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Course Listing for WOMEN, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY - Spring 2025 (ALL: 01/21/2025 - 05/09/2025)
Class
No.		 Course ID Title Credits Type Instructor(s) Days:Times Location Permission
Required		 Dist Qtr
2949 WMGS-211-01 Global Intimacies 1.00 LEC Zhang, Shunyuan MW: 1:30PM-2:45PM TBA GLB  
  Enrollment limited to 29 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: INTS-211-01
  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.
2055 WMGS-245-01 The Hollywood Musical 1.00 SEM Corber, Robert T: 6:30PM-9:10PM TBA HUIP  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: FILM-245-01
  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.
2875 WMGS-267-01 Passing 1.00 LEC Zhang, Shunyuan TR: 9:25AM-10:40AM TBA GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: INTS-267-01
  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.
2811 WMGS-320-01 Global 1001 Nights 1.00 SEM Antrim, Zayde TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM TBA GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HIST-320-01, INTS-320-01
  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.
2666 WMGS-335-01 Mapping American Masculinities 1.00 SEM Corber, Robert W: 1:30PM-4:10PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Also cross-referenced with ENGL Cross-listing: AMST-335-01
  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.
2733 WMGS-359-01 Feminist Political Theory 1.00 LEC Terwiel, Anna MW: 10:00AM-11:15AM TBA SOIP  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: Y Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: POLS-359-01
  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.
2207 WMGS-379-01 Fem & Queer Theory/Postcol 1.00 SEM Zhang, Shunyuan MW: 10:00AM-11:15AM TBA GLB5  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  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.
1163 WMGS-399-01 Independent Study 1.00 - 2.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar’s Office, and the approval of the instructor and director are required for enrollment.
1164 WMGS-466-01 Teaching Assistant 0.50 - 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  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)
2563 WMGS-497-01 Senior Thesis 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y WEB  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the instructor and director are required for enrollment in this single term thesis.
2564 WMGS-499-01 Senior Thesis Part 2 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y WEB  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  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.)
2979 EDUC-309-01 Race Class & Educ Policy 1.00 SEM Lockart, Rachel TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM TBA SOIP  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Also cross-referenced with CLIC, PBPL, WMGS
  Prerequisite: C- or better in Educational Studies 200 or permission of instructor.
  How do competing theories explain educational inequality? How do different policies attempt to address it? This class will consider the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the examination of educational inequality. Possible topics include economic and cultural capital, racial/gender/sexual identity formation, desegregation, multiculturalism, detracking, school choice, school-family relationships, and affirmative action. Student groups will expand upon the readings by proposing, implementing, and presenting their research analysis from a community learning project.
2922 ENGL-376-01 The Queer Premodern 1.00 SEM Staples, James TR: 8:00AM-9:15AM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Also cross-referenced with WMGS
  Prerequisite: C- or better in English 260 or ENGL 160.
  NOTE: For majors enrolled before December 2023, this course fulfills the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700. For majors enrolled after January 2024, this course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement and the UVSJ requirement or may be an elective/additional literature or film course.
  In The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, Michel Foucault insisted that sexual identity is a modern phenomenon, coming into existence at the end of the nineteenth century. Four years later, John Boswell provocatively described a flourishing "gay" subculture in twelfth-century Europe. Rather than disprove Boswell's fantastic claim, Foucault seriously considered it, and he began his history of sexuality anew to inquire what a "premodern" sexuality might entail. In this course, we will develop our own theory of "premodern queerness" by considering the acts and identities of premodern subjects in medieval literature, read alongside historical documents, theology, and queer theory. Rather than simply contrast a premodern sexuality to (post)modern queerness, we will consider the ways the past can inspire new horizons of possibility for queer expression.
2958 SOCL-272-01 Social Movements 1.00 LEC Gabriel, Ricardo TR: 2:55PM-4:10PM TBA GLB5  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Also cross-referenced with WMGS
  Prerequisite: C- or better in Sociology 101
  The objectives of this course are to enhance your ability to think critically about the problems we face in society from a sociological perspective, to analyze the social movements that have developed in response, and to work reciprocally with a local organization to gain perspective on how social movement organizations operate in addition to working alongside them in their efforts. We will primarily utilize five theoretical perspectives to understand social movements: 1.) collective behavior, 2.) resource mobilization, 3.) political opportunity / political process, 4.), new social movement theory, and 5.) network / new media / alternative globalization. We will be concerned with not only how social problems come to be defined as such, but also with who is affected by these problems and how, and with what people are doing, have done, and might continue to do to address unequal distributions of power, money, and other resources. We will examine how individuals have come together to change society through protest, revolution, and other social movements. We will examine U.S-based and international social movements and revolutions historically, and we will also discuss inequalities and oppression as they characterize the national and global climate today. We will consider possibilities for social change and examine the landscape of current social movement responses. Students in this course will work with a Hartford-based community organization that is fighting for social justice, in coordination with the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER). We will work closely as a class with this organization and apply sociological theoretical perspectives to analyze their work, learn what is important to them and how they function, and help them advance their efforts to achieve their goals. Through working with a local group, we will deepen our understanding of local and global social issues and gain real-world experience as social justice-oriented sociologists on the ground in Hartford.