| WGSS 100-01 |
Introduction to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
This course offers an introduction to central concepts, questions and debates in gender and sexuality studies from US, Women of Color, queer and transnational perspectives. Throughout the semester we will explore the construction and maintenance of norms governing sex, gender, and sexuality, with an emphasis on how opportunity and inequality operate through categories of race, ethnicity, class, ability and nationality. After an introduction to some of the main concepts guiding scholarship in the field of feminist studies (the centrality of difference; social and political constructions of gender and sex; representation; privilege and power; intersectionality; globalization; transnationalism), we will consider how power inequalities attached to interlocking categories of difference shape key feminist areas of inquiry, including questions of: work, resource allocation, sexuality, queerness, reproduction, marriage, gendered violence, militarization, consumerism, resistance and community sustainability.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 311 |
| WGSS 201-01 |
Goddesses, Prostitutes, Wives, Saints, and Rulers: Women and European Art 1200-1680
Instructor: Melinda Schlitt
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ARTH 216-01.
How has the representation of women been constructed, idealized, vilified, manipulated, sexualized, and gendered during what could be broadly called the "Renaissance" in Europe? How have female artists, such as Sofanisba Anguissola (1532-1625) or Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), among others, represented themselves, men, and other familiar subjects differently from their male counterparts? How have female rulers, like Queen Elizabeth I of England, controlled their own political and cultural self-fashioning through portraiture? What role do the lives and writings of female mystics, like Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) or Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) play in depictions of their physical and spiritual identity? How was beauty and sexuality conceived through the imagery of mythological women, like Venus, or culturally ambivalent women, like courtesans and prostitutes? What kind of art did wealthy, aristocratic women or nuns pay for and use? Through studying primary texts, scholarly literature, and relevant theoretical sources, we will address these and other issues in art produced in Italy, France, Spain, Northern Europe, and England from 1200-1680. The course will be grounded in an understanding of historical and cultural contexts, and students will develop paper topics based on their own interests in consultation with the professor. A screening of the documentary film, "A Woman Like That" (2009), on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi and a trip to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. will take place during the second half of the semester.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
WEISS 221 |
| WGSS 201-02 |
Writing Jewish Women
Instructor: Marley Weiner
Course Description:
Cross-listed with JDST 216-01 and RELG 260-01.
This class will explore how Jewish women have shaped the Jewish world through their words and writing. The "Jewish cannon" is heavily male dominated, and women tend to be an object of discourse rather than a subject. And yet, throughout Jewish history, Jewish women have written about their faith, culture, and circumstances, and in so doing they have shaped the communities in which they live. From memoir to theology, liturgy to fantasy, Biblical analysis to poetry, we will analyze the ways in which Jewish women think about themselves both as women and as Jews within the context of Jewish community. We will begin with examinations of tropes and stories of women in Biblical texts, and continue through history to writers shaping the worldwide Jewish conversation today. We will examine the ways in which women's voices and identities have been obscured or decentralized throughout history, and ultimately the ways in which feminine and feminist writing has profoundly shaped the way the Jewish community thinks about Jewish identity, God, and community. Texts will encompass women of diverse national, ethnic and racial backgrounds in addition to thinking about gender from trans and nonbinary perspectives.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 301 |
| WGSS 202-01 |
Political Economy of Gender
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ECON 230-01 and SOCI 227-01.
Political Economy of Gender adopts a gender-aware perspective to examine how people secure their livelihoods through labor market and nonmarket work. The course examines the nature of labor market inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity and other social categories, how they are integrated with non-market activities, their wellbeing effects, their role in the macroeconomy, and the impact of macroeconomic policies on these work inequalities. These questions are examined from the perspective of feminist economics that has emerged since the early 1990s as a heterodox economics discourse, critical of both mainstream and gender-blind heterodox economics. While we will pay special attention to the US economy, our starting point is that there is one world economy with connections between the global South and the North, in spite of the structural differences between (and within) these regions.
|
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 110 |
| WGSS 202-02 |
Black Feminist Thoughts
Instructor: Jerry Philogene
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-04, AMST 200-02 and LALC 200-01.
This course provides perspectives on the development and materialization of Black feminist thoughts within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary in focus, it surveys feminist politics and theories through films, popular culture, manifestoes, literary texts, and theoretical and historical essays. It offers an interdisciplinary survey of African-American and other African descendant women's contributions to feminist theory as a heterogeneous field of knowledge encompassing multiple streams of gender- and race-cognizant articulation and praxis. This course will pair primary texts authored by black women with secondary texts produced by black feminist scholars; these critiques will illustrate the myriad ways black feminists engage with and seek to transform representations of black female experience. During the course, we will identify and characterize the major issues that black feminists address as well as the various contemporary forms of resistance to social structures. In addition, the course will explore the diversity and ambiguity of various black feminisms through a number of frames, such as gender theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and reproductive rights and practices. Caribbean, Afro-Latina, and Black British feminisms are also included as we map feminist consciousness and practice across the African Diaspora.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 110 |
| WGSS 202-03 |
Gender and Sexuality in African HIstory
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-03 and HIST 216-01.
