Department of Women’s and Gender Studies

This first-year seminar will expose students to the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, and gender and how these have shaped the American city since 1945.

Compares the rhetoric of equality between the sexes presented by late Qing, May Fourth, and communist thinkers to perspectives on gender and society by 20th-century Chinese women writers. Honors version available.

This course introduces students to different ways of understanding plantation culture and how that culture persists today, using close reading strategies and gender analysis. The class will examine film, literature, music, and poetry.

Course introduces students to literature by women from around the world, particularly stories of a girl's transition to womanhood. Close reading strategies are used to examine films, novels, and poetry.

In Christianity and Islam, bodies populate the afterlife. What those bodies look like, how they act, what they feel, and who they engage with are subjects of contentious and long-standing debates. The various answers offered in these debates deeply affect Christian and Muslim responses to the body, sexuality, race, and gender in this life. This course examines how these two religious traditions' diversity of histories and ideas construct theories of identity.

Uses photography and its aspects of role playing, performance, and documentation to understand the construction of identity. Looks at historical and contemporary photographers who use assumed identities to explore their changing identity roles and challenge society's stereotypes. Individual and group performance/photography projects working with still photography, video, and the Internet.

Special topics course. Content will vary each semester. Honors version available.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality in American society and internationally. Topics include work; sexuality; gender relations, and images of women in literature, art, and science; and the history of feminist movements. Course readings are drawn from the humanities and the social sciences. Honors version available.

This course introduces students to the broad range of disciplinary perspectives used by the field of sexuality studies to study, teach, and create knowledge about human sexuality in various functions and forms. Honors version available.

Examination of the social differentiation between men and women. Attention to the extent, causes, and consequences of sexual inequality and to changes in sex roles and their impact on interpersonal relations.

This course introduces students to Iranian women's issues through their literary works. To contextualize, we will read articles and essays on the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic backgrounds. In order to approach these literary works in a more effective manner, we will also be reading various secondary materials.

Introduces students to concepts in queer theory and recent sexuality studies. Topics include queer lit, AIDS, race and sexuality, representations of gays and lesbians in the media, political activism/literature.

This course will survey the history of women, gender relations, and notions of sex difference in the United States from the colonial era to present times, with a special emphasis on women's varied experiences and expectations across divisions of class, race, and region. Key themes will include work, politics, citizenship, reproduction, sociability, and sexuality.

This course explores questions of ethics, justice, and inequality with respect to gender in modern South Asia. Each unit will probe a different aspect of social justice in order to understand the histories, politics, and expressive cultures of various disempowered communities. Intersections between gender and ethics, politics, sexuality, caste, class, and the environment will be studied in depth.

The role of women in performance, composition, patronage, and the music business across a wide range of repertories.

Introduction to the study of gender and sexuality in African societies. Theoretical questions relating to the cross-cultural study of gender will be a primary focus. Topics include historical perspectives on the study of kinship and family in Africa and the impact of colonialism and other forms of social change.

Introduces students to feminist theorizing on debates over gender-based oppression. Gives students tools to pursue academic work in women's studies and to understand the relationships among concepts, activism, and change. Required for majors. Strongly recommended for minors.

Through a variety of texts that span the 20th and 21st centuries, students will be introduced to key concepts, figures, and movements in Latina feminisms. Emphasis will be placed on a diversity of historical and ethno-national perspectives as well as academic interdisciplinarity.

The course is designed to introduce a variety of ways that gender is present in how we define, interpret, and engage the broad categories of the spiritual and spiritualities. Students will learn how to analyze how gender is portrayed by spiritual and religious traditions and reflect on the socially constructed nature of those encounters.

A comparison of men and women as political actors at the mass and elite level in America. Topics considered include the "gender gap," the women's movement, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

This interdisciplinary course examines representations of women, concepts of gender, and women's participation in the economic, political, religious, and cultural life of the Middle Ages. Discussion and texts in English.

A survey of prehistoric art in Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Europe.

