Spring 2010 Courses

WINTER AND SPRING COURSES 2010

This interdisciplinary course provides a brief introduction to the field of women and gender studies, addressing the topic "Engendering America: Past and Present." By surveying the history and evolution of the role of women in society, masculinity, homosexuality, diversity, class, ethnicity, age, ability, and transgender issues in the United States, students will constantly rethink and reevaluate definitions. Course readings, audiovisual materials, and class discussions will allow students to encounter varying women and gender perspectives. What students theorize in this class will be linked to real-world practice. Several assignments in the course will take students out into the community to observe, talk, listen, and consider ways to take a small step toward improving the world.

This class will explore the contours of American masculinity through a variety of media, including literature, television, film, and theory. The purpose of this course is to study the social phenomena that we often take for granted or as natural, masculinity, and then examine how it shapes our understanding of what it means to be an American. In America, we have both positive and negative images of manhood, and masculinity is basic to our understanding of what it means to be an American in the United States. A critical study of masculinities is necessary and central to a study of feminism, queer studies, and critical race theory, especially since all of these are interested in pointing out how the idea of “Americaness” is constructed at the price of a variety of exclusions. We will examine masculinity through an interdisciplinary lens, which include sociology, history, literature, psychology, anthropology, and media studies. A few theories of masculinity underpinning our exploration is an understanding that there are multiple masculinities, men do masculinities, and masculinities are not secure; rather, masculinities are problematic, fragile, negotiated and constantly under construction. We will approach the idea of multiple masculinities through the concept of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. We will then trace a brief historical study of manhood in the United States since its inception. Following that, we will see the ways in which men (and women) sustain and recreate masculinities in the face of their fragility. Finally, we will discuss the ways in which a rigorous examination and critique of masculinities in the U.S. can complicate and help shape new directions for women’s and gender studies."

Draws broadly from the humanities, sciences and social sciences. Topics to be studies include the emergence of lesbian and gay subcultures in the modern west, including political, literary and artistic cultures; the history of sexualities in the premodern west and in non-western cultures; medical and psychological approaches to the study of homosexuality, transsexuality and intersexuality; homophobia; and the rise of queer theories and identities.

Practical experience in a variety of professional settings. Includes bi-weekly seminar with internship coordinator. Students will complete at least 7-10 hours a week at an internship site. The internship will encourage students to put theories to the test of practice, explore approaches and ideas, and consider vocations. The course builds research expertise and practical experience in addition to vocational preparation. Requires written permission - Limited enrollment.

This course will provide a pedagogical space for active reflection and synthesis of women's and gender studies as it is represented in popular culture and lived experience. The course intends to prepare the student with a new found critical visual literacy useful in various sites for work and community. Image and text are engaged, researched, and applied to life-long learning and consciousness raising.

Allows students to do Honors work in WGS. Through Disciplinary Honors, students have the opportunity to study topics in depth and to do original, sophistocated research under the supervision of a faculty member, thus giving themselves a competitive advantage when applying for graduate school or beginning a career.

Required of students taking the certificate who are not enrolled in a degree program at UNCG. Supervised experience related to women's and gender studies; may include teaching internship, service learning opportunity, applied research experience, or internship in organizations and agencies that work on women's concerns or serving women in the community.

This course will examine women as victims and critics of war and terror, primarily through their autobiographical writings. We will examine women's autobiographical writings in the context of three different 20th century tragedies: Stalin's Terror in the Soviet Union (1930s), the Holocaust (1940s) and the war(s) in the Former Yugoslavia (1990s). Students will consider, in online discussions and written assignments, the different motivations behind this literature, as well as the relative effectiveness or appropriateness of the different forms and genres used by the authors. What role, if any, does gender (or one's ‘outsider' status) play in these creative decisions? We will explore and compare the specific political, historical and cultural contexts in which these works were written along with broader questions about women's place in history and the dynamics of language, power and resistance.

Across cultures, classes, races, and generations, a contentious debate is continuously evolving over the defining values and practices of motherhood, over the question of what makes a ‘good mother.’ Since the publication of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born in 1976, mothers, their rights and responsibilities in the family and in society, their challenges and choices, their career paths and character, have been endlessly analyzed, theorized, criticized and sensationalized. In this course, we will examine how motherhood has been represented in the media, evaluated in scholarly and creative literature and experienced by mothers from all walks of life. We will explore how each of these different discourses (generated by the media, academia and popular literature/the blogosphere) informs the other as we attempt to further our understanding of how ideas and experiences of motherhood have changed over the past few decades. Among the questions we will consider: In what sense are the struggles of mothers an identity issue or, as mother and scholar Miriam Peskowitz argues, a labor issue? Who is to blame when mothers are overwhelmed or dissatisfied with their options for a fulfilling work and home life- society’s expectations? The culture of the workplace? Men/patriarchy? Women themselves (our peers or our own mothers)? What has been done and can still be done to address the burdens and inequity of the ‘institution of motherhood’ so powerfully and incisively described by Rich? If much of feminism’s deconstruction of motherhood has come from ‘mainstream’ white feminism, what vital perspectives and counternarratives can we draw from the traditions and analyses of African American motherhood and the mothering practices of other ethnicities and cultures? And lastly, how has the Internet equipped women to overcome some of the isolation and voicelessness of motherhood and provided a creative outlet from which to put forth a more positive picture and egalitarian practice of ‘mothering’ today?

