Featured Courses

This introductory survey course fulfills requirements for General Education in Social Sciences, the Bachelor of Arts degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences, and United States and International Cultures competence. It is also a prerequisite for upper-level courses in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This class focuses on women's shared and unshared experiences, issues of gender roles and stereotyping, questions related to sex/gender systems, and the different disciplinary approaches to the study of women and gender. The course asks how women’s behavior, activities, accomplishments, roles, sexuality, and status have been shaped by biological, psychological, sociological, cultural, historical, and political determinants, as well as by women’s experiences based on their racial, class, and sexual identities. Topics include the history of women’s liberation movements, women’s experiences in home, work and educational settings, gender roles and stereotyping as influenced by media, culture, education, and other social institutions, health and body image issues, and multiple forms of oppression. The course will focus equally on feminist issues in both the United States and on a global scale and is both interdisciplinary (drawing information and readings from history, psychology, political science, and sociology) and broadly inclusive (addressing at all times the relationship between gender, race, class, ethnicity and sexual orientation).

This introductory survey course fulfills requirements for General Education in Social Sciences, the Bachelor of Arts degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences, and United States and International Cultures competence. It is also a prerequisite for upper-level courses in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This class focuses on women’s shared and unshared experiences, issues of gender roles and stereotyping, questions related to sex/gender systems, and the different disciplinary approaches to the study of women and gender. The course asks how women’s behavior, activities, accomplishments, roles, sexuality, and status have been shaped by biological, psychological, sociological, cultural, historical, and political determinants, as well as by women’s experiences based on their racial, class, and sexual identities. Topics include the history of women’s liberation movements, women’s experiences in home, work and educational settings, gender roles and stereotyping as influenced by media, culture, education, and other social institutions, health and body image issues, and multiple forms of oppression. The course will focus equally on feminist issues in both the United States and on a global scale and is both interdisciplinary (drawing information and readings from history, psychology, political science, and sociology) and broadly inclusive (addressing at all times the relationship between gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation).

This introductory survey course fulfills General Education Integrative Studies requirements in humanities and social sciences, and also meets the requirements for the United States Cultures Designation and Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences. This course uses literature, film and scholarly texts to inspire students to explore how conceptions of social difference, such as those linked to categories of gender, race, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and disability, shape society and everyday interactions historically and today. The course takes an intersectional perspective to explore how and why these categories vary over time and space, the effects of such variations for individuals and communities, and the connections between identity and the exercise of power. Geographically, the course emphasizes the relationship between social difference and power in the U.S. history and society, but takes a transnational perspective when possible by making comparisons to contexts beyond the United States. Furthermore, the class examines how individuals and communities most directly marginalized by these processes contest and re-imagine dominant categories and assumptions. Materials and discussions in the class trace broad social and historical trends as well as dive into the facets of everyday life. The class is designed to encourage reflection on the ethical challenges that arise when we become aware of how privilege, power and difference are intertwined in our world and daily lives. Students who successfully navigate this course will be able to: 1. Apply basic theories of identity, difference, social power, and privilege to a wide range of textual and visual materials, and to their own interactions in the context of day-to-day life. 2. Critically engage at an introductory level histories of how race, gender, sexuality, class and disability have been constructed in the U.S. context. 3. Consider transnational dimensions of similar dynamics and contrast these with the U.S. context. 4. Identify and analyze the multiple ways individuals, communities, and social movements have resisted and remade categories of identity and changed relations of power over time and space. 5. Recognize and explore the ethical dimensions of social, political, and/or economic marginalization rooted in constructions of social identity.

Interdisciplinary consideration of primary works and scholarship pertaining to women in the humanities and the arts. WMNST 106N Representing Women and Gender in Literature, Art and Popular Cultures (3) (GA;GH;US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This is an introductory survey course that fulfills General Education Integrative Studies requirements in humanities and arts, and also fulfills United States and International Cultures requirements. The course is a prerequisite for upper level women's studies courses. WMNST 106N is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, with an emphasis on the experiences, achievements, and status of women in the arts and humanities in the United States and global context. While providing a broad overview of scholarly research and theory pertaining to women and gender, students will also see many examples of contemporary women’s creative practice through the visual arts, media, and popular culture. Students will learn about the challenges women artists have faced in making their way in a male-dominated arts and media industry; they will learn how these artists sought and continue to seek new languages and forms, whether in paint, words, film, music, crafts, to reassess and re-imagine notions of sex and sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity that underlie many forms of social injustice. Depending on the location where the course is taught, class meetings may be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, films, and guest speakers. Assigned readings and class meetings may be designed to help students reassess predominant modes of thought and to give students tools to appreciate the creative work of highly diverse women. Depending again upon location, evaluation methods will include a balanced selection from among short papers, longer research papers, journals, book reviews, quizzes, exams, group assignments and other creative activities.

