| WMGS 133 |
| Blues Women to Nicki Minaj |
| This course explores the music of Black American women in music from the era of blues queens of the 1920s through Nicki Minaj. Along the way we will listen to and read about the music of blues greats Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith; trailblazer Marian Anderson; jazz legends Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington; Motown superstar Diana Ross and the fabulous Supremes; disco queen Donna Summer; gospel and soul diva Aretha Franklin; rocker Tina Turner; and, ultimately, women in hip-hop, among them Queen Latifah, Lil' Kim, and Nicki Minaj. Because context is critical to the understanding of the music of these women, course readings will situate the women in their social and musical times. (ART) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 150 |
| Before Lady Gaga and Beyoncé |
| A broad survey of the music and music-making traditions of European and North American women from antiquity to the present. We explore the work and lives of women active as composers and performers in a range of genres, including the classical traditions, blues, jazz, and hip hop. No previous training or experience in music is required. (ART) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 201 |
| Gender and Sexuality in a Transnational World |
| This broadly interdisciplinary course provides students with an introduction to the field of gender and sexuality studies. It pays particular attention to transnational approaches. Materials are drawn from a variety of disciplines and may include films, novels, ethnographies, oral histories, and legal cases. (GLB5) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 209 |
| War and the Asian Diaspora |
| How has war shaped and reshaped the Asian diasporic experience in the mid to late 20th century? This course examines texts by Sri Lankan, Korean, Vietnamese and other anglophone Asian voices to examine how militarized conflict intersects with gender and sexuality to shape the politics and experiences of Asians in diaspora. We will read novels, poetry, academic articles and essays on the experiences of Asian subjects who have witnessed/survived/ been impacted by war in their homelands in order to understand the systemic and as well as everyday effects of militarization, ethnic violence and imperialism. (SOC) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 211 |
| Global Intimacies |
| What is globalization? A process of homogenization and Americanization? Where does globalization happen? In the economic realm that we usually associate with the public? In contrast to these conceptualizations, this course explores diverse and contingent processes of globalization in the domestic and private spheres. Specifically, we will look at how global mobilities trouble and complicate intimate relations such as marriage, love, sex, reproduction, family making, and self-identity across culture. (GLB) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 221 |
| Afro-European Feminisms |
| This course looks at the social movements and cultural production of women and gender minorities with Afro-European identities, with an emphasis on the diasporas of North and West Africa. In addition to critical works, readings may include fiction by Léonora Miano, May Ayim, and Assia Djebar, documentaries by Amandine Gay and Dagmar Schultz, and various podcasts and interviews. Key topics will include the relationship between anticolonial struggles and contemporary activism, colonial stereotypes, the influence of US-based black feminist thought on European black feminisms, debates in feminist historiography, and cultural constructions of gender and race. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 245 |
| The Hollywood Musical |
| Perhaps more than any other genre, the musical epitomized Hollywood’s “golden age.” This course traces the development of the enormously popular genre from its emergence at the beginning of the Great Depression to its decline amid the social upheavals of the 1960s. It pays particular attention to the genre’s queering of masculinity and femininity, as well as its relationship to camp modes of reception. Readings by Jane Feuer, Rick Altman, Richard Dyer, Janet Staiger, and Steven Cohan. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 246 |
| Sociology of Gender |
| Sex and gender are used as principles of social organization in all known societies. This course surveys research in the sociological study of gender with the goal of providing students with a theoretical grounding for analyzing gender from a sociological perspective. We will explore how our lives and the world around us are shaped by gender and how gender has been constructed over time. We will further examine how sociological research on gender helps us to understand power and inequality at various levels – institutional, organizational, and interactional—by examining various topics such as gender socialization, reproduction, education, work, and violence. We will also pay attention to how gender reinforces and builds upon other areas of inequality such as social class, race, ethnicity, and age. (SOC) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 248 |
| Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Religion |
| Why do particular embodiments render some people “other” within their religion? How are women represented in religious texts and images? How does gender determine what counts for religiously-sanctioned behavior? This course provides an overview of topics where issues of gender and sexuality intersect with particular religious traditions (including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Native American traditions). Topics include: purity and power, celibacy and virginity, marriage and reproduction, veiling and eating practices, violence and sacrifice, as well as the issue of religious leadership and ordination. This course may count towards the Women, Gender and Sexuality major. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 249 |
| Amazons Then and Now |