At the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Identify how multiple dimensions of gender roles, identity, and power affect people’s perception of conflict.
• Discuss the variety of choices and limitations in women's lives as they are shaped by biology and society.
• Analyze the interaction of gender theories and cultural issues. • Analyze issues of gender, identity, and power in relation to indigenous conflict models and formal legal systems.
• Develop culturally relevant interventions and transformational practices integrating gender role issues.
• Apply understandings of gender with critical awareness of interrelationships to race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, nationality, and religion;

This course will provide an introduction to the theory and methods of interpretive research and inquiry. It will situate such methods in the growing crisis of positivist forms of knowledge and understanding, and the development of alternative post-positivist methodologies. Within this understanding, and the development of alternative post- positivist methodologies. Within this context we will look at the influence of postmodern and critical perspectives on social and educational research. We will consider the relationship between experience and meaning; tacit and common sense knowledge; the role of language and discourse in the' construction' of our world; the 'hermeneutics of suspicion'; ideological critique and critical consciousness. We will be interested in the ways our own subjectivities are shaped by language, ideology and culture. The course will explore issues of validity, generalizability and objectivity, and the effects of human interests in the production of knowledge. We will look at the significance of the phenomenological perspective in interpretive inquiry, and Marxist theories of culture and consciousness in ethnographic research. And we will consider the challenge of feminist epistemology to the dominant ways of knowing and acquiring knowledge.

This course will focus upon U.S. women writers from the early 19th century to the present day. Topics covered will include challenges facing women writers at different historical periods; how women authors conceive of terms such as “art,” “politics,” and literary “merit”; and how women authors treat the intersection of different facets of identity (race, ethnicity, class, nationality or regional affiliation, sexual orientation, etc.).

In this class, we will focus our study on cultural perceptions of the relationship between representation and power, by asking questions such as, how is power represented? How do aesthetic and rhetorical conceptions of the work of representation structure our understanding of who (should) garner political authority? To respond to these questions and consider their significance to feminist rhetorics, we'll read influential texts from philosophy's tradition (including Plato, Aristotle, Baudrillard, Deleuze), and reflect on how they have shaped attitudes about how representation works and what representations ought to do. We'll then turn our attention to feminist theorists (including Butler, de Lauretis, Braidotti) who diagnose and disrupt commonplace conceptions of what constitutes the work of representation, as well as the relationship between politics, aesthetics, and ethics.

“A Novel Approach to Women's History” Students will read and analyze novels as a means of examining factors in women's lives during the turbulent mid-to-end of the 19th Century. There will be a focus on the individuals who were key to the suffrage, birth control and social welfare movements.

This course will trace the development of feminism in France and consider points of intersection between feminist theory and female artistic expression. What does it mean to be a female writer, theorist, activist, or filmmaker in different historical and cultural moments? What is the reception of these writers and thinkers at the time when they are writing? How do they combat or affirm social expectations of gender? We will analyze how different female authors, theorists, and filmmakers have denied or affirmed a sexual specificity in their writing or art. Do they incorporate in their work a reflection on what it means to be both a woman and a thinker or writer? We will analyze how French female authors reflect their lived experience as women in their writing and through their art from the Middle Ages and the French Revolution to today. How do these expressions of female subjectivity change over time? Students will gain a historical and cultural understanding of different French feminisms, as well as understand the theoretical underpinnings of gender, sexuality, race, class, and the body in French and Francophone contexts. Readings and films will include: The Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pisan), Only Paradoxes to Offer (Joan Scott), Ourika (Claire de Duras), The Pure and the Impure (Colette), The Second Sex and The Woman Destroyed (Simone de Beauvoir), The Straight Mind (Monique Wittig), “The Laugh of the Medusa” (Hélène Cixous), This Sex Which Is Not One (Luce Irigaray), Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (Assia Djebar), Vagabond (Agnès Varda), Entre Nous (Claire Denis), and Persepolis (Vincent Parannoud and Marjane Satrapi). This course will be taught in English.

This course will analyze the multiple mappings of race, gender, class, and sexuality in contemporary Francophone Cinema. We will identify social, economic, political, and cultural forces at play both in the productions of the films and in the content. We will examine the intricacies of colonialism, independence, and post-colonialism and discuss the ongoing flows between North and West Africa and France. What are the challenges of imagining Africa in its own terms and not in relation to the West, especially the former colonial power? How are interactions with the West negotiated? We will also consider representations of French citizens of African descent and analyze their relationship to the homeland. Finally, we will consider how these films and their circulation may change perceptions of Africa both from within and outside the continent. Films will include: Bamako, Bye-Bye, Chocolat, Frontières, La graine et le mulet, Lumumba, Madame Brouette, Moulaadé, La noire de … , La petite vendeuse de soleil, Rachida, Rêves de poussière, Satin rouge, Le Thé d’Archimèdes, and La vie sur terre. This course will be taught in English and films will be subtitled in English.

As the Holocaust recedes into the historical past, our knowledge of the event becomes increasingly dominated by its literary and cinematic representations. This course investigates artistic mediations of the Holocaust, focusing in particular on questions of ethics, aesthetics, and memory. The seminar concentrates on two objectives. First, we examine the various debates and controversies surrounding the issue of artistic representation of the Holocaust. We focus on processes of remembering and forgetting and the notion of cultural memory and the importance of gender in these representations and the accompanying theoretical debates. Second, we explore the ways in which fiction and film have attempted to narrate the events of the Holocaust. Central to our exploration of these texts are issues of representation, authenticity, appropriateness and uniqueness, the role of memory and the phenomenon of postmemory, the problems and limits of language, questions of trauma, the development of post-Holocaust German and Jewish identities, and the increasingly global dimension of the Holocaust.

Develop an in-depth understanding of the variation within and between families through an exploration of the similarities and differences among families and children from a cultural, racial, gender, and class perspective.

The study of families and children, particularly child-rearing practices, that vary as a function of differing socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds both inside and outside the United States.

Study of psychosocial, biological, cultural, and developmental research aspects of human sexuality emphasizing methods of sexuality research, relationships, gender issues, intimacy, sexual response, reproduction, exploitation, and dysfunctions.