Examines multiple relationships among gender, communication and culture. Explores how communication creates gender and shapes relationships and how communication reflects, sustains, and alters cultural views of gender. Honors version available.

Gender, race, and class are examined in terms of the spatial patterns of everyday life, regional patterns, and global patterns. (GHA)

This seminar will explore the lives and work of women in contemporary art through a combination of readings, films, interviews, studio visits with area artists, and visits to museums and galleries. We will engage questions of identity, gender, sexuality, politics, and cultural representation and how these affect the creativity, media, and final output of women artists.

This course examines the ways in which gender and sexual identities are represented and consumed in popular culture.

This course asks how gendered identity is shaped over time in relation to different cultural, social, and historical circumstances. Examines the practices of photographers who present themselves and others in assumed identities to comment on shifting social roles and challenge stereotypes. Students use photography to document performance and create self-portraits.

This course will provide an introduction to Latina literature. We will read a variety of genres from a range of ethno-national perspectives and examine such topics as immigration, identity, mother-daughter relationships, and sexuality.

This course introduces students to the history of North and South Korean film and television through the lens of gender and sexuality. In so doing, it explores the multiple forms of the Korean self and the diverse shapes that Korean identity has taken across the modern and contemporary eras.

Course examines law, religion, medicine, social practices, and ideologies in the lives of women in ancient Greece, from Homer to Hellenistic Egypt, using literature, art, and epigraphy. Honors version available.

Course examines the life of women in ancient Rome, from the first beginnings of the organized community in Rome through the early Empire, a period of about 900 years. Also explores aspects of the lives of women in provinces governed by Rome. Honors version available.

Exploration of gender constructs, what it meant to be a woman or a man, in antiquity, as revealed in literary, historical, and archaeological sources. Readings from Homer, Euripides, Plato, Ovid, Virgil, Juvenal, Petronius, and other ancient authors.

An examination of the development of teachings on issues of gender and sexuality through the history of Western Christianity, with particular focus on contemporary controversies. Honors version available.

An exploration of gender on the musical stage in the past and present, with an emphasis on female-identified creators and characters, onstage and behind the scenes.

The first goal of this super course is to give students real tools for how to address multiple modes of difference and identity formations like race, gender, class, and sexuality.

This course examines the history and culture of Jewish women in America from their arrival in New Amsterdam in 1654 to the present and explores how gender shaped this journey.

This course analyzes the role of women in Western art as art producers and consumers of art and looks at how women have been represented.

This course examines and compares the situation of women in politics, the work force, society and family from the French Revolution to the new women's movement in the 1970s with a focus on Britain, France and Germany. One major theme is the history of the struggle for women's emancipation.

A broad based perspective of women's participation in sport including history of participation, physiological differences, and socio-cultural influences including work, politics, family, economics, and gender roles and identity.

Focused study of how issues of gender shape literary themes, characters, and topics, and the composition and reception of literary texts. Honors version available.

Traces the development of sexual identities and changes in masculine and feminine ideals from Tsarist Russia through the post-Soviet period with emphasis on politics, society, and popular culture.

Introduction to feminist theory and its implications for the study and practice of political theory. Topics: women in feminist critiques of the Western political tradition, schools of feminist political theory.

An examination of the individual and collective experiences of black women in America from slavery to the present and the evolution of feminist consciousness.

This course surveys the breadth of the field of transgender studies through an interdisciplinary lens. This course will outline trans history from 16th century to the present as well as current topics addressed by scholars in the field.

Introduction to feminist aesthetics and film theory by the examination of the representation of women in German cinema from expressionism to the present. All materials and discussions in English. Previously offered as GERM/WGST 250.

This class is an interdisciplinary study of masculinities as theorized by feminists and shaped by race, class, sexuality, gender identity, age, ability, and nationality. Meanings of masculinities will be addressed at multiple levels - historical, structural, cultural, and interpersonal - and in multiple sites - childhood, adolescence, the body, education, work, sports, popular culture, immigration, gender violence, and mass incarceration.