This course examines how African societies have constructed gender and sexuality since the nineteenth century. Lectures and readings will be arranged thematically. Themes include sexuality and reproduction, colonialism and masculinity, queer identities, the household, women's economic activity, political power, religion, and democracy. We will analyze pre-colonial production and reproduction, family life and religion in the twentieth century, gender and nationalist politics, African women's leadership, and transnational debates over gender and sexuality. Readings, including historical studies and novels, songs, and art, will be drawn from across the cultures and languages of Africa.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 103 |
| WGSS 202-04 |
American Childhood
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 101-02.
Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 212 |
| WGSS 206-01 |
Fat Studies
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 200-01. This course introduces students to an emerging academic field, Fat Studies. By drawing from historical, cultural, and social texts, Fat Studies explores the meaning of fatness within the U.S. and also from comparative global perspectives. Students will examine the development of fat stigma and the ways it intersects with gendered, racial, ethnic and class constructions. Not a biomedical study of the obesity epidemic, this course instead will interrogate the very vocabulary used to describe our current crisis. Finally, students will become familiar with the wide range of activists whose work has challenged fat stigma and developed alternative models of health and beauty. This course is cross-listed as AMST 200.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 212 |
| WGSS 208-01 |
Introduction to Sexuality Studies
Instructor: Todd Nordgren
Course Description:
This course explores how practices, identities, behaviors, and representations of sexualities shape and are shaped by political, cultural, social, religious, medical and economic practices of societies across time and space. It will put sexuality at the center of analysis, but will develop understandings of sexuality as they are related to sex, gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, nationality and geographical location. Students will explore the historical and social processes through which diverse behaviors are and are not designated as sexual. They will then analyze how these designations influence a range of institutional forces and social phenomena. Possible topics include: medicine, environmentalism, colonialism and nation-building, STI and HIV transmission, public health campaigns, art and literary production, visual and popular culture, community development, family structure, human rights frameworks, and law or policy.
|
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 103 |
| WGSS 301-01 |
Seminar on Toni Morrison II
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-03.This course is part two of a year-long exploration of the imaginative and critical works of Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison that were published from 1993-2015. We will continue to trace Morrison's development as a novelist, dramatist, childrens book author as well as a literary and cultural critic. In the process, we will examine her provocative commentaries on Black identity, race relations, and culture. In our analyses of these works, we will use such critical lenses as psychoanalytic theory, Black existentialism, Black feminism, and Womanism.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
EASTC 303 |
| WGSS 301-02 |
Music, Gender, and Performance
Instructor: Ellen Gray
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 211-01.
Global divas, trans voices, and all girl bands: these are some of the topics we will consider. This course examines relationships between gender, music, and performance from an interdisciplinary perspective (music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, gender and queer theory, performance studies). We examine debates around issues of sex and gender and nature and culture through the lens of musical performance and experience and draw on musical examples from a diverse range of socio-cultural contexts from around the world. Some questions we consider include: To what extent is participation in particular musical scenes dictated by gendered conventions? What might the voice tell us about gender or sexuality? How might the gendered performances and the voices of musical celebrities come to represent or officially speak for particular publics? How does music shape our understanding of emotion, our experience of pleasure? Class discussions will focus on careful readings of the assigned texts and listening/viewing assignments. Majors across the College are welcome and no musical note reading skills are necessary.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
WEISS 212 |
| WGSS 301-03 |
Sex in the City of Light: Early 20th-Century Women in Paris
Instructor: Adeline Soldin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FREN 364-01. Part of the Globally Integrated Semester in Paris.
This course in comparative literature and visual culture investigates the city of Paris as a site of sexual and artistic exploration, liberation, and confrontation for women of the early 20th-Century. Students will study a variety of literature, visual art, performance art, and haute couture created and produced by women from diverse backgrounds who came to Paris in search of free self-expression. Most of these writers, journalists, artists, dancers, and designers knew each other; many collaborated professionally and mingled socially; and some became involved romantically. We will discuss the implications of their professional, social, and intimate relationships and consider to what extent these networks may have fostered artistic creation as well as political activism. To facilitate these investigations, students will read feminist and queer theory to deepen and strengthen our analyses.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 211 |
| WGSS 301-04 |
James Baldwin: Reflections of a Radical
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-02.
This is an interdisciplinary seminar that seeks to explore the different sides of James Baldwin: a writer, an intellectual, a cosmopolitan, a radical, and an activist. The seminar will focus on James Baldwin's essays, in addition to his major novels and works of fiction. We will watch the recent, highly acclaimed film based on his writings, "I am not your Negro" as well as his speeches and debates with prolific figures like Malcolm X. Finally, we will explore Baldwin's invaluable contributions to the discourses on Queer Studies, critical race theory, class, philosophy, and above all, his visions of Black liberation and the meaning of freedom.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
ALTHSE 109 |
| WGSS 301-05 |
Ethical Theory
Instructor: Amy McKiernan
Course Description:
Cross-listed with PHIL 302-01.