We consider how the complexities of women's lives and status influence women's health. Students will consider how research, practice, and action can all contribute to improved health for all women.

This course focuses on constructions of gender and biological sex and their implications for understanding determinants of health and wellness as well as creating healthy policies and programs. In the course we consider how different frameworks of addressing gender and biological sex shape the questions people ask about societal patterns of health and well-being along with the explanations, interventions and policies that are generated from these questions. This course is designed to provide a climate in which students can explore and grapple with the gendered, ethnic, cultural, and class dimensions that underlie the patterning of health and wellness within our society, with special attention given to the intersections that exist among gender, class, and race/ethnicity. Students will be introduced to gender as both a theoretical concept and a category of analysis in public health and as a group we will examine how gender has contributed to differentially structuring women and men’s experiences of health. The course will explore the concepts through a specific set of issues for which gender has been of special importance: reproduction, contraception, sexual health and sexuality; sexual and domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and STIs, and parenting. The overall goal is for students to develop a framework for considering how gender shapes the production of and solutions to public health problems. Students will be able to articulate critical perspectives concerning constructions of gender and sex in relation to public health, and to incorporate these perspectives when considering research, interventions, and policy development.

Analyze the complex relationships between public policy and women’s health, assess and evaluate the the role of gender, science, religion, ethics and advocacy in policy development, and gain experience in women’s health policy analysis and advocacy. Examine policy in the areas of health reform, economic equity, Title IX, preconceptual and reproductive health, maternity care, worksite support, and violence against women.

This course seeks to introduce students to women's experiences in the past as a vital component of the making of the United States. In addition, we will explore the history (historiography) of the study of women. Students will read and analyze both primary accounts -- letters, diaries, slave narratives, and novels -- and recent secondary studies that use methods of social history and gender analysis to reconstruct our understanding of American history. During the semester, we will have both lectures, class discussions, and class presentations including a final group project.

This course will explore the history and current state of the field of twentieth century US women's and gender history. We will explore a wide variety of themes including: race and ethnicity, sexuality, social movements, the state, transnational history, politics, culture, and labor. Students will read influential books on topics ranging from feminism, suffrage, and prostitution to Korean American war brides and sexuality in prisons. They will gain exposure to a range of historical methodologies and learn to evaluate diverse historical approaches.

In “Women and the Law,” students will study the jurisprudence of gender issues, with readings in legal theory and case law. Topics include domestic violence, sexual harassment, employment and pay equity, and marriage and family law. By the end of the semester, students should be able to:
1. Explain, compare and contrast the equality and difference approaches to feminist jurisprudence
2. Explain and assess the reasons why women are sometimes treated as a “special” category under the law
3. Apply basic legal reasoning techniques to case law on specified “women’s issues” in the law
4. Articulate and defend different legal positions regarding the status of men and women in the laws of marriage, parenthood, reproduction, and employment.

Study of the role of gendered categories in the creation and maintenance of Islamic notions of piety, authority, and community.

This class will explore the key questions in the scholarly literature on gender, crime and deviance. We will be primarily concerned with how gender socialization, gender roles, and institutions affect males' and females' offending, deviant behavior and patterns of victimization. We will consult the literature on masculinity and crime, approaching criminal behavior as a distinctly "gendered" phenomenon. We will consider the victimization of females, how it differs from males, and the gendered restructuring of the "self" after males and females are victimized. We will explore deviant behaviors along gendered lines, including teen pregnancy and reproduction, political rebellion, the sexual double standard and drug use.

This course will survey twentieth and twenty-first century British and American feminist theatre, focusing on performance texts that address salient concerns of first, second, and third wave feminisms.