A survey of feminist perspectives on topics such as the meaning of oppression, sexism and racism, sex roles and stereotypes, ideals of female beauty, women in the workplace, pornography, rape. Honors version available.

Examines what it means to be male, female, and other gendered categories in different societies. Focus on institutions, groups, and individuals that both shape and challenge how gender is understood, organized, and enacted.

The role of women in scientific domains throughout history and a consideration of the status of women and men as scientists. The development of science as a cultural practice.

Examines the experiences of women and gender relations in Latin American societies from pre-Columbian times to the present, providing a new perspective on the region's historical development.

Through a diverse set of texts, students will examine the role of armed conflict in forming United States empire in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will also consider the gendered contradictions of freedom and historical embodiments of war and violence.

This course will acquaint students with how African American women have been depicted (and depicted themselves) in 20th- and 21st-century media. The course will examine representations of African American women in several aspects of culture including film, art, print, television, theater, and music.

Topics are announced in advance and reflect the interest of the particular instructor. Each course will concern itself with a study in depth of some problem or issue in women's studies.

This course provides an overview of language and power studies. Issues: sexist and sex-neutral language; languages of subcultures defined by gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity; hate speech; "politically correct" language.

Explores women's and men's engagement with colonial and post-colonial legal systems with a focus on the 19th through 21st centuries. Topics include customary law, Islamic law, women's rights as human rights, disputation and conflict resolution. We will ask the question: "how does gender influence how women and men navigate legal systems?" Course previously offered as WMST 289.

In Christianity and Islam, bodies populate the afterlife. What those bodies look like, how they act, what they feel are subjects of popular and scholarly contentious, long standing debates. The various answers that have been offered in these debates deeply affect Christian and Muslim responses to the body, sexuality, race, and gender in this life. This course examines how theories about sex, gender, and identity are constructed within two religious traditions' histories, ideas, and theories.

This course focuses on the contemporary art and social change movement. We will learn how to use site-specific and performative art interventions to make invisible borders, boundaries, and other issues visible and innovatively to create engaged and sustained dialogue.

We examine works written by Middle Eastern women. We will begin with reading speeches and short stories in the 1860s. We will focus on topics such as Middle Eastern women and feminism and the West; women and nationalism; women and colonialism; women and patriarchy; women, sexuality, and religion.

Course examines the history of women's health activism and advocacy in the 20th century United States. Course materials and discussions will trace the development of several women's health movements and causes, health activists' tactics and rhetoric, and the complex dynamic between lay activists and medical professionals.

Required preparation, at least one AAAD or WMST course. This course seeks to familiarize students with scholarly debates on the importance of gender as a category of analysis, while gaining a greater sense of the African past.

Examines interpersonal violence, the factors that enable it, and prevention strategies. The course examines violence on both individual and structural levels, considering perpetrators, victims/survivors, and bystanders and drawing upon the expertise of local organizers and service providers in the system of care.

This course examines the representations of women in contemporary American film and also considers women as producers of film.

This course uses films, novels, and essays to engage with various notions of activism (as represented in art and social justice organizations) at play in hemispheric America.

This course uses films, novels, and essays to move beyond sun, sand, and sex representations of Caribbean women to examine how they negotiate imperial and national definitions of their place.

The course examines and compares the images of war and gender that movies from different time periods and countries propagate and explores the different factors that influence these images and thereby the perception and recollection of war. Honors version available.

This course will explore women's experiences in America from 1500 to 1865. Topics will include the ways in which women have shaped American politics, economy, society, and culture.

This course will examine the changing lives of women in the United States after 1865: Their contribution to economy, society, cultural change, and political struggles.

This course investigates the history of people who might today be defined as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) in the United States. Key themes will include identity formation, culture, politics, medical knowledge, discrimination, and community.

This course covers writings by Asian American women and examines issues of gender, race, and sexuality.

