13 courses with the subject WGSS, 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.
WGSS 202Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies1.00
Examines the roots of and topics within the feminist project and explores how gender and sexuality are shaped and mutually constituted by bodies, systems and ideologies. Students explore gender and sexuality through a variety of frameworks, and in tandem with race, ethnicity, class, religion, and other markers of identity. By enrolling in WGSS 202, students agree to engage in an interdisciplinary and transnational journey that investigates gender as ever-evolving, cultural, sociohistorical, and differentially read and experienced in varying contexts. Students develop the language and analytical tools to speak and think critically about oppression, patriarchy, and social change, to unlearn common assumptions about the world and people around us. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Senior Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing Core Component: None
WGSS 260Intersectionality in Theory and Practice1.0
Traces an intellectual genealogy of intersectionality's emergence as one the most significant theories coming out of feminist scholarship. In our present, intersectionality has become axiomatic insofar as multiple discourses both inside and outside of academia demand that all feminism be intersectional. Yet the history of intersectionality's emergence from black women's lived experience is often rendered opaque. Intersectionality as a feminist theory is one response to the often-forgotten Sojourner Truth question and demand "Ain't I a woman?" that causes problems for feminist's attempts to reconcile questions of difference and exclusion in feminist scholarship and activism. Hence, students will explore the historical conditions that produce intersectionality by interrogating the very question of black women's relationship to the category of woman. And, more broadly, students will discuss the various ways feminist respond to questions of difference, inclusion, and exclusion in feminist social and political worlds. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation or Confronting Collective Challenges Core Component: None
An interdisciplinary journey into historical and emergent intellectual contributions engendered from navigating, refusing, and subverting systemic gendered oppression. As an homage to the distinct and layered legacy of Black feminist thought, students will learn concepts (i.e., interlocking systems of oppression, misogynoir), methodological tools (i.e., outsider within, blended scripting), and practice/organizing orientations (i.e., interdependence, homegirling). With a focus on contributions from the
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Credits: variable Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None
WGSS 301Feminist Methodologies: Theory and Praxis1.00
Is there a distinct feminist method of conducting research? How do feminist and decolonial methodologies challenge - or complement - conventional research methodologies? Students are provided a framework for thinking about methods and forms of knowledge production from a feminist decolonial perspective. Students examine how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge through a lens that recognizes multiple, interrelated axes of inequality. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts Practices: The Process of Writing Core Component: None
WGSS 302Special Topics: Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Offers an advanced level study of a specific and narrowed field within the interdiscipline of feminist studies. Students focus on topics that reflect on the breadth of women's and gender studies at Colgate. Faculty teach in the area of their scholarly expertise on a rotating basis. Focus may be on particular identities, practices,
Students consider (dis)ability as a gendered, racialized, and classed category of difference. Students discuss how dominant cultural, scientific, and educational understandings of the body/mind construct the boundaries of normalcy and determine the material conditions of our lives. Students look at how different aspects of a person's identity – their ability, their gender, their race, their sexuality, their class – intersect to position them as citizens or non-citizens, members or threats to the future of the family and the nation. Students are introduced to the theoretical, analytical, and methodological tools of feminist disability studies, and the emerging field of DisCrit (Disability studies and Critical Race Theory). Using these theoretical and analytic tools, students look to the ways that activists, artists, and scholars have re-imagined the disabled body/mind as a complex identity. Crosslisted: EDUC 339
An introduction to the emergent field of Black Girlhood Studies. An interdisciplinary journey, it engages theories, methods, and analytical approaches that recognize the power and potential of Black girlhood. Through interpretive and pragmatic inquiry of Black girls' lives, students will develop and enact an intersectional approach to interrogate the ways power, systems of oppression, and culture mediate girlhood. To expose discrepancies in popularized narratives of Black girls and women in the United States, the course is organized around the tenet of celebration and other foundational concepts and scholars within the field. Drawing on theories and concepts derived from Black feminist thought, budding scholars will approach Black girlhood as a political category of identity and symbol of agency. Working within and beyond hip-hop feminist and womanist frameworks, learning will involve critical thinking and embodiment of theories and practices as produced by Black girls, artists, and scholars. With attention to knowledge and creativity engendered amidst legacies of anti-Black racism and racialized femininity, Corridors of Black Girlhood reveals the contributions of Black girls, girlhood, and Black feminist thought to the expansion of theory, praxis, and power analyses. Crosslisted: ALST 341 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts Practices: Artistic Practice and Interpretation and The Process of Writing Core Component: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Credits: variable Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None
WGSS 490Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Senior Seminar
The course is taught by the members of the women's studies faculty, and the content of the course takes a different shape depending on the instructor. The content of the course is interdisciplinary; coursework is rooted in and utilizes feminist theory; and, where appropriate, students engage in some form of praxis in the
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty. Credits: variable Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None
WGSS 499Honors in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies1.00
Students pursuing honors research enroll in this course. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts Practices: None Core Component: None