This course is an interdisciplinary consideration of primary works and scholarship pertaining to women in the humanities and the arts. This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements in Arts and Humanities and fulfills General Education Integrative Studies requirements in both Arts and Humanities, as well as United States and International Cultures requirements. It is a prerequisite for upper level courses in the department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, with an emphasis on the experiences, achievements, and status of women in the arts and humanities in the United States and global context. While providing a broad overview of scholarly research and theory pertaining to women and gender, students will also see many examples of contemporary women’s creative practice through the visual arts, media, and popular culture. Students will learn about the challenges women artists have faced in making their way in a male-dominated arts and media industry; they will learn how these artists sought and continue to seek new languages and forms, whether in paint, words, film, music, crafts, to reassess and re-imagine notions of sex and sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity that underlie many forms of social injustice. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, films, and guest speakers. Assigned readings and class meetings are designed to help students reassess predominant modes of thought and to give students tools to appreciate the creative work of highly diverse women. Given that this is an honors section, assignments will be geared towards taking advantage of small class sizes and fully engaged learners to generate dynamic classroom discussions and creative innovation.

This introductory course considers core topics in the field of feminist sexuality studies to both unsettle popular mainstream discourses on sexuality and to aid students in developing a more comprehensive, inclusive, and ethical lens through which to view intersections of gender, sexuality, and the body. Over the course of the semester, students will engage critical conversations in the field of feminist sexuality studies, from debates on pornography and sex work to subcultural and queer sexual practices to the emergence “hook-up culture” and new technologies transforming the landscape of sexual knowledge and practice. The course also substantively engages the ethics of sexual consent, sexual pleasure, and sexual communication. Utilizing an intersectional approach, the course examines how sexual idenities and experiences are informed by differences of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and dis/ability status. The course is interdisciplinary and grounded in the behavioral and social sciences, drawing from feminist sociological, psychological, historical, ethnographic, and public health literatures in order to provide students with a comprehensive and multi-faceted introduction to recent, contemporary, and emergent scholarship on sexual health and diverse forms of sexual practice. Geographically, the course emphasizes the relationship between social difference, power, and sexuality in U.S. history and society, but takes a transnational perspective when possible by making comparisons to contexts beyond the United States. Furthermore, the class examines how individuals and communities most directly marginalized by these processes of sexual stigmatization contest and re-imagine dominant categories and assumptions. Materials and discussions in the class trace broad social and historical trends as well as dive into the facets of everyday life. The class is designed to encourage reflection on the ethical challenges that arise when we become aware of how privilege, power, and difference impact sexual knowledge and practice.

ENGL 227 Introduction to Sexuality Studies (3) (GH;US) This course focuses on the body of critical writings known as queer theory in order to analyze issues of sexuality and gender since 1969. The course interrogates sexual norms and their deviations, with a particular focus on the relationships between sexuality, imagination, and ethics in the making of sexual communities and fostering activism around sexuality and gender. We will study how class, race, and gender have been shaped, and themselves shape, the production of and resistance to sexual norms. Queer Theory engages issues “queer space” and “queer time,” related concepts that relate bodies and environments to history and memory, and to fantasy, imagination, and utopianism. We will also explore the ways marginalization, shame, and criminalization have been transformed into visionary acts of “world-making” that have changed contemporary understandings of bodies, identities, social formations, literature and visual culture. Throughout, our focus will be on the relationships between sexuality and ethics, and how both shape the history of queer culture and activism.