WINTER AND SPRING COURSES 2010
CRN	Course ID	Credit	Title	Days	Time	Place	Instructor	GEC
14403	WGS 250-81D	3	Intro to Women's & Gender Studies	WEB	Winter Session		Laura Field	SB, CSB, GSB, WGS
13403	WGS 250-01	3	Intro to Women's & Gender Studies	M W	2:00-3:15	HHP 338	Carrie Hart	SB, CSB, GSB, WGS
13404	WGS 250-02	3	Intro to Women's & Gender Studies	T R	11:00-12:15	Petty 303	Elizabeth T. Walker	SB, CSB, GSB, WGS
13405	WGS 250-03	3	Intro to Women's & Gender Studies	T R	09:30-10:45	Eber 161	Sarah Cervenak	SB, CSB, GSB, WGS
This interdisciplinary course provides a brief introduction to the field of women and gender studies, addressing the topic "Engendering America: Past and Present." By surveying the history and evolution of the role of women in society, masculinity, homosexuality, diversity, class, ethnicity, age, ability, and transgender issues in the United States, students will constantly rethink and reevaluate definitions. Course readings, audiovisual materials, and class discussions will allow students to encounter varying women and gender perspectives. What students theorize in this class will be linked to real-world practice. Several assignments in the course will take students out into the community to observe, talk, listen, and consider ways to take a small step toward improving the world.
14226	WGS 250-04	3	Intro to WGS-Focus on Masculinities	M W	03:30-04:45	MFoust	David Rogers	SB, CSB, GSB, WI, WGS
This class will explore the contours of American masculinity through a variety of media, including literature, television, film, and theory. The purpose of this course is to study the social phenomena that we often take for granted or as natural, masculinity, and then examine how it shapes our understanding of what it means to be an American. In America, we have both positive and negative images of manhood, and masculinity is basic to our understanding of what it means to be an American in the United States. A critical study of masculinities is necessary and central to a study of feminism, queer studies, and critical race theory, especially since all of these are interested in pointing out how the idea of “Americaness” is constructed at the price of a variety of exclusions. We will examine masculinity through an interdisciplinary lens, which include sociology, history, literature, psychology, anthropology, and media studies. A few theories of masculinity underpinning our exploration is an understanding that there are multiple masculinities, men do masculinities, and masculinities are not secure; rather, masculinities are problematic, fragile, negotiated and constantly under construction. We will approach the idea of multiple masculinities through the concept of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. We will then trace a brief historical study of manhood in the United States since its inception. Following that, we will see the ways in which men (and women) sustain and recreate masculinities in the face of their fragility. Finally, we will discuss the ways in which a rigorous examination and critique of masculinities in the U.S. can complicate and help shape new directions for women’s and gender studies."
14248	WGS 270-01	3	Sexuality and Culture	M	04:00-06:50	Graham 424	Brian Ammons	WGS
Draws broadly from the humanities, sciences and social sciences. Topics to be studies include the emergence of lesbian and gay subcultures in the modern west, including political, literary and artistic cultures; the history of sexualities in the premodern west and in non-western cultures; medical and psychological approaches to the study of homosexuality, transsexuality and intersexuality; homophobia; and the rise of queer theories and identities.
14247	WGS 333-01	3	Gendered Worlds	T R	02:00-03:15	MHRA 1215	Belinda Walzer	GHP.GMO.GN.WGS
Explores social problems, movements, and change related to gender in specific cultural, historical, political contexts. Advances a questioning of one’s position in gendered, relations of power in a constantly changing world.
13406	WGS 350-01	3	Intro to Feminist Theories	T R	11:00-12:15	Eber 161	Danielle Bouchard	GPR.WGS
“Feminist theories” describes a potentially vast amount of work. Thus rather than aiming to be comprehensive, this course is organized around a careful investigation (and often interrogation) of some of the key concepts that enable feminist and women’s studies work: namely, “feminism,” “woman,” “theory,” and “power.” Because working to understand such concepts is itself a political act, the goal of this course is not only to critically examine some of the great variety of feminist theory, but also to encourage students to see themselves as responsible for engaging with and producing knowledge. As a mode of keeping open this question of responsibility, the course presents “feminism” as a contested terrain which is itself fraught with hierarchies, tensions, and radical difference.
13407	WGS 400-01	1	Independent Study				Katherine Jamieson	WGS
Intensive independent study of specialized topics. Requires written permission.
10702	WGS 450-01	3	Special Topics Seminar: Gender, Crime & Deviance	T R	12:30-1:45	Graham 310	Gwen Hunnicutt	SI, WGS
This class will explore the key questions in the scholarly literature on gender, crime and deviance. We will be primarily concerned with how gender socialization, gender roles, and institutions affect males' and females' offending, deviant behavior and patterns of victimization. We will consult the literature on masculinity and crime, approaching criminal behavior as a distinctly "gendered" phenomenon. We will consider the victimization of females, how it differs from males, and the gendered restructuring of the "self" after males and females are victimized. We will explore deviant behaviors along gendered lines, including teen pregnancy and reproduction, political rebellion, the sexual double standard and drug use.
13408	WGS 450-02	3	Special Topics Seminar: Race, Gender, and Performance: Enactments of (Un)freedom	T R	3:30-4:45	Bryan 112	Sarah Cervenak	WGS, AFS
Race and gender are inextricably tied to performance. The way one moves and acts in the world is shaped by the complex intersections of race, gender, and desire. In this course, we will think about the history of a relation between race, gender and performance, particularly as it concerns the enactment of and resistance to (neo)colonial, patriarchal control and captivity. So too, we will think about the contradictions and complexities of Black performances (in particular) as they negotiate questions of freedom and desire on the one hand and captivity and incarceration on the other? We will ask: How, and in what way, does performance and other modes of audio and visual (or audiovisual) creativity enact a kind of movement and action otherwise restricted by the operations of racism, sexism, and global capital? Given that captivity takes the form of everything from the slave trade and prison industrial complex to the glance/study/stare of a spectator, how does resistance to captivity emerge? What role does performance and visual culture, more broadly, play in racialized, gendered captivity and resistance? What new forms of freedom become possible?
14251	WGS 450-03	3	Special Topics Seminar: French Feminisms	T R	12:30-13:45	MHRA 2208	Cybelle McFadden	GL,GLT,WGS
We will analyze how different female authors, theorists, and filmmakers have denied or affirmed a sexual specificity in their writing or art. We will analyze how French female authors reflect their lived experience as women in their writing and through their art from the Middle Ages and the French Revolution to today. Students will gain a historical and cultural understanding of different French feminisms, as well as understand the theoretical underpinnings of gender, sexuality, race, class, and the body in French and Francophone contexts. This course will be taught in English. All texts will be in English translation and films will be subtitled in English.
14252	WGS 450-04	3	Special Topics Seminar: Francophone Cinema	R	06:30-09:20	MHRA 2211	Cybelle McFadden	WGS
This course will analyze the multiple mappings of race, gender, class, and sexuality in contemporary Francophone Cinema. We will identify social, economic, political, and cultural forces at play both in the productions of the films and in the content. We will examine the intricacies of colonialism, independence, and post-colonialism and discuss the ongoing flows between North and West Africa and France. What are the challenges of imagining Africa in its own terms and not in relation to the West, especially the former colonial power? How are interactions with the West negotiated? We will also consider representations of French citizens of African descent and analyze their relationship to the homeland. Finally, we will consider how these films and their circulation may change perceptions of Africa both from within and outside the continent. Films will include: Bamako, Bye-Bye, Chocolat, Frontières, La graine et le mulet, Lumumba, Madame Brouette, Moulaadé, La noire de … , La petite vendeuse de soleil, Rachida, Rêves de poussière, Satin rouge, Le Thé d’Archimèdes, and La vie sur terre. This course will be taught in English and films will be subtitled in English.
13409	WGS 460-01	3	Internship in WGS				Danielle Bouchard	WGS
Practical experience in a variety of professional settings. Includes bi-weekly seminar with internship coordinator. Students will complete at least 7-10 hours a week at an internship site. The internship will encourage students to put theories to the test of practice, explore approaches and ideas, and consider vocations. The course builds research expertise and practical experience in addition to vocational preparation. Requires written permission - Limited enrollment.
13410	WGS 490-01	3	WGS Senior Capstone Course	W	04:00-06:50	Bryan 206	Danielle Bouchard	SI, WI, WGS
This course will provide a pedagogical space for active reflection and synthesis of women's and gender studies as it is represented in popular culture and lived experience. The course intends to prepare the student with a new found critical visual literacy useful in various sites for work and community. Image and text are engaged, researched, and applied to life-long learning and consciousness raising.
13411	WGS 493-01	3	WGS Honors Work				Katherine Jamieson	WGS
Allows students to do Honors work in WGS. Through Disciplinary Honors, students have the opportunity to study topics in depth and to do original, sophistocated research under the supervision of a faculty member, thus giving themselves a competitive advantage when applying for graduate school or beginning a career.
13412	WGS 600-01	3-6	Independent Study				Katherine Jamieson	WGS
