Syllabus Library

Investigation of some specific topic in gender and women's studies related to gender, women and the humanities. Subject differs each semester.

Investigates how gender and race were socially constructed in cultural encounters between Europeans and "other" peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Investigation of some specific topic in gender and women's studies related to gender, women and society.

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.

Uses an interdisciplinary framework to examine the key assumptions, debates, and silences in contemporary black feminist thought.

his humanities-based literature, theory and film course explores the importance of regional orientation to sexual orientation in the U.S.: not just the “what you do” of sexuality but also the “where you do it.” This course grates against the assumption that the city is where “anything goes,” while rural spaces are merely places of intense sexual repression. Students interrogate themes such as sex work, migration, homonationalism, metronormativity, trans lives and histories, how the gender binary developed as a tool of colonial oppression, what a disabled sexual culture might look like, and rural and suburban responses to the metropole. In turn, we will also have opportunities to explore gender and sexuality in Madison.

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.

This course centralizes the intersection of LGBTQ identities and dis/ability through various queer bodies which are also inflected by race, class, geographical and national locations. Approaches may include critical theory about queer bodies and personal narratives.

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.

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?

What happens to the bodymind kept in waiting? This course pursues questions of the “in- between” through the lenses of health and disability justice. Considering the concept of “patient,” with connotations of compliance and medicalization, students will explore how race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship impact how long one waits for care.

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.

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.

Examines the social, cultural, political, and symbolic constructions of the intersecting categories of gender and disability.

Interdisciplinary analysis of the films about disability, stigmatized bodies, and their gendered constructions using feminist and disability studies methods.

Explores gender identity and sexuality among disabled people using historical and theoretical articles to discuss and analyze films, memoirs, and poetry by people with disabilities. Provides a brief introduction to disability studies and intersectionality before delving into academic discussions and artistic representations of the intersections of disability, gender, and sexuality.

Explores topics in gender and visual culture, including artistic practice, political and creative expression, and cultural phenomena.

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.

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

Explores the intertwined relationship between gender and politics in contemporary Middle East and North Africa. Situates the region's historical, socio-political, and cultural context that have particularly contributed to shaping the current discourse on gender in the Arab World. Explores - both theoretically and empirically - the role of Arab women in influencing the political processes across the Middle East.

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

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

This course is a mode of critical inquiry that emerges from intersecting theorizations of race, gender, sexuality, nation, class, and other sites of lived experience. While queer theory and activism have previously faced charges of insufficiently reckoning with race, activism and scholarship that take up race as their primary focus have a similar history of presumed heteronormativity. Queer of color critique, a term often credited to Roderick Ferguson, resists this divide and centers the intellectual traditions of queer thinkers of color to interrogate the mutual constitution of race, gender, and sexualities.

Where have we come from and where are we going? Designed to take us on a journey and tell stories of knowledge building over time, we will explore feminist theories from a broad array of disciplines and perspectives.

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.

Major texts by Asian American women writers.

A history of sexuality approach to a period of major social, economic, and political change in US history, 1880-1930; medical, legal, and popular discourses shaping urbanization, reform, nationalism and colonialism.

Examination of theories and research on the psychology of women and gender.

Explores various aspects of identity politics and body politics such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and citizenship status as they relate to and intersect with body size and constructions of fatness. Situates how fatness has been conceptualized over time, the formation of the gendered body ideals, and the proliferation of obesity rhetoric.

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 interdisciplinary course focuses on scientific approaches to studying sexuality. We discuss current biological and neuroscientific research about sexuality, as well as feminist scholarship on these topics and critical responses to this research. Topics cover the intersections between biology (e.g., hormones, anatomy, neural activity, psychophysiology, evolution, etc.), sexuality (e.g., desire, dysfunction, arousal, bisexuality, orgasm, same-sex sexuality, pleasure, etc.), and feminist/critical scholarship about this research (e.g., feminist science studies, queer theory, feminist psychology, medicalization, etc.).

Women as patients and as health professionals in America from the colonial period to the present.

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.

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.

This course explores several theoretical lenses, disciplinary approaches, and substantive topical areas relating to reproductive and sexual health.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Explores central assumptions, questions, and debates regarding the relationship between feminist theory, pro-feminist theory, and the practice and performance of multiple masculinities.

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.

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.

Advanced level investigation of some specific topic in gender and women's studies.

This seminar will explore both the emergence of and recent work within the field of feminist disability studies. As an interdisciplinary field, feminist disability studies uses the critical lenses of feminist theory and disability studies to interrogate bodyminds norms at the intersections of (dis)ability and gender as well as race and sexuality.

Transdisciplinary approaches to women's studies/gender studies. Emphasizes theoretical and methodological issues, the nature of interdisciplinary work, and the relationship to traditional disciplines, with an international and multicultural focus.

Provides an overview of the field of gender and women’s studies. Surveys the origin of the field and traces its major transformations. Explores and analyzes historical and contemporary debates that have shaped and continue to shape the field.

Examines assumptions and debates in contemporary theorizing about gender and women including what constitutes "good" gender and women studies' theorizing, how to recognize gender-based oppression when we see it, how gender, race, sexuality, and other hierarchies of power intersect, as well as the merits of transnational theorizing about gender and women.

Provides an introduction to feminist pedagogy in Gender and Women’s Studies, Focuses upon: (1) the historical importance of an explicit feminist pedagogy in the foundation of GWS, (2) the development of feminist pedagogical theory and (3) a hands-on experience with developing feminist pedagogical materials, classroom strategies and a teaching portfolio.

Orients students to key dimensions of scholarly life as well as professional options outside of academia. Explores issues both broad (e.g., professional development) and specific (e.g., obtaining research grants) that are important to those building professional careers with a Gender and Women's Studies Ph.D. Enables students to hear about and learn from individual GWS faculty members’ professional experiences within and beyond the academy.

Introduces gender and women’s studies as an interdisciplinary area of study and a profession. Reviews the profession, both academic and non-academic. Explores issues both broad (e.g., professional development) and narrow (e.g., obtaining research grants) that are of interest to those building professional careers with a Gender and Women’s Studies Ph.D.

Introduces new graduate students to the breadth of scholarship in Gender and Women's Studies. It also develops particular skills (critical reading, critical writing and basic research) important to graduate level scholarship.

Focuses on how specific schools of feminist thought redefine the political, spanning historical and contemporary feminist political theory.

Ecological spaces and nonhuman beings play a key role in human politics, the human imagination, and in constructing this idea of “the human.” Animals have long played a key role (not voluntarily) in distinguishing a hierarchy among humans, but plants also play a key role in the Western Enlightenment ideal that sets humans as “apart from” rather than “part of” an ecology of beings. Bringing environmental studies, indigenous studies, and critical race theory perspectives to bear on gender and sexuality studies, this course takes feminism as an identity, an object of analysis, a methodological approach and social justice practice.