This seminar will explore major issues or texts in classical or contemporary moral philosophy.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 21 |
| WGSS 301-06 |
Indigenous and Chicana Feminisms
Instructor: Jed Kuhn
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 303-01 and LALC 300-02.This course examines Indigenous and Chicana feminisms as distinct-yet-overlapping schools of feminist thought. Indigenous feminisms refer to the range of feminist theories and practices that have emerged from Native American and Hawaiian communities in the U.S. as well as Indigenous communities globally. Chicana feminism refers to feminist theories and practices that have emerged from Mexican American communities of Indigenous descent in the United States in conversation with Mexican, Central American, Puerto Rican, and other Latina feminisms. Indigenous and Chicana feminisms have much in common. Both, for instance, examine the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, and both turn to their respective indigenous cultures to imagine new ways of surviving, thriving, and decolonizing the present. However, there are also sources of tension as the fundamental goals of some Native American and Chicanx scholars and activists contradict one another. Good relations between these groups are further hindered by a colonial history of violence. This course interrogates the tensions and alliances between these groups to ask how Native American and Chicanx communities can support one another in solidarity as well as why feminism has continually been the common ground from which scholars have attempted to bridge the divide between these groups. We will ground our interrogation in the historical and legal context of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands and practice applying these theories through the analysis of cultural texts. Additionally, we will bring in the insights of select Black and transnational feminist theorists to complicate these discussions. In addition to Indigenous and Chicana feminisms, major perspectives we will consider include borderlands theory, settler colonial theory, postcolonial theory, and queer of color critique. Major authors may include Gloria Anzalda, Joanne Barker, Lourdes Alberto, Eve Tuck, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Mara Josefina Saldaa-Portillo.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204 |
| WGSS 301-07 |
Fascism and Film: Propaganda, Sexualized Politics and Male Fantasies
Instructor: Nicoletta Marini Maio
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 310-02 and ITAL 323-01.Additional Time Slot: For students pursuing the Italian FLIC option only Wednesdays 11:30-12:30 in Stern 103.
In this course, we will explore the narratives of fascism in cinema from the 1920s onwards. The infamous slogan "cinema is the most powerful weapon" was coined by fascist dictator Mussolini who understood how the media could create consensus and control. We will begin our analysis from the Italian cinema produced during fascism, which revolves around a fantasy of masculinity associated with racial and ethnic superiority, in contrast to the feminine sphere of reproduction, pliability, and madness. We will then examine the shift to selective memories of victimization and rejection in postwar antifascist films by directors such as Bertolucci, Wertmuller, Fellini, and Spielberg. These films characterize fascism through symbols of violence, immorality, and instability: from the policing of national and sexual boundaries to man-to-man bonding and the fear of homosexuality, and images of Nazi and fascist eroticism. Finally, through the analysis of works by directors such as Scola, Benigni, Bellocchio, and Tarantino, we will explore how cinema continues to intercept the cultural configurations that fascism has constructed of itself, the system(s) of power it has created, and the ur-fascist myths still present in western societies. Taught in English. FLIC in Italian is offered exclusively for Italian minors/majors, INBM majors, and INST majors who have completed ITAL 231 or equivalent.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
BOSLER 314 |
| WGSS 302-01 |
Consumerism, Nationalism and Gender
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 377-01.
This reading seminar examines the development of consumerism and nationalism in Europe and America beginning in the late 18th century and continuing on into the post-WWII era - from American Revolutionary boycotts to French fast food establishments. We will look for overlaps or polarities between the movements and the way gender interacted with both of them. Students may be surprised at the gendered aspects of both movements. We will consider, for example, the historical development of the image of women loving to shop, and we will study propaganda from the two world wars with men in uniform and women on the "home front." Our readings will include both promoters and critics of each movement.
|
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 204 |
| WGSS 302-02 |
Gender and Justice
Instructor: Kathryn Heard
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LAWP 234-01, PHIL 261-02 and POSC 234-01. Permission of instructor required.
This course analyzes how legal theorists have drawn upon notions of gender, sex, and sexuality in order to understand and critique the American legal system and its norms. It considers questions like: How might a feminist perspective on the law illuminate instances of systematized inequality or legalized discrimination? Can queer theorists engage with the law in order to alter it, or does the very act of engagement hinder the possibility of future socio-legal change? How can the law better represent women of color, working women, queer women, stay-at-home mothers, transgender or non-binary individuals, women seeking surrogate or abortion services, and more, without reinforcing traditional understandings of what it means to be a woman? These questions and more will be taken up as we move through a rich combination of political philosophy, legal cases, and works of socio-legal analysis.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| WGSS 400-01 |
Senior Seminar
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
All topics will draw upon the knowledge of the history and theories of feminism and will be interdisciplinary in nature. Prerequisite or co-requisite: 100, 200 and 300 or permission of the instructor.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 103 |
| WGSS 500-01 |
Reproductive Justice in the Public Sphere
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
|
|
| Courses Offered in AFST |
| AFST 220-03 |
Gender and Sexuality in African History
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 216-01 and WGSS 202-03.
