Gen&WS 350: Special Topics in Gender & Literature – Women Writers & Social Fictions in 20th Century Literature

Analyzes 20th century transnational literature by women writers *about* women writers and creative women. Authors portray female characters who are in the process of writing or other artistic endeavors and, through the characters, show them grapple with gendered “social fictions” regarding women’s roles, creativity, and power. Focusing on literature that portrays women who write and women who are creative, we will examine how women’s written works of art are shaped by social fictions regrading domestic labor, pregnancy, motherhood, sexual repression, woman as visual/representational, and more. We will also examine different forms of creativity and different access to the creative realm among women in literature. What historical, institutional, and systemic obstacles have shaped what women write and which women write? How does the portrayal of writerly/creative female characters vary based on their gender, race, sexuality, and locationality?

File: GenWS-350-Spring-2025-Syllabus-T-Lemaster.pdf

Gen&WS 340: Topics in LGBTQ+ Sexuality: Queer Worldmaking

Across the last half-century, we have witnessed continued social, political, and legislative efforts to control, suppress, and eradicate queer life around the world; at the same time, LGBTQ+ creators have resisted these efforts by imagining new worlds on the street, the screen, and the page. In this humanities-oriented course, we will examine cultural histories of LGBTQ+ worldmaking in North America from the 1950s to the present through film, literature, and popular culture. Objects will include queer coming-of-age narratives and love stories that subvert archival silences; radical manifestos that imagine a world liberated from rigid gendered divides and homophobia; speculative fiction that rewrites the past, present, or future to center LGBTQ+ life; iconic queer music videos that invent new worlds in a matter of minutes; and documentaries capturing countercultural worlds of queer art, eroticism, and activism from the twentieth century to today. This reading and viewing-heavy course will culminate with a final project that combines historical research and creative remediation, so that students can try their hand at worldmaking of their own.

File: GenWS_340_SP25_Syllabus_Cannell.pdf

Gen&WS 547: Theorizing Intersectionality

The aim of this course is to critically examine important issues, questions, and debates regarding intersectionality or the notion that race, gender, sexuality, and other terrains of difference are mutually constructing. GWS 547 is interdisciplinary in its approach. Course materials include texts, films, and other multimedia resources drawn from an array of disciplines including gender and women’s studies, sociology, critical race theory, history, political theory, and cultural studies.

File: GenWS-547_Spring-2025_Syllabus.pdf

Gen&WS 539: Pregnancy, Parenthood, Illness & Disability

The physical, social, and emotional work of pregnancy, birth, and parenting is heavily gendered in the United States and elsewhere. Although not all pregnant, birthing, or parenting people are women, this work is frequently feminized and devalued in various ways linked to gender within patriarchal and androcentric social institutions. Within the matrix of domination, other identity categories also shape the experiences of parents, children, and families; for example, disabled parents, queer parents, and parents of color are also affected by ableism, hetero/cisnormativity, and white supremacy. In this course, we will cover a broad array of topics related to the ways in which pregnancy, birth, and parenting are socially understood, constructed, and controlled in the United States today.

File: GWS-539-FALL-2024-Gathman-Syllabus-FINAL.pdf

Gen&WS 350: Special Topics in Gender and Literature – Narrating Gender & Sexual Difference

In this session of Gender and Women’s Studies/English 350, we will traverse North American literary fiction, drama, manifestos, memoirs, and poetry in order to apprehend intersectional archives of gender and sexual expression from the 1960s to the present. As we interrogate how these vastly different texts might touch one another in unexpected ways, we will also contextualize them through their cultural and historical contexts in liberatory political movements in North America and abroad. Together, we will reckon with the literary and lived experiences of gender and sexual outlaws over the last half-century as they express new ways of being in the world and even new worlds.

File: GenWS-350-002_Fall-2024_Cannell.pdf

Gen&WS 449: Special Topics in Feminist Theory – Uncertainty & Possibility

In this session of Gender & Women's Studies 449, we will address feminist theories of “uncertainty, doubt,” and “skepticism,” alongside theoretical and cultural texts which take that uncertainty as a site of radical “political imagination” and possibility. By examining work from queer and feminist theorists including Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Barbara Johnson, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Jennifer Nash, Sara Ahmed, Marquis Bey, Jasbir Puar, and more, we will identify new forms for reckoning with uncertainty as we navigate activist pasts and imagine new feminist futures.

File: GenWS-449-003_Uncertainty_Fall-2024_Cannell.pdf

Gen&WS 533: Gender, Race & Botany

With rising pandemics of mosquito-borne viruses like zika, malaria, dengue, and continuing searches for cures for Ebola, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and infectious diseases (like COVID-19), plants (in addition to animals) provide insight, inspiration, and often ingredients for possible cures. The World Intellectual Property Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization have dedicated special programs for plant medicine, traditional knowledge (folklore) and genetic resources (biological specimens of plants). The high value placed on traditional knowledge, particularly from indigenous communities, has led to vandalism and biopiracy of plants (and animals) across national borders. There also deeper histories of plant knowledge and dispossession woven into the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the cotton and tobacco industry in the US South, as well as rubber from the Amazon rainforest that become crucial to world wars.

File: GWS-533_Gender-Race-and-Botany_Syllabus_2024.docx

Gen&WS 538: Queering Health: Research, Activism, and Intervention in LGBTQIA+ Health

LGBTQIA+ people experience disparities in both access to and appropriateness of healthcare. Sub-groups within the “LGBTQ+ community” have particular health concerns and needs that are often not well-addressed by current healthcare systems. In recent years, transgender and gender non-conforming people have additionally faced legislative attacks on their access to care. All of these problems may be further exacerbated by other forms of marginalization based in race, ability, class, etc., and they may also shed light on broader issues in healthcare for the general population. This course begins with a general exploration of LGBTQIA+ marginalization and medicalization, their effects on healthcare research, access, and outcomes, and the scope and role of patient autonomy, and then applies these concepts to a number of specific issues in LGBTQIA+ health such as differences of sex development or intersex, violence, mental illness, and disability, sexual health and fertility, and aging.

File: Gathman-GWS-538-SPR-2024-syllabus-FINAL.pdf