Independent study of specialized topics. Requires written plan, permission of sponsoring instructor, and approval of the Women's and Gender Studies Program director.
13413	WGS 601-01	3	WGS Internship				Katherine Jamieson	WGS
Required of students taking the certificate who are not enrolled in a degree program at UNCG. Supervised experience related to women's and gender studies; may include teaching internship, service learning opportunity, applied research experience, or internship in organizations and agencies that work on women's concerns or serving women in the community.
13414	WGS 651-01	3	Feminist Research Analysis	M	5:00-7:50	MHRA 2206	Leila Villaverde	WGS
Conducting meaningful inquiry is more than technique – it is most importantly about political engagements between participants, researchers, institutions, and the very notions of science. A history of scientific inquiry reveals a few truly life-altering studies, but also unveils a host of intellectual borders that have been erected along the way. Thus, it seems feminist research has done some of its best work in deconstructing intellectual borders, such as positivism versus interpretivism, and quantitative versus qualitative designs. Yet, debate continues as to just what counts as feminist analyses. In this course we will explore a) what it means to un/become researchers; b) various feminist epistemologies; and c) creative tensions between researcher, researched, institutions, and ways of knowing. Throughout the course, we will complicate categories of analysis, interrogate relationships within research contexts, ponder ethical and political issues around the production and treatment of “data”, and critique methods of re/presenting (making arguments) findings.Additionally, the course examines feminist approaches to philosophical and practical inquiries as it prepares students to critically read research, as well as understand the place of gender in lived experiences and institutional spaces. Most importantly this course dwells in the rules/ ideas that govern research decisions and methods. These conventions are shaped by ideologies and theories that construct what questions to ask, what problems to detect, and what analysis to produce. Too often research paradigms are glossed over, pushed behind the scenes, and obscured. One of our main goals is not only exposure of the strings which mobilize the marionette, so to speak, but to critically comprehend the nature of knowledge production and critical inquiry, to follow the metaphor, our goal is also for students to develop ways of seeing/ manipulating the strings that control movement and direction.Academics, traditional theory, and practice are riddled with compartmentalizations, everyday lived experiences are not immune either and suffer the same tendencies. Our intent in this course is to rupture such boundaries and dispel set categories of study and cognition while maintaining a clear focus through intended displacement. In situating most of the course within interdisciplinary works we invite you to join us in the constructions of intellectual, research, and pragmatic, activist hybrids.
13415	WGS 698-01	3	Culminating Project	R	4:00-6:50		Danielle Bouchard	WGS
A capstone experience for the Master's Degree in Women's and Gender Studies. Students design and present culminating project in their area of specialization and professional portfolio developed from WGS courses.
13416	WGS 699-01	1-6	Thesis				Katherine Jamieson	WGS
13417	WGS 803-01	1	Research Extension				Katherine Jamieson	WGS
13632	AFS 305-05	3	Special Topics Seminar: Race, Gender, and Performance: Enactments of (Un)freedom	T R	3:30-4:45	Bryan 112	Sarah Jane Cervenak	WGS, AFS
Race and gender are inextricably tied to performance. The way one moves and acts in the world is shaped by the complex intersections of race, gender, and desire. In this course, we will think about the history of a relation between race, gender and performance, particularly as it concerns the enactment of and resistance to (neo)colonial, patriarchal control and captivity. So too, we will think about the contradictions and complexities of Black performances (in particular) as they negotiate questions of freedom and desire on the one hand and captivity and incarceration on the other? We will ask: How, and in what way, does performance and other modes of audio and visual (or audiovisual) creativity enact a kind of movement and action otherwise restricted by the operations of racism, sexism, and global capital? Given that captivity takes the form of everything from the slave trade and prison industrial complex to the glance/study/stare of a spectator, how does resistance to captivity emerge? What role does performance and visual culture, more broadly, play in racialized, gendered captivity and resistance? What new forms of freedom become possible?
13149	BLS 320-13D	3	Women, War and Terror	WEB			Carrie Levesque	WGS
This course will examine women as victims and critics of war and terror, primarily through their autobiographical writings. We will examine women's autobiographical writings in the context of three different 20th century tragedies: Stalin's Terror in the Soviet Union (1930s), the Holocaust (1940s) and the war(s) in the Former Yugoslavia (1990s). Students will consider, in online discussions and written assignments, the different motivations behind this literature, as well as the relative effectiveness or appropriateness of the different forms and genres used by the authors. What role, if any, does gender (or one's ‘outsider' status) play in these creative decisions? We will explore and compare the specific political, historical and cultural contexts in which these works were written along with broader questions about women's place in history and the dynamics of language, power and resistance.
13144	BLS 380-03D	3	American Motherhood	WEB			Carrie Levesque	WGS
Across cultures, classes, races, and generations, a contentious debate is continuously evolving over the defining values and practices of motherhood, over the question of what makes a ‘good mother.’ Since the publication of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born in 1976, mothers, their rights and responsibilities in the family and in society, their challenges and choices, their career paths and character, have been endlessly analyzed, theorized, criticized and sensationalized. In this course, we will examine how motherhood has been represented in the media, evaluated in scholarly and creative literature and experienced by mothers from all walks of life. We will explore how each of these different discourses (generated by the media, academia and popular literature/the blogosphere) informs the other as we attempt to further our understanding of how ideas and experiences of motherhood have changed over the past few decades. Among the questions we will consider: In what sense are the struggles of mothers an identity issue or, as mother and scholar Miriam Peskowitz argues, a labor issue? Who is to blame when mothers are overwhelmed or dissatisfied with their options for a fulfilling work and home life- society’s expectations? The culture of the workplace? Men/patriarchy? Women themselves (our peers or our own mothers)? What has been done and can still be done to address the burdens and inequity of the ‘institution of motherhood’ so powerfully and incisively described by Rich? If much of feminism’s deconstruction of motherhood has come from ‘mainstream’ white feminism, what vital perspectives and counternarratives can we draw from the traditions and analyses of African American motherhood and the mothering practices of other ethnicities and cultures? And lastly, how has the Internet equipped women to overcome some of the isolation and voicelessness of motherhood and provided a creative outlet from which to put forth a more positive picture and egalitarian practice of ‘mothering’ today?
11568	CED 574A--01	3	Contemporary Topics:Women's Issues	T	9:00-11:50	Ferg 251	John S. Young Elizabeth Hodges	WGS
Designed to study issues, problems, and new approaches in helping relationships. Emphasis placed on current topic(s) of interest.
12038	CNR 630-01	3	Gender and Conflict	W	6:00-8:50	SULV 103	Sherrill W. Hayes	GL, WGS
At the end of this course, students will be able to: • Identify how multiple dimensions of gender roles, identity, and power affect people’s perception of conflict. • Discuss the variety of choices and limitations in women's lives as they are shaped by biology and society. • Analyze the interaction of gender theories and cultural issues. • Analyze issues of gender, identity, and power in relation to indigenous conflict models and formal legal systems. • Develop culturally relevant interventions and transformational practices integrating gender role issues. • Apply understandings of gender with critical awareness of interrelationships to race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, nationality, and religion;
10970	DCE 505-01	3	Contemporary Dance: Aesthetics and Cultural Practice	T R	9:30-10:45	HHP 319	Ann Dils	SI, WGS
Cultural issues and aesthetic priorities of dance in the late postmodern world, especially contemporary dance. Present ideas about and debate issues concerning contemporary dance.
10431	ELC 664-01	3	Foundations of Interpretive Inquiry	T	7:00-9:50	Curry 312	Silvia Bettez	WGS
This course will provide an introduction to the theory and methods of interpretive research and inquiry. It will situate such methods in the growing crisis of positivist forms of knowledge and understanding, and the development of alternative post-positivist methodologies. Within this understanding, and the development of alternative post- positivist methodologies. Within this context we will look at the influence of postmodern and critical perspectives on social and educational research. We will consider the relationship between experience and meaning; tacit and common sense knowledge; the role of language and discourse in the' construction' of our world; the 'hermeneutics of suspicion'; ideological critique and critical consciousness. We will be interested in the ways our own subjectivities are shaped by language, ideology and culture. The course will explore issues of validity, generalizability and objectivity, and the effects of human interests in the production of knowledge. We will look at the significance of the phenomenological perspective in interpretive inquiry, and Marxist theories of culture and consciousness in ethnographic research. And we will consider the challenge of feminist epistemology to the dominant ways of knowing and acquiring knowledge.
10444	ELC 688H-01	3	Contemporary Problems: Critical Multicultural Education	W	4:00-6:50	MHRA 2207	Silvia Bettez	WGS

