28 courses with the subject WMST BC, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
WMST BC1006Introduction to Environmental Humanities3.00
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to key concepts and texts in environmental humanities, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies of race, gender, sexuality, capital, nation, and globalization. The course examines the conceptual foundations that support humanistic analyses of environmental issues, climate crisis, and the ethics of justice and care. We will also focus on how the generalized contemporary environmental crisis plays out on the specific terrain of New York City. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Students will learn what difference humanistic studies make to understanding environmental issues and climate crisis. The course will prepare students to: • Identify humanistic methods and how they contribute to understanding the world; • Demonstrate critical approaches to reading and representing environments; • Apply concepts from the course to synthesize the student’s use of humanistic approaches to address urgent environmental questions; • Develop a strong understanding of how generalized elements of the environmental crisis play out in and are resisted in New York City
Combines critical feminist and anti-racist analyses of medicine with current research in epidemiology and biomedicine to understand health and health disparities as co-produced by social systems and biology
WMST BC2026Authority, Power, ＆ Evidence: An Introduction to Feminist/Intersectional Science and Technology Studies (F/ISTS)3.00
Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary academic field that investigates entanglements between the technical and social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine. Understanding this interplay is central to addressing many of the most pressing problems of our times, such as struggles around vaccination; climate justice and environmental racism; health disparities; digital surveillance; the biology of gender, sex, and sexuality; and the growing mistrust in “science” as a domain of authority. Feminist/Intersectional Science and Technology Studies (F/ISTS) is a focused approach to Science and Technology Studies (STS) that homes in on the reciprocal relations between techno-scientific knowledge and practices, on the one hand, and gender, race, class, and other intersecting axes of power, on the other
WMST BC2140Critical Approaches in Social and Cultural Theory3.00
This course examines the conceptual foundations that support feminist and queer analyses of racial capitalism, security and incarceration, the politics of life and health, and colonial and postcolonial studies, among others. Open to all students; required for the major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE)
Enrollment for this class is by instructor approval and an application is required. Please fill out the form here: https://forms.gle/bPsV7rcf5RWB35PM9 This introductory course for the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE) as well as Majors/Minors in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is open to all students. We focus on the critical study of social difference as an interdisciplinary practice, using texts with diverse modes of argumentation and evidence to analyze social differences as fundamentally entangled and co-produced. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of this course, the professor will frequently be joined by other faculty and guest speakers who bring distinct disciplinary and subject matter expertise. Some keywords for this course include hybridity, diaspora, borderlands, migration, and intersectionality
This course explores the intimate entanglements of technology, science, bodies, culture, and power, with a focus on post-World War II U.S. society. In this lecture course, we will draw on history, feminist thought, anthropology, sociology, science fiction, and visual/digital art to investigate the historical and cultural contexts shaping the dreams, practices, and products of technoscience. We will explore technologies and sciences as sites of power, complex pleasures, and embodied transformations in our own everyday lives
WMST BC3122Contemporary American-Jewish Women Writers: 1990 to the Present4
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA). Explores the international character of the Jewish people through the experiences of Jewish women in various historical periods and contexts. Identifies issues and concerns, past and present, articulated by contemporary Jewish feminists: perspectives of secularists, observant traditional women, heterosexuals, lesbians, feminists, and activists committed to diverse political ideologies.
WMST BC3125Pleasures and Power: An Introduction to Sexuality Studies3
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I). This introduction to sexuality studies is an examination of 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. Sexuality is often taken to be a natural and unchanging element of individual life. In this course, we seek to examine the ways in which sex is both social and political. We will consider how sexuality has been socially constructed, paying careful attention to the ways these ideas relate to other social forces such as gender, race, and class. Electives Open To All, Appropriate for 1st Year Students
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 18 students. Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 18 students. History and politics of womens involvement with science. Womens 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
This seminar investigates the significance of contemporary and historical issues of social, political, and cultural conflicts conducted through the language of gender. How do such conflicts constitute social relations, and what do they tell us about societies, cultures, and politics? How do we understand gender analysis in relation to intersectionality? How to we read and analyze gender through contested social issues? How do we analyze the ethical discourses employed in such conflicts? How do we best create change in response to such conflicts?