| In ancient Greece, the Amazons were a group of female warriors who created their own society outside of ancient Greek civilization. Cultivating their legendary skills in combat, they were characterized as the archenemies of Greek culture, the opposite of its patriarchal definition of sexuality, and frequently clashed with heroes like Hercules and Theseus. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Amazons have become a popular topic once again as modern societies grapple with women's roles, the most prominent example being the superheroine Wonder Woman. In this course we'll explore the various meanings that have been attributed to the Amazons at different times in different places, from ancient Greece to the contemporary United States in literature, art, film, and graphic novels. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 260 |
| Sexual Diversity and Society |
| Sexuality has often been considered to be a natural, biological instinct-a drive that is fueled by hormones, genes or deep psychic impulses. During the last twenty years, however, scholars (including sociologists) have challenged this view of sexuality. Instead, they argue that how we organize our sexuality-our desires, ideas, value systems, practices and identities-are profoundly shaped by social and cultural influences. Although this course focuses on the social construction of homosexuality, we will also examine the many ways that normative as well as nonnormative sexualities are socially constructed. We will also examine the many ways that the social construction of sexuality is informed by class, gender, race and ethnicity. Using materials from sociology and from the many other disciplines that are working in the areas of lesbian and gay studies and queer theory, we will explore the impact that history, economics, social structure and cultural logics have had on sexual behaviors, identities, and belief systems. Enrollment limited. (SOC) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 267 |
| Identity and Performativity |
| What is your understanding of passing? What is the relationship between passing and identity? Under what circumstances do people pass out of what considerations? This course explores these questions through reading and contextualizing feminist writer Susan Faludi's biography In the Darkroom (2016), following Faludi's inquiry into her father's life, from her sex reassignment surgery in Thailand at her seventies to his youth as a Jew in Hungary during WWII; from his sojourn in Brazil to his married life in the U.S during the Cold War era. We will be engaging with materials that include documentary films, podcasts, autobiographies, and academic texts across disciplines, to examine the diverse ways in which gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, and geopolitics intersect. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 268 |
| Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora |
| This course will introduce students to the ways in which diasporic Black subjects understand, interpret, and navigate gender and sexuality in what Saidiya Hartman calls the "afterlife of slavery." A core component of this course is arriving at a definition of Blackness that is diasporic, transnational, and always already inflected by gendered and sexual markers. Taking the transnationalism of Black feminist thinkers like M.Jacqui Alexander, Dora Santana, Matt Richardson, and Audre Lorde as a starting point, we will examine how Blackness reconfigures western liberal ideas of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality and, in so doing, shapes diasporic Black subjects' relationships to empire and citizenship. (GLB) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 310 |
| Queer China |
| This course offers an interdisciplinary perspective on non-normative gendered and sexual practices in urban(izing) China and how they have been represented, embodied, and regulated across time and space. The course will introduce students to materials-textual, visual, and audio-that span more than a hundred years from late imperial China to the present against the backdrop of modernization, urbanization, and globalization. Students will explore the different methodological, thematic, and analytic approaches to genders and sexualities in literature, cultural studies, history, and ethnographies. (GLB) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 312 |
| Arab and Queer |
| This course explores the representations and regulations of non-normative sexual practices in the Arab world, with a focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course is interdisciplinary in scope. In addition to queer studies and a variety of theoretical underpinnings, our readings range from literature, history, sociology, anthropology, as well as media and cultural studies. We will explore issues related to identity, power, and resistance especially in the context of (post) Arab Spring. No knowledge of Arabic language is required. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 316 |
| Global Gender Inequalities |
| This course broadly addresses women’s low status and power worldwide. Topics include issues such as son preference, gendered violence, maternal health and reproductive rights, sexual rights, work and household labor, globalization, politics, human rights, and women’s global activism. Utilizing a transnational sociological feminist perspective, students learn how gender inequality intersects with not only culture but also nationalism, racism, and economic injustice in various countries and regions of the world (Southeast Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America). At several key points, students engage in critical comparison between examples of gender oppression and exploitation observed in both the United States and other societies (i.e., gendered violence), which reveal a false binary in the discourse of progress often drawn between “us” and “them.” (GLB5) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 319 |
| The Woman's Film |
| In the 1930s Hollywood created a new genre, the woman’s picture or “weepie,” designed specifically for female audiences. This course examines the development of this enormously popular genre from the 1930s to the 1960s, including important cycles of women’s pictures such as the female gothic and the maternal melodrama. It pays particular attention to the genre’s exploration of female sexuality and its homoerotic organization of the look. It also considers the genre’s role in the formation of contemporary theories of female spectatorship. Film screenings include both versions of Imitations of Life, These Three, Stage Door, Blonde Venus, Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce, Rebecca, Suspicion, Gaslight, The Old Maid, Old Acquaintance, The Great Lie, Letter from an Unknown Woman, All that Heaven Allows, and Marnie. Readings by Doane, Williams, Modleski, de Lauretis, Jacobs, and White. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 320 |