In certain eras, Mary has been more central to Catholic devotion than Christ. This course explores doctrine, liturgy, and popular devotion centering on the Virgin in medieval European Christianity, her impact on colonial religion in the New World, and her roles in Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islam. Honors version available.

Theories of feminist criticism in relation to general theory and women's writing. Honors version available.

Public policies affect men and women differently, and they participate differently in the policy-making process. This course examines several key areas of public policy, some expressly related to gender or sexuality and others that have significantly gendered impacts, organized around four themes: family, labor, body, and the world.

This course will examine the role of women of color as grassroots activists, leaders, and thinkers in the new social and community movements of the postwar period.

Over time, Christian institutions and traditions have helped constitute contemporary narratives of race, sexuality, and disability in society. This course examines shifting definitions and specific case studies from the premodern era through to contemporary discourses and polemics in America. Honors version available.

An investigation of the forms, characteristics, and variety of the mystical experiences of women in medieval and modern Christianity, with comparative consideration of women mystics and spiritual leaders in at least two other religious traditions.

The development of a women's literary tradition in the works of such writers as George Sand, George Eliot, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Yourcenar.

The study of fiction, poetry, plays, and essays by Southern American women writers of the past 200 years, continuing to the present.

This course will explore how Americans from 1600 to the present have defined what is masculine and what is feminine and how they have constructed their identities around those definitions.

Authors' use of narrative techniques to create the separation between heroines and their fictional societies and sometimes also to alienate readers from the heroines. Austen, Flaubert, Ibsen, Arishima, Tanizaki, Abe.

The course covers the history of black women in the United States from the 18th century to the present. It deals with such themes as work, family, community, sexuality, politics, religion, and culture. Previously offered as HIST/WGST 569.

This class places transnational Black feminist thought in conversation with Black speculative fiction from across the diaspora, particularly emphasizing sci-fi and fantasy narratives set in dystopic or post-apocalyptic worlds. By reading these two traditions of writing together, we study how both genres theorize the potential sources of, responses to, and preventative measures against forms of political, social, and environmental catastrophe.

Examines participatory development theory and practice in Africa and the United States in the context of other intervention strategies and with special attention to culture and gender.

Permission of the instructor. Takes a feminist political economy perspective on debates over current health issues of international concern, including abortion, population control, and sexually transmitted infections. Focuses on the United States, Mexico, and Kenya, as well as on international organizations and social movements.

Permission of the instructor. A supervised internship designed to provide experience working in organizations concerned with women's or gender issues. Must be arranged with a faculty advisor during the semester prior to the internship. See the department's website for important information.

Permission of curriculum chair. Faculty supervison required. Independent reading and research. A student can repeat the course as long as they work on a different topic each time they enroll.

This course has two main purposes. First, it will build on the work students have done in WGST 202; students will explore more deeply significant trends, key theoretical texts, and epistemological and methodological debates in feminist thought. Second, by emphasizing connections among theory, method, evidence, and analysis, it will prepare students for the senior capstone course in which they develop and carry out a major research project.

This advanced undergraduate course examines the diverse terms by which empire and sexuality have produced and reflected gender in Asian Pacific America. This seminar brings together two strains of politicized critical analysis: queer/feminist studies and postcolonial studies through the interdisciplinary standpoint of Asian American studies. Close readings are drawn from the social sciences, humanities, and arts.

Permission of the instructor. Compares the histories, experiences, identities, and political struggles of sexual and gender minorities in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Américas and at the United Nations.

This course examines the differing philosophical approaches in queer theory (psychoanalytic, cultural, transnational) in order to understand how scholars have incorporated discussions of sex, sexuality, gender, and race into their own work on religions.

This course explores family and kinship in early modern China and Korea through the lens of gender and sexuality. In particular, it invites students to think beyond the bias that women in premodern East Asia were victims of patriarchy to understand their active participation in their world-making as well as their dynamic imagination and expression through writing, working, learning, loving.

An examination of contemporary gender theory, with particular focus on its application to the study of religion.

