Intermediate/Advanced Courses

Contemporary theoretical positions and debates about feminisms in the humanities and social sciences. Enroll Info: 3 credits of GEN&WS and sophomore standing.

Examines the relationship between dominant images of women and men and their self-images, as they emerge in expressive culture in various societies.

Investigation of some specific topic in gender and women's studies related to gender and literature. Topic differs each semester.

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.

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.

Explores a broad range of contemporary theories concerned with bodies and power. Intersections with gender, race, class, dis / ability, sexuality and nation.

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

This course will take a human rights approach to global women's health to provide an overview of health issues within the context of a woman's life cycle. It will pay special attention to the socio-cultural and economic factors that play a role in determining women's access to quality basic health care.

This course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. It will highlight the social values placed on different bodies, the changing social expectations bodies create, and the role of science and medicine in creating the cultural meanings of bodies.