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Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Current Courses

Fall 2024

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
WGSS 100-01 Introduction to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Instructor: Mireille Rebeiz
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.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 304
WGSS 101-02 Shakespeare's Women
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-03 and MEMS 200-03. Male characters such as Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Prospero, Shylock were the focus of historical Shakespeare criticism until the late twentieth century. Even criticism complicating the reception of Shakespeare's women characters, however, have not erased their neglect. Directors looking to cut long plays and to depict straightforward female characters have limited women's lines, represented them as stereotypes, and cut evidence of their agency. In the context of Shakespeare's (uncut) play texts and in the context of Early Modern English culture, however, Shakespeare's women-Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Miranda, Portia- are equally as multifaceted as his male characters. In this course we will study a cross-section of Shakespeare's plays from each genre, considering the representation of women within the play text, as well as within historical and cultural contexts embodying changes in expectations for women's roles. Shakespeare's play texts simultaneously reproduce and subvert the evolving stereotypes of women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions of representation of women in patriarchal society will inevitably include scrutiny of our own moment in history. In addition to reading the play texts, work for the course will include students' acting out scenes from plays, viewing some films, two brief critical papers, a midterm, and a final exam.
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203
WGSS 101-03 Gender, Race and Pop Culture
Instructor: Charity Fox
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 101-02. This course investigates the influence of popular culture on our perceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class, emphasizing their interconnected nature. Students will engage with a diverse range of theories and methodologies from the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies and Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and apply them to popular culture content such as advertising, music and music videos, television, film, toys, and social media. The course posits that popular culture is never simply entertainment. Instead, it functions as a platform for constructing and communicating narratives and imagery that reflect and shape our understanding of race, ethnicity, femininities, masculinities, and sexualities as well as the broader social dynamics of these overlapping identities. These cultural representations exert influence on various aspects of everyday life, including consumer choices and our shifting perceptions of what we consider normal, acceptable, or aspirational. By honing critical thinking skills, students will learn to independently analyze and deconstruct layers of meaning in popular cultural products. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, and films. Assignments will include active class participation, informal and formal writing and research assignments, class presentations, and an individual project exploring a popular culture topic of your choice.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 204
WGSS 200-01 Feminist Practices, Writing and Research
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Building upon the key concepts and modes of inquire introduced in the WGSS Introductory course, WGSS 200 deepens students understanding of how feminist perspectives on power, experience, and inequality uniquely shape how scholars approach research questions, writing practices, methods and knowledge production. Approaches may include feminist approaches to memoir, oral histories, grassroots and online activism, blogging, visual culture, ethnography, archival research, space, art, literary analysis, and policy studies.Prerequisite: 100 or 208, which can be taken concurrently.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 212
WGSS 201-01 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-01 and MUAC 210-01. This course examines the complex and dynamic relationship between race, gender, and sexuality in hip hop, one of the largest cultural movements in the world. However, since hip hop is more than music, fashion, language, and style, and transcends the commercialization of products both in mainstream U.S.A. and globally, this course sets out to achieve two goals: (1) To introduce students to classic and emergent scholarship in the interrelated fields of critical race theory, feminist and gender studies, and queer theory which will be used to analyze hip hop and (2) to use hip hop as a heterogeneous and constantly shifting cultural and political formation that informs, complicates, and offers new of imaginings of these fields of study. Ultimately, utilizing a primarily interdisciplinary approach, this course will examine the ways in which the historical and contemporary social organizations of sexuality, gender, and race are mutually negotiated, contested, and constructed within and across hip hop music, film, dance, dress, and other sites of cultural performance. Students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyrics, videos, and images throughout the span of the course.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 201