Examines the culturally and historically variable ways in which individuals constitute themselves as cis- or transgendered subjects, drawing upon extant expressive resources, modifying them, and expanding options available to others. Performance of self as the product of esthetically marked or unmarked, everyday actions.

This course examines postsocialist experiences of the relationship between political, economic, social, and cultural transitions, and challenges in public health and gender relations.

The course explores cultural beliefs, practices, and social conditions that influence health and sickness of women and men from a cross-cultural perspective.

The media play a critical role in the construction and contestation of ideas about gender, class, and race. Using a range of methods, students will analyze media messages past and present to understand how gender, race, and class influence media production and consumption.

This course takes a cross-cultural approach to understanding how reproduction and associated phenomena become arenas where political debates are played out, and where global and local social relations are contested.

Conceptualizations of gender, race, and class and how, separately and in combination, they are interpreted by the wider society. Emphasis on how black and working-class women make sense of their experiences at work and within the family.

This course examines the intersections between migration processes and the political, economic, and social dimensions of health and well-being among migrants, their families, and their communities.

American women authors from the beginnings to the present. Honors version available.

Examines gender, space, and place relationships in the modern Middle East. Investigates shifting gender geographies of colonialism, nationalism, modernization, and globalization in this region. (GHA)

The seminar examines the developments in gender roles and in sexuality in contemporary Judaism.

This course deals with various topics related to sexuality and marriage in Jewish tradition and history: sex outside of marriage, wedding ceremonies, regulations of marital sex, menstruation, homosexuality, and more.

Discussion of topics related to the representation of women in Western art and/or women as producers of art.

Required preparation, at least one ANTH or one WMST course. A discussion of gender and sex roles and sexuality in past cultures; a cross-cultural examination of ways of knowing about past human behavior.

Students will explore the representation of intersections between gender, identity, immigration, and migration in Latina/o literature. Emphasis will be placed on the intersections between labor, migration, and United States immigration policy.

We examine gender and sexuality in literature written by various authors from the Middle East. Our discussions will focus on the significance of sexuality, harems, same-sex desire and homosexuality, construction of female sexuality, masculinity, contraception and abortion, the institution of marriage, gay/lesbian underground subcultures, and social media as sexual outlet.

Examines in greater depth and complexity one or more of the issues addressed in PHIL 275, investigating issues of gender, race, and class within the dominant theories of philosophy.

This course will examine the unprecedented surge of feminist thought and activism in the postwar United States. Course materials and discussions will trace feminists' varied conceptions of empowered womanhood and their expectations of the state, society at large, and each other. Honors version available.

Examines in greater depth and complexity current issues in feminist political theory. Topics: theories of subjectivity and solidarity, feminist poststructuralist and post-Marxist thinking, gender in the public sphere.

Spanning the ancient, medieval, and modern West, this course explores normative and non-normative female sexualities, ideas about female bodies, and the regulation of female sexuality by families, religions, and states.

This course explores "queer" expressions in Chinese literature and visual culture from 1949 through the twenty-first century. It surveys a combination of all-time classics and lesser-known cultural texts featuring non-heteronormative sexual desire and gender-bending performance. We mobilize queer as a broad site of critique beyond Western models of the concept, asking not only how queer challenges normative bodyminds, but also how it negotiates notions of age, family, race, and the neoliberal order.

This seminar draws on feminist and philosophical theory, including the works of Plato, Butler, and Foucualt, as well as postcolonial theory, to explore the categories of sex and gender in South Asian religions. We also analyze the moral cultivation of the self in relation to gender identity in South Asia.

Using Alexievich as our beacon, we will explore the writers behind the term "Russian Women's Prose": Valeria Narbikova, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya. The course will delve into gender identity and body politics as they manifest themselves in the literary texts of lasting aesthetic quality and social relevance. Taught in English; some readings in Russian for qualified students.

This course explores literary and media art produced by women from various political and social margins of Japan, voiced from their transnational subjectivities. The transnational situations include: immigration, colonialism, diaspora, and international coalition as well as globalizing feminist alliance. By focusing on literature, film, and performance, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to women's creative political statements.