This course examines how African societies have constructed gender and sexuality since the nineteenth century. Lectures and readings will be arranged thematically. Themes include sexuality and reproduction, colonialism and masculinity, queer identities, the household, women's economic activity, political power, religion, and democracy. We will analyze pre-colonial production and reproduction, family life and religion in the twentieth century, gender and nationalist politics, African women's leadership, and transnational debates over gender and sexuality. Readings, including historical studies and novels, songs, and art, will be drawn from across the cultures and languages of Africa.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 103 |
| AFST 320-02 |
James Baldwin: Reflections of a Radical
Instructor: Nadia Alahmed
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-04.
This is an interdisciplinary seminar that seeks to explore the different sides of James Baldwin: a writer, an intellectual, a cosmopolitan, a radical, and an activist. The seminar will focus on James Baldwin's essays, in addition to his major novels and works of fiction. We will watch the recent, highly acclaimed film based on his writings, "I am not your Negro" as well as his speeches and debates with prolific figures like Malcolm X. Finally, we will explore Baldwin's invaluable contributions to the discourses on Queer Studies, critical race theory, class, philosophy, and above all, his visions of Black liberation and the meaning of freedom.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
ALTHSE 109 |
| AFST 320-03 |
Seminar on Toni Morrison II
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-01.This course is part two of a year-long exploration of the imaginative and critical works of Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison that were published from 1993-2015. We will continue to trace Morrison's development as a novelist, dramatist, childrens book author as well as a literary and cultural critic. In the process, we will examine her provocative commentaries on Black identity, race relations, and culture. In our analyses of these works, we will use such critical lenses as psychoanalytic theory, Black existentialism, Black feminism, and Womanism.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
EASTC 303 |
| AFST 320-04 |
Black Feminist Thoughts
Instructor: Jerry Philogene
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 200-02, LALC 200-01 and WGSS 202-02.
This course provides perspectives on the development and materialization of Black feminist thoughts within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary in focus, it surveys feminist politics and theories through films, popular culture, manifestoes, literary texts, and theoretical and historical essays. It offers an interdisciplinary survey of African-American and other African descendant women's contributions to feminist theory as a heterogeneous field of knowledge encompassing multiple streams of gender- and race-cognizant articulation and praxis. This course will pair primary texts authored by black women with secondary texts produced by black feminist scholars; these critiques will illustrate the myriad ways black feminists engage with and seek to transform representations of black female experience. During the course, we will identify and characterize the major issues that black feminists address as well as the various contemporary forms of resistance to social structures. In addition, the course will explore the diversity and ambiguity of various black feminisms through a number of frames, such as gender theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and reproductive rights and practices. Caribbean, Afro-Latina, and Black British feminisms are also included as we map feminist consciousness and practice across the African Diaspora.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 110 |
| Courses Offered in AMST |
| AMST 101-02 |
American Childhood
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-04.
Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-01 |
Fat Studies
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 206-01.
This course introduces students to an emerging academic field, Fat Studies. By drawing from historical, cultural, and social texts, Fat Studies explores the meaning of fatness within the U.S. and also from comparative global perspectives. Students will examine the development of fat stigma and the ways it intersects with gendered, racial, ethnic and class constructions. Not a biomedical study of the "obesity epidemic," this course instead will interrogate the very vocabulary used to describe our current "crisis." Finally, students will become familiar with the wide range of activists whose work has challenged fat stigma and developed alternative models of health and beauty.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-02 |
Black Feminist Thoughts
Instructor: Jerry Philogene
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-04, LALC 200-01 and WGSS 202-02.
This course provides perspectives on the development and materialization of Black feminist thoughts within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary in focus, it surveys feminist politics and theories through films, popular culture, manifestoes, literary texts, and theoretical and historical essays. It offers an interdisciplinary survey of African-American and other African descendant women's contributions to feminist theory as a heterogeneous field of knowledge encompassing multiple streams of gender- and race-cognizant articulation and praxis. This course will pair primary texts authored by black women with secondary texts produced by black feminist scholars; these critiques will illustrate the myriad ways black feminists engage with and seek to transform representations of black female experience. During the course, we will identify and characterize the major issues that black feminists address as well as the various contemporary forms of resistance to social structures. In addition, the course will explore the diversity and ambiguity of various black feminisms through a number of frames, such as gender theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and reproductive rights and practices. Caribbean, Afro-Latina, and Black British feminisms are also included as we map feminist consciousness and practice across the African Diaspora.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 110 |
| AMST 303-01 |
Indigenous and Chicana Feminisms
Instructor: Jed Kuhn
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LALC 300-02 and WGSS 301-06.
