WMST V 1001x Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

Starting with the lives and experiences of women in the West, historical, comparative, and global perspectives are incorporated to introduce the commonalities and differences that mark women's lives. Also, investigates how gender intersects with such categories as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and religion.

WMST BC 1050x Women and Health

Interdisciplinary introduction emphasizing interaction of biological and sociocultural influences on women's health, and exploring health disparities among women as well as between women and men. Current biomedical knowledge presented with empirical critiques of research and medical practice in specific areas such as occupational health, cardiology, sexuality, infectious diseases, reproduction, etc.

WMST V 3111x and y Feminist Texts I

Readings of texts produced before the Second Wave of 20th century feminism. Explores some sources of that feminism and some ways that women and men experienced gender as both theory and lived practice prior to development of a contemporary political language for articulating those experiences.

WMST V 3112x and y Feminist Texts II

Contemporary issues in feminist thought. A review of the theoretical debates on sex roles, feminism and socialism, psychoanalysis, language, and cultural representations.

WMST BC 3117y Women and Film

Critical interpretation of film from a feminist perspective and exploration of the relationship of gender to the language of film.

WMST BC 3120x or y Litany for Survival: Lesbian Texts

Explores the salience of writing for the historical representation and self-definition of lesbians in a (mostly) Western context. Includes literary questions about language and form in texts as well as historical questions about the contextual construction of lesbian lives and voices in 20th-century America.
General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

WMST BC 3121x Black Women in America

Examines roles of black women in the U.S. as thinkers, activists and creators during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing on the intellectual work, social activism and cultural expression of African American women, we examine how they understood their lives, resisted oppression and struggled to change society. We will also discuss theoretical frameworks (such as "double jeopardy," or "intersectionality") developed for the study of black women. The seminar will encourage students to pay particular attention to the diversity of black women and critical issues facing Black women today.
General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
4 points

WMST V 3122x The Jewish Woman: Historical and Cultural Perspectives

Explores the international character of the Jewish people through the experiences of Jewish women in various historical periods and contexts. Identifies issues, past and present, of concern to Jewish women, articulated by contemporary Jewish feminists: perspectives of secularists, observant traditional women, heterosexuals, lesbians, feminists, and activists committed to diverse political ideologies.

AHWS BC 3123y Women and Art

Discussion of the methods necessary to analyze visual images of women in their historical, racial, and class contexts, and to understand the status of women as producers, patrons, and audiences of art and architecture.
General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).
3 points

WMST BC 3125y Pleasures and Power: An Introduction to Sexuality Studies

This interdisciplinary course explores the historical origins, social functions, and conceptual limitations of the notion of "sexuality" as a domain of human experience and a field of power relations.

WMST BC 3130y Discourses of Desire: Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies

Investigation of who or what constitutes the subject(s) of gay and lesbian studies. Themes include the historical, methodological, and epistemological crisis points of essentialism/constructionism; thinking sexuality cross-culturally; gender versus sexuality; the binaries of hetero/homo and male/female, trans discourses; community, identity, differences; personal life and the politics of liberation; the place of feminism in les/bi/gay studies.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

WMST BC 3131y Women and Science

History and politics of women's involvement with science. Women's contributions to scientific discovery in various fields, accounts by women scientists, engineers, and physicians, issues of science education. Feminist critiques of biological research and of the institution of science.

WMST BC 3132y Gendered Controversies: Women's Bodies and Global Conflicts

Investigates the significance of contemporary and historical issues of social, political, and cultural conflicts centered on women's bodies. How do such conflicts constitute women, and what do they tell us about societies, cultures, and politics? - D. Ko

WMST BC 3134y Unheard Voices: African Women's Literature

Themes include the politics of the canon in Africa, the problems of language, post-colonial counterdiscourse, the African-American continuum, and Third World and Western feminism. Authors include Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Miriam Tlali, Bessie Head, Alifa Rifaat, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Ama Ata Aidoo, Efua Sutherland, and Tess Onwueme.

WMST BC 3136y Asian American Women

Explores selected texts written by Asian American women from diverse backgrounds, focusing on issues such as identity, gender, generation, race, class, religion, and language.
General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

ENWS BC 3144x or y Minority Women Writers in the United States

Literature of 20th-century minority women writers in the United States, with particular emphasis on works by Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women, the historical and cultural as well as the literary framework.
General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT). Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

WMST V 3311y Colloquium in Feminist Theory

Explores the relationship between new feminist theory and feminist practice, both within the academy and in the realm of political organizing.

WMST V 3312x Theorizing Women's Activism

Helps students develop and apply useful theoretical models to feminist organizing on local and international levels. It involves reading, presentations, and seminar reports. Students use first-hand knowledge of the practices of specific women's activist organizations for theoretical work.

WMST BC 3509x The Sex of Science: Gender and Knowledge in Modern European History

Develops historical strategies for uncovering the significance of gender for the cultures and contents of Western science. We will consider how knowledge is produced by particular bodies in particular spaces and times.
General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

WMST BC 3515y Women in Israel: An Introduction

Focuses primarily on the contemporary status and experiences of Jewish and non-Jewish women living in Israel, with sessions on: women and the law; Jewish minorities; Palestinian women; Jewish women and the military; violence against women; Israeli feminism; pre-State Israel and women and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

WMST BC 3518y Studies in U.S. Imperialism

Historical, comparative study of the cultural effects and social experiences of U.S. Imperialism, with attention to race, gender and sexuality in practices of political, economic, and cultural domination and struggle. Material includes studies of US Imperialism in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, and Cuba and US foreign involvements in the developing world since World War II.