This course explores the growing body of research on gender, empire, and nation/nationalism in modern European history by focusing on problems of national belongings and citizenship, state and nation building and empire formation, and the gendered discourses and representations of nation and empire.

Classic writings and debates relating to gender and development, with emphasis on recent work that critiques conventional development models. The scope is global, with special attention to Latin America and to such questions as how alternative approaches to gender, culture, and development may be more inclusive of diverse peoples and grassroots movements for change.

This course introduces students to new research on the history of gender, the military, and war in a comparative perspective. It explores the interrelations between changing military systems, types of warfare, the gender order, as well as political, social, and cultural currents in modern history.

Course examines the speeches and other texts that announced and embodied the goals and political strategies of multiple branches of three waves of feminist activism in the United States.

This course examines historical developments in the study of women and gender in Judaism. We will discuss efforts to challenge and revitalize Jewish tradition through the lens of gender theory and other critical interpretive approaches. Topics to be addressed include biblical interpretation, Jewish law, feminist Jewish theology and liturgy, the renewal of ritual, the rabbinic ordination of women, gender identity, race, sexuality, queer, trans, and non-binary approaches, and representations of these themes in various media.

Explores the lives of women in the Middle East and how they have changed over time. Focus will change each year.

Introduction to the theoretical and practical contributions of African American feminists who maintain that issues of race, gender, sexuality, and social class are central, rather than peripheral, to any history or strategy for bringing about social justice in the United States.

This course will present an overview of the variety and diversity of contemporary American women's experiences of creative expressions. We explore how women have been historically excluded from the arts.

An interdisciplinary consideration of women's roles, behavior, and ideas in the religious life of Americans from 1636 to 1982.

Explores through performance contemporary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and feminist thought by women of color in the United States. Honors version available.

This course combines readings and field work in oral history with the study of performance as a means of interpreting and conveying oral history texts. Honors version available.

An exploration of the distinctive themes in Southern women's lives, using the evidence of history and literature.

This course will discuss theories, methods, and empirical research findings on the physical, cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of the psychology of women, as well as topics such as feminist psychology, intersectionality, bias in psychological research, sexual orientation, sexuality, lifespan development, work, and health. Men and masculinity, the psychology of transgender persons, and a critique of the gender binary are also discussed.

Introduces students to the study of Native American women through the perspectives of anthropology, history, and autobiography.

Required preparation, one course in gender or non-Western societies. Permission of the instructor for students lacking the preparation. Focuses on feminist perspectives on imperialism, the effects of imperialism on colonized and European women, women's participation in anti-imperialist movements; and the legacies of imperialism for feminism today.

The image of woman in 16th- and 17th-century Hispanic literature. A study of texts by Spanish and Spanish American authors. Readings in Spanish or in English translation. Lectures in English.

Permission of the instructor required for undergraduates. Examination of the environmental and health risks, policy institutions, processes, instruments, policy analysis, and major elements of American environmental policy. Lectures and case studies.

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Medieval Christians consistently focused on the suffering body as a means of reflecting on Christ's sacrifice. This course considers how medical theories of cognition, gender, and pain influenced the potential role of the body in medieval mystical experience.

This course explores literature, performance art, film, and photography by Latinas and Latinos whose works may be described as "queer" and that question terms and norms of cultural dominance.

This course explores Latina/o literature about photography in relation to photography by "queer" Latina/o artists and, through this double focus, poses certain questions about identity, subjectivity, and culture.

Senior standing and permission of the department. The first semester of the yearlong honors thesis in women's and gender studies. Completing WGST 691H fulfills the WGST 695 requirement for the major.

Permission of department. Second semester of the yearlong honors thesis project.

Required preparation, at least one additional WGST course and senior standing or permission of the instructor. Required for majors; strongly recommended for minors. An advanced writing-intensive course drawing on a student's interests and background. Major research of specific topics utilizing feminist perspectives. Honors version available.