This course examines Indigenous and Chicana feminisms as distinct-yet-overlapping schools of feminist thought. Indigenous feminisms refer to the range of feminist theories and practices that have emerged from Native American and Hawaiian communities in the U.S. as well as Indigenous communities globally. Chicana feminism refers to feminist theories and practices that have emerged from Mexican American communities of Indigenous descent in the United States in conversation with Mexican, Central American, Puerto Rican, and other Latina feminisms. Indigenous and Chicana feminisms have much in common. Both, for instance, examine the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, and both turn to their respective indigenous cultures to imagine new ways of surviving, thriving, and decolonizing the present. However, there are also sources of tension as the fundamental goals of some Native American and Chicanx scholars and activists contradict one another. Good relations between these groups are further hindered by a colonial history of violence. This course interrogates the tensions and alliances between these groups to ask how Native American and Chicanx communities can support one another in solidarity as well as why feminism has continually been the common ground from which scholars have attempted to bridge the divide between these groups. We will ground our interrogation in the historical and legal context of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands and practice applying these theories through the analysis of cultural texts. Additionally, we will bring in the insights of select Black and transnational feminist theorists to complicate these discussions. In addition to Indigenous and Chicana feminisms, major perspectives we will consider include borderlands theory, settler colonial theory, postcolonial theory, and queer of color critique. Major authors may include Gloria Anzalda, Joanne Barker, Lourdes Alberto, Eve Tuck, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Mara Josefina Saldaa-Portillo.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204 |
| Courses Offered in ARTH |
| ARTH 216-01 |
Goddesses, Prostitutes, Wives, Saints, and Rulers: Women and European Art 1200-1680
Instructor: Melinda Schlitt
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-01. How has the representation of women been constructed, idealized, vilified, manipulated, sexualized, and gendered during what could be broadly called the Renaissance in Europe? How have female artists, such as Sofanisba Anguissola (1532-1625) or Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), among others, represented themselves, men, and other familiar subjects differently from their male counterparts? How have female rulers, like Queen Elizabeth I of England, controlled their own political and cultural self-fashioning through portraiture? What role do the lives and writings of female mystics, like Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) or Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) play in depictions of their physical and spiritual identity? How was beauty and sexuality conceived through the imagery of mythological women, like Venus, or culturally ambivalent women, like courtesans and prostitutes? What kind of art did wealthy, aristocratic women or nuns pay for and use? Through studying primary texts, scholarly literature, and relevant theoretical sources, we will address these and other issues in art produced in Italy, France, Spain, Northern Europe, and England from 1200-1680. The course will be grounded in an understanding of historical and cultural contexts, and students will develop paper topics based on their own interests in consultation with the professor. A screening of the documentary film, A Woman Like That (2009), on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi and a trip to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. will take place during the second half of the semester. Offered every year.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
WEISS 221 |
| Courses Offered in ECON |
| ECON 230-01 |
Political Economy of Gender
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with SOCI 227-01 and WGSS 202-01. Political Economy of Gender adopts a gender-aware perspective to examine how people secure their livelihoods through labor market and nonmarket work. The course examines the nature of labor market inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity and other social categories, how they are integrated with non-market activities, their wellbeing effects, their role in the macroeconomy, and the impact of macroeconomic policies on these work inequalities. These questions are examined from the perspective of feminist economics that has emerged since the early 1990s as a heterodox economics discourse, critical of both mainstream and gender-blind heterodox economics. While we will pay special attention to the US economy, our starting point is that there is one world economy with connections between the global South and the North, in spite of the structural differences between (and within) these regions.For ECON 230: ECON 111 (ECON 112 recommended); For SOCI 227: SOCI 110 or ECON 111; For WGSS 202: none (ECON 111 recommended) This course is cross-listed as SOCI 227 & WGSS 202.
|
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 110 |
| Courses Offered in FMST |
| FMST 310-02 |
Fascism and Film: Propaganda, Sexualized Politics and Male Fantasies
Instructor: Nicoletta Marini Maio
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ITAL 323-01 and WGSS 301-07.Additional Time Slot: For students pursuing the Italian FLIC option only Wednesdays 11:30-12:30 in Stern 103.
In this course, we will explore the narratives of fascism in cinema from the 1920s onwards. The infamous slogan "cinema is the most powerful weapon" was coined by fascist dictator Mussolini who understood how the media could create consensus and control. We will begin our analysis from the Italian cinema produced during fascism, which revolves around a fantasy of masculinity associated with racial and ethnic superiority, in contrast to the feminine sphere of reproduction, pliability, and madness. We will then examine the shift to selective memories of victimization and rejection in postwar antifascist films by directors such as Bertolucci, Wertmuller, Fellini, and Spielberg. These films characterize fascism through symbols of violence, immorality, and instability: from the policing of national and sexual boundaries to man-to-man bonding and the fear of homosexuality, and images of Nazi and fascist eroticism. Finally, through the analysis of works by directors such as Scola, Benigni, Bellocchio, and Tarantino, we will explore how cinema continues to intercept the cultural configurations that fascism has constructed of itself, the system(s) of power it has created, and the ur-fascist myths still present in western societies. Taught in English. FLIC in Italian is offered exclusively for Italian minors/majors, INBM majors, and INST majors who have completed ITAL 231 or equivalent.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
BOSLER 314 |
| Courses Offered in FREN |
| FREN 364-01 |
Sex in the City of Light: Early 20th-Century Women in Paris
Instructor: Adeline Soldin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-03.Note: Part of the Globally Integrated Semester in Paris.