WGSS 201-02 Gender and Sexuality in Modern European Art
Instructor: Ty Vanover
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ARTH 205-01. This course offers an introduction to modern European art from roughly 1800 to 1945 with a marked focus on the ways that art pictured, responded to, and subverted gender roles and conceptions of sexuality. In particular, we will examine how widespread social changes (urbanization, class formation), political developments (nationalism, socialism, fascism), and scientific developments (sexual science, psychoanalysis) incited shifts in how European artists conceived of their identities and positionalities. We will supplement canonical texts in feminist and gender theory with recent interventions in queer, trans, and post-colonial theory to arrive at a historically grounded understanding of gender and sex in modern art. Together, we will consider depictions of sex work in post-Impressionist art, sexual "primitivism" and the Black model, masculinity in Expressionist art, and trans approaches to modern art, among other topics, in order to rethink traditional art historical approaches to the modern canon. No prior experience in Art History or Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies is required.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
WEISS 221
WGSS 201-03 Arab Cinema: Women and Sexuality, Politics and Revolution
Instructor: Magda Siekert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEST 200-01 and FMST 210-02. This course introduces students to Arab society and culture through an exploration of Arab cinema, which has a long and rich tradition. Students will watch a representative selection of Arab films from across the Arab world that reflect the many challenges and narratives in the region. Through the films, we will explore Arab societies and cultures, especially women and sexuality, politics and revolution, and the role of religion and tradition in shaping public discourse and imagination on taboo topics including LGBTQ issues. In addition to weekly film viewings and discussions, we will read critical film and culture theory and analysis as they apply to Arab cinema. The class will be conducted in English and all films will have English subtitles.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 104
WGSS 201-04 Arab Feminism: Then and Now, Image and Reality, Secular and Religious
Instructor: Magda Siekert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEST 200-02. This course will trace Arab feminism from its early years in Egypt and Tunisia to the present day. We will look at the work of the early pioneers fighting for equal rights for women while actively supporting nationalist, anticolonial movements in the region. We will then explore the gains that women made post-independence and the limits placed on their freedoms as voiced in their writing, filmmaking, and activism. Next, we will look at Islamic feminism in its many manifestations, its pursuit of a feminist re-interpretation of the Qu'ran, and role in shaping the dialogue on women's rights. We will focus on diverse voices from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. Throughout, we will hear women's voices directly in memoires, historical accounts, literature (poetry and short stories), essays, documentaries, and interviews.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 104
WGSS 201-05 Hispanic Cultures through Women's Voices
Instructor: Eva Copeland
Course Description:
Cross-listed with SPAN 231-01. This class explores literary texts and films created by women writers and directors from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. The course delves into overarching themes such as representation, identity, diversity, gender roles, and empowerment.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
BOSLER 305
WGSS 201-06 Hispanic Cultures through Women's Voices
Instructor: Eva Copeland
Course Description:
Cross-listed with SPAN 231-02. This class explores literary texts and films created by women writers and directors from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. The course delves into overarching themes such as representation, identity, diversity, gender roles, and empowerment.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
BOSLER 305
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 206
WGSS 202-02 Gender, Politics, and Policy in the U.S.