| Queer Rhetorics |
| This class is open to anyone interested in learning how rhetoric can create new knowledges and perspectives on diversity and inclusion. Specifically, we will apply rhetorical methodologies to US history, popular culture, politics, and law to research the formation of LGBTQ identities alongside mainstream identities in America. Our course moves from the rhetoric surrounding the 1960s Stonewall Riots through current debates about Don't Ask Don't Tell and gay marriage. We also investigate the influence of alternative rhetorics, such as the subversive use of social media activism and the spatial arguments of gender neutral bathrooms. Students will take away the ability to rhetorically navigate key dialogues about gender and sexuality, as well as articulate how these debates influence research and knowledge creation in their majors. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 320 |
| Global 1001 Nights |
| This seminar explores the history and global dissemination of the fantasy story collection known as the 1001 Nights. The recent success of movie adaptations of Aladdin is just one of the many waves of popularity that these stories have enjoyed over the centuries. We will begin with medieval story-telling and the circulation of the Nights in Arabic. We will then discuss its transformation into an international best-seller in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the context of British and French colonialism. Finally we will map its more recent reinventions in literature, film, and art across the globe. Key topics will include magic, gender, sexuality, race, empire, and orientalism. Students will undertake a final research project. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 321 |
| Gender and Sexuality in Middle Eastern History |
| Through theoretical readings, historical monographs, ethnographies, novels, and films, this course explores changing discourses of gender and sexuality among Muslims in the Middle East from the foundational period of Islam to the present. Major topics include attitudes toward the body, beauty, and desire; social and legal norms for marriage, divorce, and reproduction; intersections between gender, sexuality, imperialism, and nationalism; and contemporary debates about homosexuality and women's rights. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 324 |
| Transgender Migrations |
| This interdisciplinary course explores the concept of migration through narratives of crossing geographical and gender borders. By putting films, memoirs, novels, and graphic novels in conversation with history and sociology, we will consider the ways in which bodies are regulated by political, legal, and economic forces as they come to occupy and invent new spaces for themselves Topics include the metaphor of "border crossing" in narratives of gender transition, interactions between global gender identities and local cultures, neoliberalism and the so-called "migrant crisis," transgender asylum seekers and sexual rights discourse, and representations of sex work. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 335 |
| Mapping American Masculinities |
| This course examines the construction of masculinity in American society starting with Theodore Roosevelt’s call at the turn of the twentieth century for men to revitalize the nation by pursuing the “strenuous life." Through close readings of literary and filmic texts, it considers why American manhood has so often been seen as in crisis. It pays particular attention to the formation of non-normative masculinities (African-American, female, and gay) in relation to entrenched racial, class, and sexual hierarchies, as well as the impact of the feminist, civil rights, and gay liberation movements on the shifting construction of male identity. In addition to critical essays, readings also include Tarzan of the Apes, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, The Great Gatsby, The Sun also Rises, Native Son, Another Country, and Kiss Me Deadly (Spillane). Film screenings include Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich), Shaft, Magnum Force, Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, Cleopatra Jones, and Boys Don’t Cry. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 337 |
| Critical Ethnic Studies |
| This course considers the relational formation of race in the United States, including its intersection with dynamics such as indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and class. We analyze race as both a social construction that contributes to differentiated access to power and privilege, and as an identity and source of solidarity, community, and political agency. We study the roots of racial capitalism in histories of slavery and settler colonialism. We examine transnational dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality as they circulate via global migration and US imperial expansion. With this relational understanding, we explore histories of and possibilities for antiracist, feminist, and decolonial social movements and cultural production. This interdisciplinary course brings together historical, theoretical, and cultural texts. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 342 |
| Global Histories of Sexuality |
| This course examines how notions of the body, gender, erotic desire, and sexuality have been organized over space and time. Beginning with the Mediterranean, Asia, and Latin America in the ancient and medieval periods, the course seeks to de-center discourses of Western sexual modernity. From the eighteenth century on, it considers how colonialism, racism, nationalism, and globalization have shaped modern sexualities, with particular attention to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Writing assignments focus on how scholars use theory and evidence to explore the sexual past. (GLB2) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 343 |
| Women and Empire |
| This course examines women’s involvement in British imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. What part did ideologies of femininity play in pro-imperialist discourse? In what ways did women writers attempt to "feminize" the imperialist project? What was the relationship between the emerging feminist movement and imperialism at the turn of the 20th century? How have women writers in both centuries resisted imperialist axiomatics? How do women authors from once-colonized countries write about the past? How are post-colonial women represented by contemporary writers? Authors to be studied include Charlotte Brontë, Flora Annie Steel, Rudyard Kipling, Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Alexander McCall Smith. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 345 |