This course in comparative literature and visual culture investigates the city of Paris as a site of sexual and artistic exploration, liberation, and confrontation for women of the early 20th-Century. Students will study a variety of literature, visual art, performance art, and haute couture created and produced by women from diverse backgrounds who came to Paris in search of free self-expression. Most of these writers, journalists, artists, dancers, and designers knew each other; many collaborated professionally and mingled socially; and some became involved romantically. We will discuss the implications of their professional, social, and intimate relationships and consider to what extent these networks may have fostered artistic creation as well as political activism. To facilitate these investigations, students will read feminist and queer theory to deepen and strengthen our analyses.
|
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 211 |
| Courses Offered in HIST |
| HIST 216-01 |
Gender and Sexuality in African History
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-03 and WGSS 202-03.
This course examines how African societies have constructed gender and sexuality since the nineteenth century. Lectures and readings will be arranged thematically. Themes include sexuality and reproduction, colonialism and masculinity, queer identities, the household, women's economic activity, political power, religion, and democracy. We will analyze pre-colonial production and reproduction, family life and religion in the twentieth century, gender and nationalist politics, African women's leadership, and transnational debates over gender and sexuality. Readings, including historical studies and novels, songs, and art, will be drawn from across the cultures and languages of Africa.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 103 |
| HIST 377-01 |
Consumerism, Nationalism and Gender
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 302-01. This reading seminar examines the development of consumerism and nationalism in Europe and America beginning in the late 18th century and continuing on into the post-WWII era - from American Revolutionary boycotts to French fast food establishments. We will look for overlaps or polarities between the movements and the way gender interacted with both of them. Students may be surprised at the gendered aspects of both movements. We will consider, for example, the historical development of the image of women loving to shop, and we will study propaganda from the two world wars with men in uniform and women on the "home front." Our readings will include both promoters and critics of each movement. Offered every two or three years.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 204 |
| Courses Offered in ITAL |
| ITAL 323-01 |
Fascism and Film: Propaganda, Sexualized Politics and Male Fantasies
Instructor: Nicoletta Marini Maio
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 310-02 and WGSS 301-07.Additional Time Slot: For students pursuing the Italian FLIC option only Wednesdays 11:30-12:30 in Stern 103.
In this course, we will explore the narratives of fascism in cinema from the 1920s onwards. The infamous slogan "cinema is the most powerful weapon" was coined by fascist dictator Mussolini who understood how the media could create consensus and control. We will begin our analysis from the Italian cinema produced during fascism, which revolves around a fantasy of masculinity associated with racial and ethnic superiority, in contrast to the feminine sphere of reproduction, pliability, and madness. We will then examine the shift to selective memories of victimization and rejection in postwar antifascist films by directors such as Bertolucci, Wertmuller, Fellini, and Spielberg. These films characterize fascism through symbols of violence, immorality, and instability: from the policing of national and sexual boundaries to man-to-man bonding and the fear of homosexuality, and images of Nazi and fascist eroticism. Finally, through the analysis of works by directors such as Scola, Benigni, Bellocchio, and Tarantino, we will explore how cinema continues to intercept the cultural configurations that fascism has constructed of itself, the system(s) of power it has created, and the ur-fascist myths still present in western societies. Taught in English. FLIC in Italian is offered exclusively for Italian minors/majors, INBM majors, and INST majors who have completed ITAL 231 or equivalent.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
BOSLER 314 |
| Courses Offered in JDST |
| JDST 216-01 |
Writing Jewish Women
Instructor: Marley Weiner
Course Description:
Cross-listed with RELG 260-01 and WGSS 201-02.
This class will explore how Jewish women have shaped the Jewish world through their words and writing. The "Jewish cannon" is heavily male dominated, and women tend to be an object of discourse rather than a subject. And yet, throughout Jewish history, Jewish women have written about their faith, culture, and circumstances, and in so doing they have shaped the communities in which they live. From memoir to theology, liturgy to fantasy, Biblical analysis to poetry, we will analyze the ways in which Jewish women think about themselves both as women and as Jews within the context of Jewish community. We will begin with examinations of tropes and stories of women in Biblical texts, and continue through history to writers shaping the worldwide Jewish conversation today. We will examine the ways in which women's voices and identities have been obscured or decentralized throughout history, and ultimately the ways in which feminine and feminist writing has profoundly shaped the way the Jewish community thinks about Jewish identity, God, and community. Texts will encompass women of diverse national, ethnic and racial backgrounds in addition to thinking about gender from trans and nonbinary perspectives.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 301 |
| Courses Offered in LALC |
| LALC 200-01 |
Black Feminist Thoughts
Instructor: Jerry Philogene
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-04, AMST 200-02 and WGSS 202-02.