11244	ENG 331-01	3	Women in Literature	T R	3:30-4:45	MHRA 2211	Maria Sanchez	GLT,WGS
This course will focus upon U.S. women writers from the early 19th century to the present day. Topics covered will include challenges facing women writers at different historical periods; how women authors conceive of terms such as “art,” “politics,” and literary “merit”; and how women authors treat the intersection of different facets of identity (race, ethnicity, class, nationality or regional affiliation, sexual orientation, etc.).
14135	ENG 531-01	3	Feminist Theory & Women Writers	T	6:30-9:20	MHRA 2210	Mary Ellis Gibson	WGS
Examines gender and creativity, women's place in literary tradition, and connections between art, gender, race, and class. Focuses on contemporary theory and on literary works from one historical period.
11368	ENG 688-01	3	Women's Rhetoric and Feminist Pedagogy	M	6:30-9:20	SULV 460	Nancy A. Myers	WGS
In this class, we will focus our study on cultural perceptions of the relationship between representation and power, by asking questions such as, how is power represented? How do aesthetic and rhetorical conceptions of the work of representation structure our understanding of who (should) garner political authority? To respond to these questions and consider their significance to feminist rhetorics, we'll read influential texts from philosophy's tradition (including Plato, Aristotle, Baudrillard, Deleuze), and reflect on how they have shaped attitudes about how representation works and what representations ought to do. We'll then turn our attention to feminist theorists (including Butler, de Lauretis, Braidotti) who diagnose and disrupt commonplace conceptions of what constitutes the work of representation, as well as the relationship between politics, aesthetics, and ethics.
13682	FMS 160-03	3	Freshmen Seminar: Historical Perspectives A Novel Approach to American Women's History	M W	2:00-3:15	Graham 423	Beth Walker	GHP,GMO,WI,WGS
“A Novel Approach to Women's History” Students will read and analyze novels as a means of examining factors in women's lives during the turbulent mid-to-end of the 19th Century. There will be a focus on the individuals who were key to the suffrage, birth control and social welfare movements.
10648	FRE 222-01	3	Explorations in French Literature: English Versions: French Feminisms	T R	12:30-1:45	MHRA 2208	Cybelle McFadden	WGS
This course will trace the development of feminism in France and consider points of intersection between feminist theory and female artistic expression. What does it mean to be a female writer, theorist, activist, or filmmaker in different historical and cultural moments? What is the reception of these writers and thinkers at the time when they are writing? How do they combat or affirm social expectations of gender? We will analyze how different female authors, theorists, and filmmakers have denied or affirmed a sexual specificity in their writing or art. Do they incorporate in their work a reflection on what it means to be both a woman and a thinker or writer? We will analyze how French female authors reflect their lived experience as women in their writing and through their art from the Middle Ages and the French Revolution to today. How do these expressions of female subjectivity change over time? Students will gain a historical and cultural understanding of different French feminisms, as well as understand the theoretical underpinnings of gender, sexuality, race, class, and the body in French and Francophone contexts. Readings and films will include: The Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pisan), Only Paradoxes to Offer (Joan Scott), Ourika (Claire de Duras), The Pure and the Impure (Colette), The Second Sex and The Woman Destroyed (Simone de Beauvoir), The Straight Mind (Monique Wittig), “The Laugh of the Medusa” (Hélène Cixous), This Sex Which Is Not One (Luce Irigaray), Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (Assia Djebar), Vagabond (Agnès Varda), Entre Nous (Claire Denis), and Persepolis (Vincent Parannoud and Marjane Satrapi). This course will be taught in English.
10643	FRE 562-01	3	Studies in Film Genre: Francophone Cinema	R	6:30-9:20	MHRA 2211	Cybelle McFadden	WGS
This course will analyze the multiple mappings of race, gender, class, and sexuality in contemporary Francophone Cinema. We will identify social, economic, political, and cultural forces at play both in the productions of the films and in the content. We will examine the intricacies of colonialism, independence, and post-colonialism and discuss the ongoing flows between North and West Africa and France. What are the challenges of imagining Africa in its own terms and not in relation to the West, especially the former colonial power? How are interactions with the West negotiated? We will also consider representations of French citizens of African descent and analyze their relationship to the homeland. Finally, we will consider how these films and their circulation may change perceptions of Africa both from within and outside the continent. Films will include: Bamako, Bye-Bye, Chocolat, Frontières, La graine et le mulet, Lumumba, Madame Brouette, Moulaadé, La noire de … , La petite vendeuse de soleil, Rachida, Rêves de poussière, Satin rouge, Le Thé d’Archimèdes, and La vie sur terre. This course will be taught in English and films will be subtitled in English.
12636	GER 305-01	3	The Holocaust in Fiction, Film, and Memory	M W	2:00-3:15	MHRA 3204	Susanne Rinner	GL,SI,WI,WGS
As the Holocaust recedes into the historical past, our knowledge of the event becomes increasingly dominated by its literary and cinematic representations. This course investigates artistic mediations of the Holocaust, focusing in particular on questions of ethics, aesthetics, and memory. The seminar concentrates on two objectives. First, we examine the various debates and controversies surrounding the issue of artistic representation of the Holocaust. We focus on processes of remembering and forgetting and the notion of cultural memory and the importance of gender in these representations and the accompanying theoretical debates. Second, we explore the ways in which fiction and film have attempted to narrate the events of the Holocaust. Central to our exploration of these texts are issues of representation, authenticity, appropriateness and uniqueness, the role of memory and the phenomenon of postmemory, the problems and limits of language, questions of trauma, the development of post-Holocaust German and Jewish identities, and the increasingly global dimension of the Holocaust.
11765	HDF 409-02	3	Family Diversity	T R	12:30-1:45	STAC 204	Andrea G. Hunter	WGS
Develop an in-depth understanding of the variation within and between families through an exploration of the similarities and differences among families and children from a cultural, racial, gender, and class perspective.
11767	HDF 410-01	3	Families and Children: Global Perspectives	M W F	12:00-12:50	Stone 215	Mary Y. Morgan	GL, WGS
The study of families and children, particularly child-rearing practices, that vary as a function of differing socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds both inside and outside the United States.
11035	HEA 260-01	3	Human Sexuality	M	6:00-8:50	HHP 338	Jason Robinson	GSB, WGS
11038	HEA 260-02	3	Human Sexuality	WEB			Leah E. Tompkins	GSB, WGS
Study of psychosocial, biological, cultural, and developmental research aspects of human sexuality emphasizing methods of sexuality research, relationships, gender issues, intimacy, sexual response, reproduction, exploitation, and dysfunctions.
11070	HEA 333-01	3	Women's Health	WEB			Leah E. Tompkins	WGS
We consider how the complexities of women's lives and status influence women's health. Students will consider how research, practice, and action can all contribute to improved health for all women.
11107	HEA 662-01	3	Gender and Health	T	6:00-8:50	Bryan 106	Tracy Nichols	WGS
This course focuses on constructions of gender and biological sex and their implications for understanding determinants of health and wellness as well as creating healthy policies and programs. In the course we consider how different frameworks of addressing gender and biological sex shape the questions people ask about societal patterns of health and well-being along with the explanations, interventions and policies that are generated from these questions. This course is designed to provide a climate in which students can explore and grapple with the gendered, ethnic, cultural, and class dimensions that underlie the patterning of health and wellness within our society, with special attention given to the intersections that exist among gender, class, and race/ethnicity. Students will be introduced to gender as both a theoretical concept and a category of analysis in public health and as a group we will examine how gender has contributed to differentially structuring women and men’s experiences of health. The course will explore the concepts through a specific set of issues for which gender has been of special importance: reproduction, contraception, sexual health and sexuality; sexual and domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and STIs, and parenting. The overall goal is for students to develop a framework for considering how gender shapes the production of and solutions to public health problems. Students will be able to articulate critical perspectives concerning constructions of gender and sex in relation to public health, and to incorporate these perspectives when considering research, interventions, and policy development.
14556	HEA 676-01	3	Problems Seminar: Women's Health Policy	W	3:00-5:50	Bryan 204	Paige Hall Smith	WGS
Analyze the complex relationships between public policy and women’s health, assess and evaluate the the role of gender, science, religion, ethics and advocacy in policy development, and gain experience in women’s health policy analysis and advocacy. Examine policy in the areas of health reform, economic equity, Title IX, preconceptual and reproductive health, maternity care, worksite support, and violence against women.
10137	HIS 328-01	3	US Women's History to 1865	M W	2:00-3:15	Curry 334	Phyllis Hunter	WGS
This course seeks to introduce students to women's experiences in the past as a vital component of the making of the United States. In addition, we will explore the history (historiography) of the study of women. Students will read and analyze both primary accounts -- letters, diaries, slave narratives, and novels -- and recent secondary studies that use methods of social history and gender analysis to reconstruct our understanding of American history. During the semester, we will have both lectures, class discussions, and class presentations including a final group project.