WMST V 3521x Senior Seminar

Individual research in Women's Studies conducted in consultation with the instructor. The result of each research project is submitted in the form of the senior essay and presented to the seminar.

WMST V 3522y Senior Seminar II

Individual research in Women's Studies conducted in consulation with the instructor. The result of each research project is submitted in the form of the senior essay and presented to the seminar.

WMST BC 3599x or y Independent Research
3-4 points.

WMST V 3813x Colloquium on Feminist Inquiry

Survey of research methods from the social sciences and interpretive models from the humanities, inviting students to examine the tension between the production and interpretation of data. Students will receive first-hand experience practicing various research methods and interpretive strategies, while simultaneously considering larger questions of epistemology about how we know what we know.

WMST BC 3902x or y Gender, Education, and Development

Examines the links between gender and education planning and policy, with a focus on educational policy initiatives for girls' education implemented by international organizations and local governments in developing countries. - M. Weisgrau
General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

WMST W 3915y Gender and Power in Global Perspective

Gender systems and their historical transformation in Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. Topics include colonialism, global economy, development, population and poverty, sexuality and sex work, comparative revolutions, and ethics of feminist politics.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

WMST W 4300y (Section 05) Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Gender and War

Theories of war: its cultural meanings, social history, motivations and effects, legal and ethical evaluation, political protest and resistance.
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

WMST W 4300y (Section 09) Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Feminism and Science Studies

Investigates socially and historically informed critiques of theoretical methods and practices of the sciences. It asks if/how feminist theoretical and political concerns make a critical contribution to science studies.

WMST W 4301x or y Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: The Search for Self - 20th Century U.S. Jewish Women Writers, Part I: 1900-1939

Covers significant pre-Holocaust texts (including Yiddish fiction in translation) by U.S. Ashkenazi women and analyzes the tensions between upholding Jewish identity and the necessity and/or inevitability of integration and assimilation. It also examines women's quests to realize their full potential in Jewish and non-Jewish communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

WMST W 4302x Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: The Search for Self - 20th Century U.S. Jewish Women Writers, Part II: 1939 - Present

Examines the memoirs and fiction by American Jewish Women writers from 1939 to the present, with a focus on the relationships between Jewish identity, post-Holocaust consciousness, gender, and class. Writers to be studied include Lucy Dawidowicz, Jo Sinclair, Tillie Olsen, Eva Hoffman, Grace Paley, Helen Epstein, Pearl Abraham, Judith Katz, and Elana Dykewomon.

WMST W 4303y Gender, Globalization, and Empire

Study of the role of gender in economic structures and social processes comprising globalization and in political practices of contemporary U.S. empire. This seminar focuses on the ways in which transformations in global political and economic structures over the last few decades including recent political developments in the U.S. have been shaped by gender, race, sexuality, religion and social movements.

WMST W 4304y Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Gender and HIV/AIDS

An interdisciplinary exploration of feminist approaches to HIV/AIDS with emphasis on the nexus of science and social justice.

WMST W 4305y Feminist Postcolonial Theory

Examines important concerns, concepts and methodological approaches of postcolonial theory, with a focus on feminist perspectives on and strategies for the decolonization of Eurocentric knowledge-formations and practices of Western colonialism. Topics for discussion and study include orientalism, colonialism, nationalism and gender, the politics of cultural representations, subjectivity and subalternity, history, religion, and contemporary global relations of domination.

WMST W 4307x Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Sexuality and the Law

Explores how sexuality is defined and contested in various domains of law (Constitutional, Federal, State), how scientific theories intersect with legal discourse, and takes up considerations of these issues in family law, the military, questions of speech, citizenship rights, and at the workplace.

WMST W 4308y Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Sexuality and Science

Examines scientific research on human sexuality, from early sexology through contemporary studies of biology and sexual orientation, surveys of sexual behavior, and the development and testing of Viagra. How does such research incorporate, reflect, and reshape cultural ideas about sexuality? How is it useful, and for whom?

WMST W 4309y Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Sex, Gender and Transgender Queries

Sex, sexual identity, and the body are produced in and through time. "Trans" - as an identity, a set of practices, a question, a site, or as a verb of change and connection - is a relatively new term which this course will situate in theory, time, discipline, and through the study of representation.

WMST W 4310y Contemporary American Jewish Women's Literature: 1990 to Present

Identifies trends in Jewish American women's writing of this period: integration of Jewish and feminist consciousness into Jewish women's mainstream writing; exploration through fictive narratives of women's roles in Jewish orthodox communities; recording of experiences of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and from Arab countries.

WMST W 4320x Queer Theories and Histories

An investigation into the central issues of queer studies. Themes include the historical, methodological, and epistemological crisis points of thinking sexuality trans-historically and cross-culturally; relations among gender, sexuality, race, class, and nation; how queer subjects are formed in relation to major institutions and how queer psychic life is inhabited; sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, migration and diaspora; and transsexual life and culture.