Instructor: Katie Marchetti
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 233-01. Overview of gender and politics in the United States. Examines the roles women play in the U.S. policy process, how public policies are "gendered", and how specific policies compare to feminist thinking about related issue areas. The course also discusses gender-based differences in political participation inside and outside of government.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203
WGSS 224-01 Reproductive Justice
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HEST 250-01. Reproductive Justice is a global social movement strategy and human rights platform that places reproductive power in the context of the larger social, racial and economic well-being of women, communities and families (Ross 2011). This course explores the origins and applications of reproductive justice. It investigates how the reproductive lives of many people, particularly women of color, are embedded in embattled legal, social, economic, racial and national frameworks that shape their capacity to control their intimate and procreative lives. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course first maps reproductive justices origins, exploring: political philosophies of sexual and reproductive liberty; racialized and disability-based histories of eugenics, population control, and adoption; the black womens health movement; birth control and abortion law; social welfare and healthcare politics; the reproductive politics of incarceration and state violence; disability and prenatal testing; and the transnational and LGBTQ applications of assisted reproductive technologies. The course will subsequently explore how reproductive justice platforms can enable diverse people to thrive: making the decision to prevent, terminate or have a pregnancy a real choice. It will assess the conditions that enable access to quality health care, economic security, racial justice, womens equality, transgender and queer rights, environmental sustainability, disability justice, sexual autonomy, and community vitality.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204
WGSS 300-01 Feminist Perspectives and Theories
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
This course deepens students understandings of how feminist perspectives situate power and privilege in relationship to interlocking categories of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability and nation. Through foundational theoretical texts, it expands students understandings of significant theoretical frameworks that inform womens, gender, critical race and sexuality studies, as well as debates and tensions within them. Frameworks may include political activisms, materialist feminism, standpoint epistemologies, critiques of scientific objectivity, intersectionality, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, transnational critique and feminist legal theory. Helps students develop more nuanced understandings of the relationship between everyday experiences, political institutions, forms of resistance and theoretical meaning-making. Prerequisite: WGSS 100 or 208.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 204
WGSS 301-01 African American Women Writers
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-01. This course examines a range of the literary productions written by African American women. Specifically, we will span the African-American literary tradition in order to discover the historical, political, and social forces that facilitated the evolution of Black women's voices as well as their roles inside and outside the Black community. Additionally, we will discuss such issues as self-definition, womanhood, sexuality, activism, race, class, and community.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
ALTHSE 109
WGSS 301-02 Plague Years
Instructor: Claire Seiler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ENGL 321-01. This course studies British, Irish, and US literature and culture of two public health crises: the influenza pandemic of 1918-20 and the polio epidemics that began in the late nineteenth century. How were the flu and polio represented in literary and popular culture? What forms did a range of textsinnovative novels, womens magazines, poems, African American newspapers, filmsadopt to consolidate or challenge the stories that states preferred to tell themselves about the ravages of the influenza pandemic or the vaccine victory over polio? How can the contested literary, political, and cultural legacies of the flu and polio help us to think about both public discourse around COVID-19 and the inequities laid bare by the pandemic? As it pursues these questions, Plague Years introduces students to the interdisciplinary fields of the health humanities and disability studies. The course pursues illuminating readings of literary works by James Baldwin, Willa Cather, J.G. Farrell, Katherine Anne Porter, Virginia Woolf, and W.B. Yeats, among others, and concludes with two signal works of the coronavirus pandemic: Ali Smiths Summer (2020) and Zadie Smiths Intimations (2020).
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 110
WGSS 301-03 Family and U.S. Fiction Since 1945
Instructor: Siobhan Phillips
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ENGL 341-01. This course looks at fiction from the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries next to contemporaneous and otherwise relevant ideas about the family from legal, political, psychological, and social thought. Focusing on the tension between individuality and belonging, we will consider how fiction reflects and complicates different models for familial relationships. Authors studied may include James Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, and Justin Torres.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