| Film Noir |
| This course traces the development of film noir, a distinctive style of Hollywood filmmaking inspired by the hardboiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett, James Cain, and Raymond Chandler. It pays particular attention to the genre’s complicated gender and sexual politics. In addition to classic examples of film noir, the course also considers novels by Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 351 |
| The Politics of Love |
| The Politics of Love This political theory course examines 20th and 21st century historical, literary, and theoretical depictions of love in politics. Love is often depicted as a force that can productively transcend political division. Yet many political thinkers warn that appeals to love in politics - for example, on behalf of gay marriage or racial justice - serve merely to distract us from political problems, oppression, and inequality. Should we see love as a potent political resource, or a dangerous political fantasy? Does love express our common humanity, or does it reinforce heteronormativity and racial inequality? Course readings will include theoretical and literary texts by Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Jürgen Habermas, Michael Warner, Lauren Berlant, and Audre Lorde. (SOC) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 359 |
| Feminist Political Theory |
| This course examines debates in feminist political theory. Topics will include liberal and socialist feminist theory, as well as radical, postcolonial, and postmodern feminist theory. We will also consider feminist perspectives on issues of race and sex, pornography, law and rights, and “hot button” issues like veiling. We will pay particular attention to the question of what feminism means and should mean in increasingly multicultural, global societies. Readings will include work by Mary Wollstonecraft, Carol Gilligan, Catherine MacKinnon, Chandra Mohanty, Wendy Brown, Audre Lorde, Patricia Williams, & Judith Butler. (SOC) |
|
1.00 units, Lecture
|
| WMGS 369 |
| Queer Studies: Issues and Controversies |
| This course provides an introduction to queer studies, a field that has transformed our understanding of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual desire. It pays particular attention to the issues and controversies currently animating the field. Broadly interdisciplinary, it draws its materials from anthropology, history, public policy, sociology, religion, and performance studies. (GLB) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 373 |
| Hitchcock |
| Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most important and influential directors of the mid-twentieth century. Starting with his first American film, Rebecca (1940), this course traces his development as a director. It pays particular attention to his controversial treatment of gender and sexuality, as well as the significance of his films for feminist and queer approaches to Hollywood cinema. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 379 |
| Feminist and Queer Theory for a Postcolonial World |
| Feminist and queer theory has influenced contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality globally. This course explores this body of theory specifically in relation to the processes and problematics of colonialism, postcolonialism, nationalism, and transnationalism. Readings will reflect a variety of critical perspectives and consider the intersection of gender and sexuality with race and class. (GLB5) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 390 |
| Medicine, Health, & Society |
| This course challenges common views of physical and mental health and illness, and encourages students to understand medicine and embodiment from a sociological perspective. Topics include the historical production and medical control of the human body and populations, sociocultural and structural determinants of health and wellness, the stratification of health outcomes via race, class, gender, sexual orientation and other social variables, the social construction of mental health and addiction, current and controversial issues in medical care and health insurance coverage, the role of corporate medicine in the commercialization of physical, psychological, and sexual health, the social construction of ability/disability, and popular representations of neuroscience, psychology, and medical research in the media and their effects on the categorization of "healthy" identities, bodies, and lifestyles. (SOC) |
|
1.00 units, Seminar
|
| WMGS 399 |
| Independent Study |
| Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar’s Office, and the approval of the instructor and director are required for enrollment. (HUM) |
|
1.00 units min / 2.00 units max, Independent Study
|
| WMGS 466 |
| Teaching Assistantship |
| Submission of the special registration form, available online, and the approval of the instructor are required for enrollment. Guidelines are available in the College Bulletin.
(0.5 - 1 course credit) |
|
0.50 units min / 1.00 units max, Independent Study
|
| WMGS 490 |
| Research Assistantship |
| This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to undertake substantial research work with a faculty member. Students need to complete a special registration form, available online, and have it signed by the supervising instructor. |
|
1.00 units, Independent Study
|
| WMGS 497 |
| Senior Thesis |
| Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and director are required for enrollment in this single term thesis. (WEB) |
|
1.00 units, Independent Study
|
| WMGS 498 |
| Senior Thesis Part 1 |
| Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and chairperson are required for each semester of this year-long thesis. (2 course credits to be completed in two semesters.) (WEB) |
|
1.00 units, Independent Study
|
| WMGS 499 |
| Senior Thesis Part 2 |
| Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and chairperson are required for each semester of this year-long thesis. (2 course credits to be completed in two semesters.) (WEB) |
|
1.00 units, Independent Study
|