This course provides perspectives on the development and materialization of Black feminist thoughts within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary in focus, it surveys feminist politics and theories through films, popular culture, manifestoes, literary texts, and theoretical and historical essays. It offers an interdisciplinary survey of African-American and other African descendant women's contributions to feminist theory as a heterogeneous field of knowledge encompassing multiple streams of gender- and race-cognizant articulation and praxis. This course will pair primary texts authored by black women with secondary texts produced by black feminist scholars; these critiques will illustrate the myriad ways black feminists engage with and seek to transform representations of black female experience. During the course, we will identify and characterize the major issues that black feminists address as well as the various contemporary forms of resistance to social structures. In addition, the course will explore the diversity and ambiguity of various black feminisms through a number of frames, such as gender theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and reproductive rights and practices. Caribbean, Afro-Latina, and Black British feminisms are also included as we map feminist consciousness and practice across the African Diaspora.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 110 |
| LALC 300-02 |
Indigenous and Chicana Feminisms
Instructor: Jed Kuhn
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 303-01 and WGSS 301-06.
This course examines Indigenous and Chicana feminisms as distinct-yet-overlapping schools of feminist thought. Indigenous feminisms refer to the range of feminist theories and practices that have emerged from Native American and Hawaiian communities in the U.S. as well as Indigenous communities globally. Chicana feminism refers to feminist theories and practices that have emerged from Mexican American communities of Indigenous descent in the United States in conversation with Mexican, Central American, Puerto Rican, and other Latina feminisms. Indigenous and Chicana feminisms have much in common. Both, for instance, examine the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, and both turn to their respective indigenous cultures to imagine new ways of surviving, thriving, and decolonizing the present. However, there are also sources of tension as the fundamental goals of some Native American and Chicanx scholars and activists contradict one another. Good relations between these groups are further hindered by a colonial history of violence. This course interrogates the tensions and alliances between these groups to ask how Native American and Chicanx communities can support one another in solidarity as well as why feminism has continually been the common ground from which scholars have attempted to bridge the divide between these groups. We will ground our interrogation in the historical and legal context of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands and practice applying these theories through the analysis of cultural texts. Additionally, we will bring in the insights of select Black and transnational feminist theorists to complicate these discussions. In addition to Indigenous and Chicana feminisms, major perspectives we will consider include borderlands theory, settler colonial theory, postcolonial theory, and queer of color critique. Major authors may include Gloria Anzalda, Joanne Barker, Lourdes Alberto, Eve Tuck, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Mara Josefina Saldaa-Portillo.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204 |
| Courses Offered in LAWP |
| LAWP 234-01 |
Gender and Justice
Instructor: Kathryn Heard
Course Description:
Cross-listed with PHIL 261-02, POSC 234-01 and WGSS 302-02. Permission of instructor required. This course analyzes how legal theorists have drawn upon notions of gender, sex, and sexuality in order to understand and critique the American legal system and its norms. It considers questions like: How might a feminist perspective on the law illuminate instances of systematized inequality or legalized discrimination? Can queer theorists engage with the law in order to alter it, or does the very act of engagement hinder the possibility of future socio-legal change? How can the law better represent women of color, working women, queer women, stay-at-home mothers, transgender or non-binary individuals, women seeking surrogate or abortion services, and more, without reinforcing traditional understandings of what it means to be a woman? These questions and more will be taken up as we move through a rich combination of political philosophy, legal cases, and works of socio-legal analysis. Prerequisites: One POSC, LAWP or WGSS course or permission of instructor. This course is cross-listed as POSC 234 and WGSS 302.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| Courses Offered in MUAC |
| MUAC 211-01 |
Music, Gender, and Performance
Instructor: Ellen Gray
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-02. Global divas, trans voices, and all girl bands: these are some of the topics we will consider. This course examines relationships between gender, music, and performance from an interdisciplinary perspective (music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, gender and queer theory, performance studies). We examine debates around issues of sex and gender and nature and culture through the lens of musical performance and experience and draw on musical examples from a diverse range of socio-cultural contexts from around the world. Some questions we consider include: To what extent is participation in particular musical scenes dictated by gendered conventions? What might the voice tell us about gender or sexuality? How might the gendered performances and the voices of musical celebrities come to represent or officially speak for particular publics? How does music shape our understanding of emotion, our experience of pleasure? Class discussions will focus on careful readings of the assigned texts and listening/viewing assignments. Majors across the College are welcome and no musical note reading skills are necessary.This course is cross-listed as WGSS 301.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
WEISS 212 |
| Courses Offered in PHIL |
| PHIL 261-02 |
Gender and Justice
Instructor: Kathryn Heard
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LAWP 234-01, POSC 234-01 and WGSS 302-02. Permission of instructor required.