EASTC 301
WGSS 302-01 Gender and Development
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with INST 351-01 and ECON 351-01. Permission of instructor required. This course examines the gender dimensions of economic development and globalization from the perspective of feminist economics. This perspective implies foregrounding labor, broadly defined to include paid and unpaid work, and examining gender differences in work, access to resources, and wellbeing outcomes, and how these are affected by macroeconomic policies and how gender inequalities are relevant for societal wellbeing. Since the early 1980's economic globalization has been achieved on the basis of a common set of macroeconomic policies pursued in industrial and developing countries alike. These policies frame both the gender-differentiated impacts of policy and the initiatives that are implemented to reduce inequalities between men and women. The main objective of the course is to examine the impact of these policies on men and women in the global South (a.k.a. developing countries/Third World) on gender inequalities and to evaluate the policies/strategies for reducing gender inequalities and promoting the well-being of all people. The pursuit of these objectives will entail first a brief examination of the central tenets of feminist economics and an historical overview of the policy-oriented field of gender and development. Gender-differentiated statistics will be reviewed as they pertain to the topics under discussion. Prerequisite: For ECON 351: ECON 288; For INST 351: ECON 288 or INST 200 or INBM 200; For WGSS 302: at least one WGSS course or ECON 288.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
ALTHSE 207
Courses Offered in AFST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
AFST 220-01 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MUAC 210-01 and WGSS 201-01. This course examines the complex and dynamic relationship between race, gender, and sexuality in hip hop, one of the largest cultural movements in the world. However, since hip hop is more than music, fashion, language, and style, and transcends the commercialization of products both in mainstream U.S.A. and globally, this course sets out to achieve two goals: (1) To introduce students to classic and emergent scholarship in the interrelated fields of critical race theory, feminist and gender studies, and queer theory which will be used to analyze hip hop and (2) to use hip hop as a heterogeneous and constantly shifting cultural and political formation that informs, complicates, and offers new of imaginings of these fields of study. Ultimately, utilizing a primarily interdisciplinary approach, this course will examine the ways in which the historical and contemporary social organizations of sexuality, gender, and race are mutually negotiated, contested, and constructed within and across hip hop music, film, dance, dress, and other sites of cultural performance. Students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyrics, videos, and images throughout the span of the course.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 201
AFST 320-01 African American Women Writers
Instructor: Lynn Johnson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-01. This course examines a range of the literary productions written by African American women. Specifically, we will span the African-American literary tradition in order to discover the historical, political, and social forces that facilitated the evolution of Black women's voices as well as their roles inside and outside the Black community. Additionally, we will discuss such issues as self-definition, womanhood, sexuality, activism, race, class, and community.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
ALTHSE 109
Courses Offered in AMST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
AMST 101-02 Gender, Race and Pop Culture
Instructor: Charity Fox
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-03. This course investigates the influence of popular culture on our perceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class, emphasizing their interconnected nature. Students will engage with a diverse range of theories and methodologies from the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies and Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and apply them to popular culture content such as advertising, music and music videos, television, film, toys, and social media. The course posits that popular culture is never simply entertainment. Instead, it functions as a platform for constructing and communicating narratives and imagery that reflect and shape our understanding of race, ethnicity, femininities, masculinities, and sexualities as well as the broader social dynamics of these overlapping identities. These cultural representations exert influence on various aspects of everyday life, including consumer choices and our shifting perceptions of what we consider normal, acceptable, or aspirational. By honing critical thinking skills, students will learn to independently analyze and deconstruct layers of meaning in popular cultural products. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, and films. Assignments will include active class participation, informal and formal writing and research assignments, class presentations, and an individual project exploring a popular culture topic of your choice.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 204
Courses Offered in ARTH
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
ARTH 205-01 Gender and Sexuality in Modern European Art
Instructor: Ty Vanover
