Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies (490-0-20)

Topic

Race, Gender, and Beauty: The Politics of Aestheti

Instructors

Tessie Liu
467/491-3150
Harris Hall Room 327

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-425: Mon 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie captured the emotions called up by the national guard presence in Washington D.C. during August 2025 by citing the French situationist critic Guy Debord: "The spectacle that falsifies reality is nevertheless a real product of that reality, while lived reality is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it." Michael Spicher from Aesthetics Research Lab further elaborates that "the ways governments present themselves, the design of public spaces, the clothing of officials, and the choreography of ceremonies are all part of the political fabric. These aesthetic elements don't merely decorate power—they help constitute it." To situate the aesthetics of power within a broader politics of beauty, this seminar will begin with Edmund Burke's notion of the sublime from his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime to augment Debord's analysis of the spectacle, Gilles Deleuze on terror, and Clifford Geertz on the performance of statecraft. Part one of the seminar will then consider why the focus of 17th and 18th century moral philosophers on aesthetic appreciation became linked to human physiognomy in the transition to 19th century anthropology, medicine, phrenology, and comparative anatomy. In this process, we uncover how elites as spectators, connoisseurs, and scientists constituted racial and sexual hierarchies through beauty standards. Part two will examine the transformation of feminist critiques of beauty culture from early Second Wave feminism to intersectional critiques of neoliberal beauty practices. Part three will examine the counter-narratives and self-fashioning embedded in collective movements in the 20th and 21st centuries that remake bodily meaning and hence create alternate political aesthetics.

Class Materials (Required)

Provided in Canvas