Intermediate/Advanced Courses

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.

This course builds on concepts and information covered in Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies (GWS 200). It explores the experiences, needs, and goals of BPA people, as well as their interactions with the mainstream lesbian & gay community and overlap and coalition building with other marginalized groups.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Examines the contemporary global health project in historical and cultural context, highlighting some of the greatest sources of tension and struggle. Uses a feminist lens and focuses on gender as key analytic category to course explore the ways that the distribution of global wealth and power impacts health and well-being around the world.

This course examines the different ways Asian American feminists and queers have used cultural production to speak up against issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, identity, diaspora, nation, justice, art, and activism. Asian American feminist and queer critiques can bring to light the ways that structures of domination uphold and further perpetuate Asian American marginalization within the U.S.

This course will focus on how visionary and speculative fiction serve as a compliment to social justice activism. Students will have the opportunity to read, respond to, and produce visionary and speculative fiction.