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-02. This course offers an introduction to modern European art from roughly 1800 to 1945 with a marked focus on the ways that art pictured, responded to, and subverted gender roles and conceptions of sexuality. In particular, we will examine how widespread social changes (urbanization, class formation), political developments (nationalism, socialism, fascism), and scientific developments (sexual science, psychoanalysis) incited shifts in how European artists conceived of their identities and positionalities. We will supplement canonical texts in feminist and gender theory with recent interventions in queer, trans, and post-colonial theory to arrive at a historically grounded understanding of gender and sex in modern art. Together, we will consider depictions of sex work in post-Impressionist art, sexual "primitivism" and the Black model, masculinity in Expressionist art, and trans approaches to modern art, among other topics, in order to rethink traditional art historical approaches to the modern canon. No prior experience in Art History or Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies is required.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
WEISS 221
Courses Offered in ECON
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
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 206
ECON 351-01 Gender and Development
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with INST 351-01 and WGSS 302-01. Permission of instructor required. This course examines the gender dimensions of economic development and globalization from the perspective of feminist economics. This perspective implies foregrounding labor, broadly defined to include paid and unpaid work, and examining gender differences in work, access to resources, and wellbeing outcomes, and how these are affected by macroeconomic policies and how gender inequalities are relevant for societal wellbeing. Since the early 1980s economic globalization has been achieved on the basis of a common set of macroeconomic policies pursued in industrial and developing countries alike. These policies frame both the gender-differentiated impacts of policy and the initiatives that are implemented to reduce inequalities between men and women. The main objective of the course is to examine the impact of these policies on men and women in the global South (a.k.a. developing countries/Third World) on gender inequalities and to evaluate the policies/strategies for reducing gender inequalities and promoting the well-being of all people. The pursuit of these objectives will entail first a brief examination of the central tenets of feminist economics and an historical overview of the policy-oriented field of gender and development. Gender-differentiated statistics will be reviewed as they pertain to the topics under discussion. Prerequisite: For ECON 351: ECON 288; For INST 351: ECON 288 or INST 200 or INBM 200; For WGSS 302: at least one WGSS course or ECON 288. This course is cross-listed as INST 351& WGSS 302.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
ALTHSE 207
Courses Offered in ENGL
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
ENGL 101-03 Shakespeare's Women
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-02 and MEMS 200-03. Male characters such as Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Prospero, Shylock were the focus of historical Shakespeare criticism until the late twentieth century. Even criticism complicating the reception of Shakespeare's women characters, however, have not erased their neglect. Directors looking to cut long plays and to depict straightforward female characters have limited women's lines, represented them as stereotypes, and cut evidence of their agency. In the context of Shakespeare's (uncut) play texts and in the context of Early Modern English culture, however, Shakespeare's women-Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Miranda, Portia- are equally as multifaceted as his male characters. In this course we will study a cross-section of Shakespeare's plays from each genre, considering the representation of women within the play text, as well as within historical and cultural contexts embodying changes in expectations for women's roles. Shakespeare's play texts simultaneously reproduce and subvert the evolving stereotypes of women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions of representation of women in patriarchal society will inevitably include scrutiny of our own moment in history. In addition to reading the play texts, work for the course will include students' acting out scenes from plays, viewing some films, two brief critical papers, a midterm, and a final exam.
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203
ENGL 321-01 Plague Years
Instructor: Claire Seiler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-02. This course studies British, Irish, and US literature and culture of two public health crises: the influenza pandemic of 1918-20 and the polio epidemics that began in the late nineteenth century. How were the flu and polio represented in literary and popular culture? What forms did a range of textsinnovative novels, womens magazines, poems, African American newspapers, filmsadopt to consolidate or challenge the stories that states preferred to tell themselves about the ravages of the influenza pandemic or the vaccine victory over polio? How can the contested literary, political, and cultural legacies of the flu and polio help us to think about both public discourse around COVID-19 and the inequities laid bare by the pandemic? As it pursues these questions, Plague Years introduces students to the interdisciplinary fields of the health humanities and disability studies. The course pursues illuminating readings of literary works by James Baldwin, Willa Cather, J.G. Farrell, Katherine Anne Porter, Virginia Woolf, and W.B. Yeats, among others, and concludes with two signal works of the coronavirus pandemic: Ali Smiths Summer (2020) and Zadie Smiths Intimations (2020).