An introduction to the dominant themes in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies, with an emphasis on both literary and cultural studies. This course explores the history of modern, western ideas about sexual identity as manifested in literature, theater, film, and other narrative forms of popular culture. Drawing on the substantial body of “queer theory” generated by scholars in the humanities since the 1990s, this class examines sexuality not as a "natural" or consistent phenomenon, but as a set of beliefs that have changed over time and manifest themselves differently in different cultural and historical contexts. Starting in the late nineteenth century, scientific and medical authorities began categorizing individuals into sexual types based on their manifestations of gendered characteristics and their erotic attractions and practices. This medical typing corresponded with the development of subcultures associated with deviance from sexual norms; these subcultures produced a rich variety of texts, images, performances, and social forms, many of which became central to both popular and high culture. This course explores this rich archive, moving among media. It investigates constructions of sexual conformity and how sexual nonconformists positioned themselves in relation to cultural and medical group identities. It examines how distinctions between gendered, raced, and classed bodies were historically produced and culturally contested. It considers what commonalities gay identities may—or may not—share with lesbian identities and how transgender and other identities have altered perceptions of sexual identity. The course also explores the relationship of the avant-garde to the mass media and how sexual subcultures have shaped literary and other cultural forms of expression. Comparative study of issues of sexual mobility beyond and between the borders of the United States expands the course's critical scope beyond dominant forms of western culture. This course does not propose definitive answers to the questions of identity it addresses. Instead it negotiates the ways sexualities have enabled individuals to articulate—and disarticulate—themselves within social bodies past and present. This course, therefore, has wide relevance for students interested in how group identities come into being and transform over time in dynamic relation to other historical forces. Exploring a wide variety of cultural forms associated with the history of sexual identity as well as a variety of interpretations of that history, this course opens students to an archive of literature, theater, film, and other narrative arts with the potential to inform and enrich their understandings of many kinds of challenges to regimes of normativity today.

This course explains how narrow, "black and white," ways of thinking limit our understanding of the diverse expressions of human sexuality. The course title’s double meaning also references the various ways that sexuality is socially constructed in relation to race. For example, we will explore how stereotypical beliefs about the sexuality of people of African descent persist in the United States and have been legitimized historically by various cultural discourses, social institutions, and academic fields. Course assignments will require us to rethink and challenge what we understand as "sexuality" and consider its many influences like race, gender, class that shape our emotions, needs, desires, relationships, representations, practices, and public policies. An aim of this course is to begin to make sense of the long, entangled, and inextricable relationship between race and sexuality in the United States.

This course focuses on women in various global contexts, including Tehran, Mumbai, Singapore, São Paulo, Philadelphia, and Johannesburg among others. The course is driven by questions such as: How do women in these places understand a time marked by increasing globalization and urbanization, paralleled with poverty and uneven resource access. How do the politics of race, class, caste, religion, and migration status shape their urban experiences? The course draws on scholarly articles, graphic novels, podcasts, and other genres to combine academic and popular knowledge. Major thematic areas for this course include migration, informal economies, culture, and environmental change.

This course examines women’s reproductive health issues from a feminist perspective. Reproduction has always been thought of as "women’s work," yet decisions about reproduction are rarely made by women. This course will focus on how various political institutions (e.g., religious, economic, governmental, legal, medical, etc.) influence all aspects of human reproduction, and how these influences affect women’s reproductive health, both ideologically and practically, as well as how women’s reproduction affects women’s lives. This course will examine four aspects of reproduction from a feminist perspective: reproductive rights, including access to birth control and abortion along with the right to be free of forced sterilization; infertility and the new conceptive technologies; pregnancy, including screening, sex selection, maternal and "fetal rights"; and childbirth options. Throughout the course, we will return to the question of the “politics of reproduction” by asking ourselves which powerful institutions govern each particular aspect of reproduction and whether the decisions made are good for women. Using a feminist perspective, we'll focus on making women and their health needs the center of discussion and examining the relative lack of power held by women in decisions made about their reproductive health. In addition to class readings (which are both theoretical and applied in nature) students will learn through class discussions, films, and group projects.

Applied critical analysis of any aspect of society and/or culture from a contemporary feminist perspective. WMNST 492W Current Feminist Issues This course is the capstone course for the Women’s Studies major. We keep the course small (15–20 students) and offer it every spring. It is constructed to provide you the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills you have developed in Women’s Studies to some of the major topics being addressed in current academic feminist discourse. The first goal of the course is for each student to become familiar with the major arguments and evidence regarding some of the current major topics in feminism. The second goal is for each student to learn more about the multidisciplinary perspectives of women’s studies. The third goal of the course is for each student to develop and demonstrate their skill at carrying out feminist scholarship.There are two core elements of the course. The first is class discussion of readings addressing some of the major current feminist issues. Each year a new set of these topics is put together by the instructor, drawing upon the suggestions of other Women’s Studies faculty and majors. The second core element of the course is each individual student doing a term paper. Work on these papers will take place both publicly and privately, so that everyone in the course will learn something about how feminist projects are constructed in the various disciplines represented by the students' choices of topics for their papers.Because this is a W course, 2/3 of your grade will be based on writing assignments. Throughout the course, you will write short (2 page) papers on the readings that we will be discussing in our seminars. You will also write a term paper and some preliminary assignments related to it, including a topic justification paper, an annotated bibliography accompanied by a text description of the major themes identified in the bibliography, a class presentation on your paper topic, and the final 10–15 page paper. The other third of your grade will be based on your participation in seminar discussions.