From love to anger to disappointment to hope, political activism mobilizes emotions towards certain ends but also generates new affective states and feelings along the way. This advanced seminar will familiarize students with feminist, anti-racist and queer scholarship on affect, feelings and emotion as intrinsic to politics and as crucial for understanding how political thought and action unfold in contingent and often unexpected ways. Mixing theoretical and cultural texts with case studies, we will look at how affect permeates structures of power and domination, embodiment and identity, and collective activist projects concerned with gender and sexual liberation. Students will have an opportunity to read theories of affect as well as to “read” activist movements for affect by working with archival documents (such as zines, manifestos, and movement ephemera) and other primary sources (such as memoir, photography and documentary film)
Some of the central questions in the study of environmental humanities focus on human action, its context, and its effects. Thus, one major contribution of the environmental humanities is to study and consider how we conceptualize action, relations (both between humans and environments and among humans), and even the meaning of human being. The environmental humanities places these conceptual questions in the context of value and values, as well as questions of how values are materialized in practice. This course considers all of these questions through the study both theories of action in the context of environmental humanities and research into existing projects that are informed by and can inform the study of environmental humanities
Love and sex have long been studied as historical constructs influenced by social, political, and economic dimensions. This course aims to expand this discourse by incorporating the often-overlooked lens of technological mediation. Beginning with the premise that romantic love is deeply shaped by the affordances of the technology of the time, a critical awareness of technological mediation in romance –especially of digital technologies, i.e. online dating, social media, or cybersex— allows for a deeper understanding of how social categories such as gender, race, class, ability, or sexuality are technologically-mediated, thereby informing our societal and cultural perceptions of love, dating, and sex. Sandra Moyano-Ariza is Term Assistant Professor of WGSS and Research Director at BCRW. Her research works at the intersection of pop culture, philosophy, and digital technologies, with interests in the fields of media studies and digital scholarship, contemporary feminist theory, critical race theory, posthumanism, and affect theory
WMST BC3512Art/Work: Sex, Aesthetics, and Capitalism4
How can performances, theatrical texts, and other art/media objects illuminate the operations of gender, sexuality, and race in global capitalism? Drawing from a range of artistic media and critical traditions, we explore how aesthetic thought can help us analyze the sexual, racial, and national character of contemporary labor and life.
"This course collaborates between students and professor, humans and animals, subjects and objects, to investigate the Animal Problem. What are non-human animals? How do we relate to them? How do we account for our animal nature while reconciling our cultural aspirations? What are our primary desires with respect to non-human animals?
Comparative study of gender, race, and sexuality through specific historical, socio-cultural contexts in which these systems of power have operated. With a focus on social contexts of slavery, colonialism, and modern capitalism for the elaboration of sex-gender categories and systems across historical time
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 20 students. Historical, comparative study of the cultural effects and social experiences of U.S. imperialism, with attention to race, gender and sexuality in practices of domination and struggle
The integration of contemporary media and social practices of all types is intensifying. This seminar examines media theory and various media platforms including Language, Photography, Film, Television, Radio, Digital Video, and Computing as treated by feminists, critical race and queer theorists, and other scholars and artists working from the margins. Prerequisite: Either one introductory WGSS course or Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory or Permission of the Instructor
Feminist Media Praxis is an advanced research seminar that integrates the theory and production of diverse media forms—from film and video, to photography, the digital, and television. We explore media as well as their associated materials, practices, and embodiments as methods for feminist research, collaboration, and expression. The course interrogates feminist histories, learns from diverse feminist political expressions and activism, and seeks to find, incorporate, and build archives and other records of media research and production.Feminist Media Praxis is an advanced research seminar that integrates the theory and production of diverse media forms—from film and video, to photography, the digital, and television. We explore media as well as their associated materials, practices, and embodiments as methods for feminist research, collaboration, and expression. The course interrogates feminist histories, learns from diverse feminist political expressions and activism, and seeks to find, incorporate, and build archives and other records of media research and production
This lab course is an optional addition to the WGSS junior colloquia courses “Theorizing Feminist Activisms” and “Feminist Inquiry”; students must take one of those courses simultaneously with this lab. The lab gives students an opportunity to gain practical experience with one or more qualitative research methods that are frequently used in feminist and gender studies. It will be particularly valuable as groundwork for senior thesis research, but all students enrolled in Theorizing Activisms or Feminist Inquiry are encouraged to take the lab to deepen their understanding of practical and ethical issues in conducting research in support of social change
Senior Seminar 1 integrates the study of research methods with critical epistemological questions about how knowledge is produced, its effects and its uses. By carrying out an original research project of their own design, students will learn how practices are embedded in knowledge claims, how to analyze the relation of knowledge to power, how feminist knowledge is deployed to meet a range of feminist goals, and what types of practices they will take up in their own production and use of knowledge. In this course, students develop a capstone research project (20-page essay or alternative digital project with permission of instructor) on a topic of feminist significance and characterized by a critical interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to the study of women, sexuality, and/or gender. Students will investigate the nexus of knowledge, practice, and power in the contexts of their research, reflecting on the conditions and implications of their own knowledge production within these fields and beyond. Students will develop a research proposal and a research plan with timeline and deadlines to be carried out over the course of the semester. (Significant parts of your paper or project will be drafted by mid-semester). Students will complete all aspects of their research plan. This course is conducted as a workshop and student engagement with peers is central to the process. The final grade is based upon the final research paper/project as well as active participation in constructive peer feedback
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 BC3965FEMINIST/INTERSECTIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES (F/ISTS) CAPSTONE1.00
This capstone course intended for juniors and seniors who are pursuing the minor or concentration in Feminist/Intersectional Science and Technology Studies (F/ISTS) will provide opportunities for students to engage with practical applications of F/ISTS theories and methodologies through interactive discussions. We will focus on current events of national and international importance for which F/ISTS-based tools and case studies offer relevant empirical evidence and analytic frameworks (scientific, political, social, and ethical). Focusing on one current issue of public importance (a policy, a circulating claim, an event, etc.), students will practice crafting synthetic and accessible analyses by producing a “message” that is empirically and conceptually grounded in F/ISTS scholarship and accessible to the general public
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 20 students. 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