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 110
ENGL 341-01 Family and U.S. Fiction Since 1945
Instructor: Siobhan Phillips
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 301-03. This course looks at fiction from the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries next to contemporaneous and otherwise relevant ideas about the family from legal, political, psychological, and social thought. Focusing on the tension between individuality and belonging, we will consider how fiction reflects and complicates different models for familial relationships. Authors studied may include James Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, and Justin Torres.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
EASTC 301
Courses Offered in FMST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
FMST 210-02 Arab Cinema: Women and Sexuality, Politics and Revolution
Instructor: Magda Siekert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEST 200-01 and WGSS 201-03. This course introduces students to Arab society and culture through an exploration of Arab cinema, which has a long and rich tradition. Students will watch a representative selection of Arab films from across the Arab world that reflect the many challenges and narratives in the region. Through the films, we will explore Arab societies and cultures, especially women and sexuality, politics and revolution, and the role of religion and tradition in shaping public discourse and imagination on taboo topics including LGBTQ issues. In addition to weekly film viewings and discussions, we will read critical film and culture theory and analysis as they apply to Arab cinema. The class will be conducted in English and all films will have English subtitles.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 104
Courses Offered in HEST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
HEST 250-01 Reproductive Justice
Instructor: Katie Oliviero
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 224-01. Reproductive Justice is a global social movement strategy and human rights platform that places reproductive power in the context of the larger social, racial and economic well-being of women, communities and families (Ross 2011). This course explores the origins and applications of reproductive justice. It investigates how the reproductive lives of many people, particularly women of color, are embedded in embattled legal, social, economic, racial and national frameworks that shape their capacity to control their intimate and procreative lives. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course first maps reproductive justices origins, exploring: political philosophies of sexual and reproductive liberty; racialized and disability-based histories of eugenics, population control, and adoption; the black womens health movement; birth control and abortion law; social welfare and healthcare politics; the reproductive politics of incarceration and state violence; disability and prenatal testing; and the transnational and LGBTQ applications of assisted reproductive technologies. The course will subsequently explore how reproductive justice platforms can enable diverse people to thrive: making the decision to prevent, terminate or have a pregnancy a real choice. It will assess the conditions that enable access to quality health care, economic security, racial justice, womens equality, transgender and queer rights, environmental sustainability, disability justice, sexual autonomy, and community vitality.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 204
Courses Offered in INST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
INST 351-01 Gender and Development
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ECON 351-01 and WGSS 302-01. Permission of instructor required. This course examines the gender dimensions of economic development and globalization from the perspective of feminist economics. This perspective implies foregrounding labor, broadly defined to include paid and unpaid work, and examining gender differences in work, access to resources, and wellbeing outcomes, and how these are affected by macroeconomic policies and how gender inequalities are relevant for societal wellbeing. Since the early 1980s economic globalization has been achieved on the basis of a common set of macroeconomic policies pursued in industrial and developing countries alike. These policies frame both the gender-differentiated impacts of policy and the initiatives that are implemented to reduce inequalities between men and women. The main objective of the course is to examine the impact of these policies on men and women in the global South (a.k.a. developing countries/Third World) on gender inequalities and to evaluate the policies/strategies for reducing gender inequalities and promoting the well-being of all people. The pursuit of these objectives will entail first a brief examination of the central tenets of feminist economics and an historical overview of the policy-oriented field of gender and development. Gender-differentiated statistics will be reviewed as they pertain to the topics under discussion.Prerequisite: For ECON 351: ECON 288; For INST 351: ECON 288 or INST 200 or INBM 200; For WGSS 302: at least one WGSS course or ECON 288. This course is cross-listed as ECON 351 & WGSS 302.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
ALTHSE 207
Courses Offered in MEMS
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
MEMS 200-03 Shakespeare's Women
Instructor: Carol Ann Johnston
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-03 and WGSS 101-02. Male characters such as Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Prospero, Shylock were the focus of historical Shakespeare criticism until the late twentieth century. Even criticism complicating the reception of Shakespeare's women characters, however, have not erased their neglect. Directors looking to cut long plays and to depict straightforward female characters have limited women's lines, represented them as stereotypes, and cut evidence of their agency. In the context of Shakespeare's (uncut) play texts and in the context of Early Modern English culture, however, Shakespeare's women-Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Miranda, Portia- are equally as multifaceted as his male characters. In this course we will study a cross-section of Shakespeare's plays from each genre, considering the representation of women within the play text, as well as within historical and cultural contexts embodying changes in expectations for women's roles. Shakespeare's play texts simultaneously reproduce and subvert the evolving stereotypes of women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Discussions of representation of women in patriarchal society will inevitably include scrutiny of our own moment in history. In addition to reading the play texts, work for the course will include students' acting out scenes from plays, viewing some films, two brief critical papers, a midterm, and a final exam.
