Explores the social, cultural, and political construction of the female/feminine body. Considers specifically the bodies of women and girls, transgender women, non-binary people that embody the feminine, female masculinities, and bodies that identify and are identified as female, as bodies that have historically and traditionally been sites of political contention, of societal meaning making, of cultural symbolism, and active resistance. Seeks to challenge what we think we know about bodies, challenging tacit knowledge and investigating how normative discourses of the female/feminine body are formed across cultures, around the world. Considers the impacts of phenomena such as globalization, neoliberalism, "global" feminism, imperialism, capitalism, and human rights movements on cultural conceptions of health, ability, beauty, representation, and the "value" of female/feminine bodies.
File: GenWS-423_Phelps_-Fall-2020.pdf
Explores central assumptions, questions, and debates regarding the relationship between feminist theory, pro-feminist theory, and the practice and performance of multiple masculinities. Explores feminist-informed definitions of and debates about masculinity including whether masculinity is primarily a gender-role and/or a form of sexual expression. Further, key tensions related to men's status, or their lack thereof, as subjects of feminist theory will be examined. Examine the practice and performance of specific masculinities including but not limited to African American masculinities, trans masculinities, and faith-informed masculinities.
File: GWS-546_2020_Spring_Lindsay.pdf
Major texts by Asian American women writers.
File: syll-464-sp-20-1.pdf
Examination in depth of specific topics in the area of gender and health. Exploration of relevant health issues in social, economic, and cultural contexts, including public health and policy, and how they relate to gender, race, sexuality, disability, and class.
File: GenWS-539_Epigenetics-and-ParentChild-Health_Goldstein_Syllabus_2021.pdf
Situates sexual health education in historical and contemporary context by tracing its discursive production and envisioning a queering of both content and practice. An examination of what might it mean to queer sex education and what would a queer sex education look like. Utilizing theoretical interventions from critical education studies, queer theory, and trans/gender studies, this course.
File: GWS-536_2020_Spring_Barcelos.pdf
Contemporary theoretical positions and debates about feminisms in the humanities and social sciences. Enroll Info: 3 credits of GEN&WS and sophomore standing.
File: GWS-441_2019_Fall_Lindsay.pdf
Examines the relationship between dominant images of women and men and their self-images, as they emerge in expressive culture in various societies.
File: Gender-and-Expressive-Culture-Syllabus-2019-Final.docx
Investigation of some specific topic in gender and women's studies related to gender and literature. Topic differs each semester.
File: GenWS-350_Social-Justice-Lit_Schalk_Fall-2020.pdf
Using a reproductive justice framework, analyze contexts, experiences, practices, ideologies, and historiographies of childbirth in the United States from roughly the 17th century to the present, with the heaviest emphasis on the 20th and 21st century. Examines the ways that colonization, genocide, enslavement, racism, capitalism, heterosexism, patriarchy, and ableism have shaped all of these aspects of childbirth. Inquire how key movements and groups resisting some of these forms of oppression have had the power to reshape birth, as well as locating in birth a source of transformational power.
File: GWS-537_Spring_2019_Menzel.pdf
An examination of the emergent theoretical field of queer of color critique, a mode of analysis grounded in the struggles and world-making of LGBTQ people of color. Activists, artists, and theorists have mobilized queer of color critique to interrogate the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, and diaspora as a response to the inherent whiteness of mainstream queer theory and persistent heterosexism in ethnic studies. Examines the development of queer of color critique (primarily in the United States) through both academic and activist domains; consider what queer theory has to say about empire, citizenship, prisons, welfare, neoliberalism, and terrorism; and articulate the role of queer of color analysis in a vision for racial, gender, sexual, and economic justice.
File: GWS-446_2019_Spring-_Barcelos.pdf