This course analyzes how legal theorists have drawn upon notions of gender, sex, and sexuality in order to understand and critique the American legal system and its norms. It considers questions like: How might a feminist perspective on the law illuminate instances of systematized inequality or legalized discrimination? Can queer theorists engage with the law in order to alter it, or does the very act of engagement hinder the possibility of future socio-legal change? How can the law better represent women of color, working women, queer women, stay-at-home mothers, transgender or non-binary individuals, women seeking surrogate or abortion services, and more, without reinforcing traditional understandings of what it means to be a woman? These questions and more will be taken up as we move through a rich combination of political philosophy, legal cases, and works of socio-legal analysis.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| PHIL 302-01 |
Ethical Theory
Instructor: Amy McKiernan
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-05. This seminar will explore major issues or texts in classical or contemporary moral philosophy. Prerequisites: three prior courses in philosophy, at least two at the 200 level, or permission of the instructor. Offered at least once every two years.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 21 |
| Courses Offered in POSC |
| POSC 234-01 |
Gender and Justice
Instructor: Kathryn Heard
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LAWP 234-01, PHIL 261-02 and WGSS 302-02. Permission of instructor required. This course analyzes how legal theorists have drawn upon notions of gender, sex, and sexuality in order to understand and critique the American legal system and its norms. It considers questions like: How might a feminist perspective on the law illuminate instances of systematized inequality or legalized discrimination? Can queer theorists engage with the law in order to alter it, or does the very act of engagement hinder the possibility of future socio-legal change? How can the law better represent women of color, working women, queer women, stay-at-home mothers, transgender or non-binary individuals, women seeking surrogate or abortion services, and more, without reinforcing traditional understandings of what it means to be a woman? These questions and more will be taken up as we move through a rich combination of political philosophy, legal cases, and works of socio-legal analysis. Prerequisites: One POSC, LAWP or WGSS course or permission of instructor. This course is cross-listed as LAWP 234 and WGSS 302.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| Courses Offered in PSYC |
| PSYC 145-01 |
Psychology of Human Sexuality
Instructor: Michele Ford
Course Description:
This course is a study of human sexuality emphasizing psychological aspects. We will cover sexual development from childhood to adulthood, sexual orientations, biological influences, sexual attitudes and behavior, gender, sex therapy, sexual coercion and abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual health, and the development of sexual relationships. The study of human sexuality is inherently interdisciplinary in nature (drawing from such varied disciplines as sociology, women's studies, biology, anthropology, history, and others). Although we will cover some material from these disciplines, we will take an explicitly social psychological perspective, focusing on individual, personal, and social aspects of sexual behaviors, attitudes and beliefs. This course is a study of human sexuality emphasizing psychological aspects. We will cover sexual development from childhood to adulthood, sexual orientations, biological influences, sexual attitudes and behavior, gender, sex therapy, sexual coercion and abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual health, and the development of sexual relationships. The study of human sexuality is inherently interdisciplinary in nature (drawing from such varied disciplines as sociology, women's studies, biology, anthropology, history, and others). Although we will cover some material from these disciplines, we will take an explicitly social psychological perspective, focusing on individual, personal, and social aspects of sexual behaviors, attitudes and beliefs.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
KAUF 179 |
| Courses Offered in RELG |
| RELG 260-01 |
Writing Jewish Women
Instructor: Marley Weiner
Course Description:
Cross-listed with JDST 216-01 and WGSS 201-02.
This class will explore how Jewish women have shaped the Jewish world through their words and writing. The "Jewish cannon" is heavily male dominated, and women tend to be an object of discourse rather than a subject. And yet, throughout Jewish history, Jewish women have written about their faith, culture, and circumstances, and in so doing they have shaped the communities in which they live. From memoir to theology, liturgy to fantasy, Biblical analysis to poetry, we will analyze the ways in which Jewish women think about themselves both as women and as Jews within the context of Jewish community. We will begin with examinations of tropes and stories of women in Biblical texts, and continue through history to writers shaping the worldwide Jewish conversation today. We will examine the ways in which women's voices and identities have been obscured or decentralized throughout history, and ultimately the ways in which feminine and feminist writing has profoundly shaped the way the Jewish community thinks about Jewish identity, God, and community. Texts will encompass women of diverse national, ethnic and racial backgrounds in addition to thinking about gender from trans and nonbinary perspectives.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
EASTC 301 |
| Courses Offered in SOCI |
| SOCI 227-01 |
Political Economy of Gender
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ECON 230-01 and WGSS 202-01. Political Economy of Gender adopts a gender-aware perspective to examine how people secure their livelihoods through labor market and nonmarket work. The course examines the nature of labor market inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity and other social categories, how they are integrated with non-market activities, their wellbeing effects, their role in the macroeconomy, and the impact of macroeconomic policies on these work inequalities. These questions are examined from the perspective of feminist economics that has emerged since the early 1990s as a heterodox economics discourse, critical of both mainstream and gender-blind heterodox economics. While we will pay special attention to the US economy, our starting point is that there is one world economy with connections between the global South and the North, in spite of the structural differences between (and within) these regions.For ECON 230: ECON 111 (ECON 112 recommended); For SOCI 227: SOCI 110 or ECON 111; For WGSS 202: none (ECON 111 recommended). This course is cross-listed as ECON 230 & WGSS 202.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 110 |