10269	HIS 724-01	3	Sp. Topics: Women and Gender in the U.S. Since 1865	M	3:30-6:20	MHRA 3207	Lisa Levenstein	WGS
This course will explore the history and current state of the field of twentieth century US women's and gender history. We will explore a wide variety of themes including: race and ethnicity, sexuality, social movements, the state, transnational history, politics, culture, and labor. Students will read influential books on topics ranging from feminism, suffrage, and prostitution to Korean American war brides and sexuality in prisons. They will gain exposure to a range of historical methodologies and learn to evaluate diverse historical approaches.
10292	PSC 336-01	3	Women & the Law	T R	12:30-1:45	Graham 209	Carisa Showden Susan Johnson	WGS
In “Women and the Law,” students will study the jurisprudence of gender issues, with readings in legal theory and case law. Topics include domestic violence, sexual harassment, employment and pay equity, and marriage and family law. By the end of the semester, students should be able to: 1. Explain, compare and contrast the equality and difference approaches to feminist jurisprudence 2. Explain and assess the reasons why women are sometimes treated as a “special” category under the law 3. Apply basic legal reasoning techniques to case law on specified “women’s issues” in the law 4. Articulate and defend different legal positions regarding the status of men and women in the laws of marriage, parenthood, reproduction, and employment.

