance.