Some of our favorite Graduate courses. See the full list of graduate courses on the Penn State Bulletin, or read more about our graduate program.
This interdisciplinary graduate seminar gives students an overview of the theoretical, epistemological, and methodological foundations of feminist pedagogy. We will examine theoretical frameworks of teaching and learning that promote justice and social change (i.e. praxis), as well as feminist pedagogical strategies that can be utilized within and beyond the classroom (i.e. practice). Students can expect to engage with various critical and liberatory pedagogies, pedagogies of identity and difference, and signature pedagogies. They will learn how feminist epistemologies shape (and are shaped by) ethical classroom practice, focusing on specific ways in which to cultivate and nurture feminist teaching and learning. In addition, students will also learn how to develop a syllabus and teaching philosophy.
Engaging with trans (and queer) of color theory as a particular approach to the political and as its own mode of knowledge production, we will not only take up the mutual constitution of race and gender, but center how whiteness has come to construct the burgeoning field of trans studies. This seminar considers how race as a modality of analysis and trans of color critique as a praxis can in turn amplify, extend, and complicate the framework and analytical interventions offered by trans studies. Rather than attempt to be exhaustive, we will focus on the critical interventions offered by trans of color critique, especially as it relates to silence, (in)visibility and representation, surveillance, medicalization, movement/mobility, violence, and death.
This course will explore the historical background and various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe.
This course offers students an interdisciplinary overview of the complex topics of gender and sexuality. Employing various theoretical and disciplinary perspectives including feminist and queer theory, historical and sociological perspectives, visual culture, and post-colonial discourse, this course gives students a broad understanding of key historical and contemporary issues in the arena of gender and sexuality.