10381	PSY 346-01	3	Sex, Gender, and Behavior	M W F	9:00-9:50	NMOR 130	Ashlyn Swartout	WGS
Evaluation of effects of biological sex and gender role socialization on personality and behavior through examination of empirical research.
11079	REL 317-01	3	Ialam & Construction of Gender	T R	11:00-12:15	Foust 111	Elizabeth Bucar	WI,WGS
Study of the role of gendered categories in the creation and maintenance of Islamic notions of piety, authority, and community.

14545	RCO 275-01	3	Social Behavioral Science Seminar: Focus on Masculinities	M W	3:30-4:15	Mary Foust	David Rogers	GSB,WGS
This class will explore the contours of American masculinity through a variety of media, including literature, television, film, and theory. The purpose of this course is to study the social phenomena that we often take for granted or as natural, masculinity, and then examine how it shapes our understanding of what it means to be an American. In America, we have both positive and negative images of manhood, and masculinity is basic to our understanding of what it means to be an American in the United States. A critical study of masculinities is necessary and central to a study of feminism, queer studies, and critical race theory, especially since all of these are interested in pointing out how the idea of “Americaness” is constructed at the price of a variety of exclusions. We will examine masculinity through an interdisciplinary lens, which include sociology, history, literature, psychology, anthropology, and media studies. A few theories of masculinity underpinning our exploration is an understanding that there are multiple masculinities, men do masculinities, and masculinities are not secure; rather, masculinities are problematic, fragile, negotiated and constantly under construction. We will approach the idea of multiple masculinities through the concept of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. We will then trace a brief historical study of manhood in the United States since its inception. Following that, we will see the ways in which men (and women) sustain and recreate masculinities in the face of their fragility. Finally, we will discuss the ways in which a rigorous examination and critique of masculinities in the U.S. can complicate and help shape new directions for women’s and gender studies."

10243	SOC 419-01	3	Gender, Crime and Deviance	T R	12:30-1:45	Graham 310	Gwen Hunnicutt	SI, WGS
This class will explore the key questions in the scholarly literature on gender, crime and deviance. We will be primarily concerned with how gender socialization, gender roles, and institutions affect males' and females' offending, deviant behavior and patterns of victimization. We will consult the literature on masculinity and crime, approaching criminal behavior as a distinctly "gendered" phenomenon. We will consider the victimization of females, how it differs from males, and the gendered restructuring of the "self" after males and females are victimized. We will explore deviant behaviors along gendered lines, including teen pregnancy and reproduction, political rebellion, the sexual double standard and drug use.
14564	THR 589-01	3	Feminist Theatre	M W F	12:00-12:50	Graham 310	Christine Woodworth	WGS
This course will survey twentieth and twenty-first century British and American feminist theatre, focusing on performance texts that address salient concerns of first, second, and third wave feminisms.