WAGS/WRPR 0201 Writing for Social Change
This course explores the many choices we face as speakers and writers when communicating across race, gender, sexuality, religion, culture, class and ability. Drawing on works by W. E. B. Dubois, James Baldwin, Beverly Tatum, Paulo Freire, Dorothy Allison, Arundhati Roy, Amy Tan, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Desmund Tutu, and others, the class explores a range of genres and voices and examines patterns of domination and subordination in diverse cultural contexts. Students will learn strategies for both creative and critical writing and respond to formal and informal writing assignments. The class will hold occasional writing workshops, and final projects will provide opportunities for collaboration. ART, CW, LIT
WAGS/THEA 0206 Contemporary Women Playwrights
In this course we will read and discuss the work of the most influential and interesting American and European playwrights from the 1980s to the present. Authors will include: Maria Irene Fomes, Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Judith Thompson, and Naomi Wallace. Issues of race, class, and gender will be closely examined. Readings will include selections from performance and feminist theory. 3 hrs. lect. ART, CW (8 spaces), LIT Fall 2012 Cheryl
WAGS/SOAN 0212 The Family in Contemporary Society
This course will investigate the social, economic, and political forces that have brought about changes in family life in the beginning of the 21st century. We will begin by looking at various attempts to define “the family,” and we will then explore a range of topics, including the webs of family relationships (e.g., mothering, fathering, kin networks), labor and family intersections (e.g., mediating between work and family; the household division of labor), gay and lesbian family life, and domestic violence. Although the focus will be on contemporary United States, we will also examine some cross-cultural and historical material. 3 hrs. lect./disc. CMP, NOR, SOC Fall 2012 Peggy
WAGS 0223 Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies
This course will provide an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of gay and lesbian studies. We will explore three topics: queer theory, the construction and representation of homosexuality in history, and queer culture before and after Stonewall. Readings will include works by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, George Chauncey, John Boswell, Lillian Faderman, Oscar Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Michael Cunningham, and Tony Kushner. 3 hrs. lect./3 screen SOC
WAGS/AMST 0230 Gender Images in American Popular Culture
In this course, we will examine representations of gender in American popular culture. Course materials will include 19th century popular music, literature, and theater, early 20th century advertising and film, 1950s television, and more recent electronic media. Considering a range of cultural forms over a broad historical period allows us to determine the impact that particular media have had on our conceptions of gender difference. Finally, by becoming critical readers of popular cultural forms that represent manhood and womanhood, we gain a greater appreciation for the complexity, variability, and open-endedness of gender constructions within American life. 3 hrs. lect. CW, NOR Fall 2012 Holly Allen
WAGS/FMMC 0267 Gender and Sexuality in Media (Fall 2012)
In this course, we will explore the intersecting roles played by gender and sexuality in our media, focusing specifically on film, television, and digital culture. We will examine the multiple ways in which popular media texts construct and communicate gender and sexuality, and we will analyze the role of gender and sexuality in the processes of spectatorship and meaning-making. We will study a wide range of theories of gender and sexuality in media including feminist film theory, queer media theory, and literature on gender and sexuality in video game history and culture. 3 hrs. lect./3 hrs. screen. SOC
WAGS/RELI 0290 Women’s Religious Life and Thought: The Female Pursuit of God in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
This course will explore the female religious experience in Greco-Roman antiquity and Early Christianity. We shall trace the transition from the mystery religions of Demeter and Isis in the Eastern Mediterranean to the cult of Mary the Mother of God (Theotokos) and the worship of female saints. Drawing on a wide range of sources (hymns, saints’ Lives, Apocryphal Gospels, Patristic texts, and icons), we shall study the varieties of female devotion and examine the roles available to women in the early Church: deaconesses and desert mothers, monastics and martyrs, poets and rulers. Different theoretical approaches will enable us to ask a series of questions: were women in the early Church considered capable of holiness? To what extent did the female ‘gifts of the spirit’ challenge church authority? What is distinct about the feminine experience of the divine? Finally, we shall consider the vision and poetics of female spirituality in select modern poets.
WAGS/SOAN 0304 Gender, Culture, and Power
This course will introduce students to the anthropological study of gender and sexuality. Topics to be addressed include: the construction of femininities and masculinities in cross-cultural perspective; the role of gender and class ideologies in labor relations and global capitalism; the historical development of gender as a locus of study, activism, and practice; and instances where anthropology has engaged in social movements including anti-violence and LGBT rights. Our readings will take us a number of places, from the streets of Los Angeles, to a factory in southern China, an Islamic fashion house in Indonesia, a men’s sex clinic in Oaxaca, a folklore performance in Mali, a comic book festival in Tokyo, a debate about women’s film in Iran. Students will be introduced to key frames of history and theory in the field of gender studies. 3 hrs. lect. AAL, CMP, SOC Fall 2010 Ellen
WAGS/SOAN 0314 Sociology of Heterosexuality
Most people believe that heterosexuality is natural or rooted in biology and so never look very closely at it as a product of culture. In this course we will examine the artifacts, institutions, rituals, and ideologies that construct heterosexuality and the heterosexual person in American culture. We will also pay close attention to how heterosexuality works alongside other forms of social power, especially gender, race, and class. (SOAN 0105 or SOAN 0191) 3 hrs. lect. NOR, SOC
WAGS/RELI 0341 Gender and Sexuality in South Asian Religions
In this course we will focus on historical and ethnographic scholarship on Hinduism and Islam in South Asia. We will initially draw on the theories of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and third world feminists to examine issues of gender and sexuality. Then we will examine a range of case studies—including colonial interpretations of the Hindu practices of sati, the experiences of devadasis in Telugu south India, an account of a female Muslim healer in Hyderabad, and the religious practices of third-gendered hijras—to address how gender and sexuality are constructed in the religious landscape of South Asian Hinduism and Islam.
WAGS/HIST 0393 A History of Gender in Early America
Exploration, conquest, settlement, revolution, and nation-building: no course in early American history should ignore such traditional topics. In this course, though, we will examine the various ways that gender shaped these historical processes. How, for example, did colonials’ assumptions about manhood and womanhood affect the development of slavery in America? Or how did the Founding Fathers’ identities as men inform their attitudes about democracy and citizenship? We will scrutinize historical documents, of both a private and public nature, and discuss several recent scholarly works on gender from 1600-1850 to consider these kinds of questions. Pre-1800. 3 hrs. lect./disc. CMP, HIS, NOR
ENAM 0220 Castaways, courtesans and criminals: The Early English Novel
ENAM 0245 From Austen to Dracula
ENAM 0270 In Other Worlds
ENAM 0302 Unquiet Minds: Gender and Madness in Literature and Medicine
ENAM 0448 Portraits of the Lady
AMST 0224 Formations of Race and Ethnicity in the US
HARC 0730 Methods and Theories in Architectural Design
(Soon to be a 300 level course on Methods, Theories and Issues in Architectural Design. Not a WAGS course…But one where I hope to raise issues related to gender, sexuality and space.)
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HARC 339: Home: The Way We Live
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French 349A — Les paradoxes sexuels de la France FR 349 SYL