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203
Courses Offered in MEST
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
MEST 200-01 Arab Cinema: Women and Sexuality, Politics and Revolution
Instructor: Magda Siekert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-03 and FMST 210-02. This course introduces students to Arab society and culture through an exploration of Arab cinema, which has a long and rich tradition. Students will watch a representative selection of Arab films from across the Arab world that reflect the many challenges and narratives in the region. Through the films, we will explore Arab societies and cultures, especially women and sexuality, politics and revolution, and the role of religion and tradition in shaping public discourse and imagination on taboo topics including LGBTQ issues. In addition to weekly film viewings and discussions, we will read critical film and culture theory and analysis as they apply to Arab cinema. The class will be conducted in English and all films will have English subtitles.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 104
MEST 200-02 Arab Feminism: Then and Now, Image and Reality, Secular and Religious
Instructor: Magda Siekert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-04. This course will trace Arab feminism from its early years in Egypt and Tunisia to the present day. We will look at the work of the early pioneers fighting for equal rights for women while actively supporting nationalist, anticolonial movements in the region. We will then explore the gains that women made post-independence and the limits placed on their freedoms as voiced in their writing, filmmaking, and activism. Next, we will look at Islamic feminism in its many manifestations, its pursuit of a feminist re-interpretation of the Qu'ran, and role in shaping the dialogue on women's rights. We will focus on diverse voices from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. Throughout, we will hear women's voices directly in memoires, historical accounts, literature (poetry and short stories), essays, documentaries, and interviews.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 104
Courses Offered in MUAC
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
MUAC 210-01 Pause: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-01 and WGSS 201-01. This course examines the complex and dynamic relationship between race, gender, and sexuality in hip hop, one of the largest cultural movements in the world. However, since hip hop is more than music, fashion, language, and style, and transcends the commercialization of products both in mainstream U.S.A. and globally, this course sets out to achieve two goals: (1) To introduce students to classic and emergent scholarship in the interrelated fields of critical race theory, feminist and gender studies, and queer theory which will be used to analyze hip hop and (2) to use hip hop as a heterogeneous and constantly shifting cultural and political formation that informs, complicates, and offers new of imaginings of these fields of study. Ultimately, utilizing a primarily interdisciplinary approach, this course will examine the ways in which the historical and contemporary social organizations of sexuality, gender, and race are mutually negotiated, contested, and constructed within and across hip hop music, film, dance, dress, and other sites of cultural performance. Students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyrics, videos, and images throughout the span of the course.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 201
Courses Offered in PHIL
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
PHIL 210-01 Philosophy of Feminism
Instructor: Emily Kelahan
Course Description:
Critical examination of key issues concerning the status and roles of women and of the developing theories which describe and explain gender-related phenomena and prescribe change for the future. Prerequisite: one prior course in philosophy or permission of the instructor.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
BOSLER 211
Courses Offered in POSC
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
POSC 233-01 Gender, Politics, and Policy in the U.S.
Instructor: Katie Marchetti
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-02. Overview of gender and politics in the United States. Examines the roles women play in the U.S. policy process, how public policies are "gendered", and how specific policies compare to feminist thinking about related issue areas. The course also discusses gender-based differences in political participation inside and outside of government.This course is cross-listed as WGSS 202. Prerequisite: 120 or AP credit equivalent.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203
Courses Offered in SOCI
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
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.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 206
Courses Offered in SPAN
Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
SPAN 231-01 Hispanic Cultures through Women's Voices
Instructor: Eva Copeland
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-05. This class explores literary texts and films created by women writers and directors from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. The course delves into overarching themes such as representation, identity, diversity, gender roles, and empowerment.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
BOSLER 305
SPAN 231-02 Hispanic Cultures through Women's Voices
Instructor: Eva Copeland
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-06.This class explores literary texts and films created by women writers and directors from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. The course delves into overarching themes such as representation, identity, diversity, gender roles, and empowerment.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
BOSLER 305