32 courses with the subject GSS, 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.
GSS 101Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies
Instructor Wynn This class provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the analytical tools, key scholarly debates, history, and research subfields of gender and sexuality studies. It pays particular attention to the construction and deployment of gender as a cultural category across various social institutions. Students will learn to assess and analyze documents pertaining to the history of and contemporary state of feminisms and women’s rights, masculinity, queer theory, disability studies, body image and consumer culture, intersectionality, as well as a host of gendered questions related to health, work, the family, violence, and politics. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
GSS 190Understanding Leadership through the Female Marvel Universe
Instructor Staff The legends, villains, and superpowers of the Marvel universe have captured the world’s attention for decades. However, while female characters are evident throughout Marvel’s history, our attention has only come to women as leaders within the Marvel universe in recent years. This course will give leaders like Black Widow, The Wasp, Shuri, Kamala Khan, She Hulk, and countless other Marvel women the attention they deserve through a critical analysis of their origin stories, leadership characteristics, and contributions to the Marvel universe. We will examine historical, social, and cultural paradigms of leadership, gender constructs within leadership roles, and leadership patterns and behaviors - not only related to cinematic, television and print portrayals of female Marvel characters, but in our own lives and society as well. We will also analyze the representation of women, how female leadership is framed, and marginalization and exclusion of women in leadership roles throughout comic book, film, and television portrayals of the Marvel universe. Selected texts, Marvel-based television shows, and Marvel movies will enhance learning in this course. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement
Instructor Wynn This class explores the epistemological and theoretical foundations of Gender and Sexuality Studies. Students will become familiarized with the different theoretical traditions that inform contemporary gender analysis, and examine scholarly definitions of gender and sexuality. We discuss the means by which gender and sexuality are produced and reproduced at the individual and institutional levels, their intersection with other dimensions of social difference, as well as various related approaches to and interpretations of equality, justice, and freedom. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement. Satisfies Sociology major requirement.
Instructor Sockol This course provides an overview of the foundational concepts and timely conversations in Trans Studies, including trans rights and recognition, trans medicalization, trans visibility and surveillance, and decolonial and abolitionist frameworks for trans(feminist) liberation. Students will apply key concepts from queer and feminist theories of sex/gender that inform how gendered meaning is constructed and contested in relation to race, class, sexuality, ability, and nationality. Throughout the course, students will develop an understanding of Trans Studies’ interdisciplinary frameworks for both studying and honoring trans life, as well as using transness to learn about power, subjecthood, and systems of oppression more broadly. Satisfies a requirement in the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor (society and politics track). Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Instructor Staff This course provides an introduction to the field of queer studies by way of a specialized topic. Course content and emphasis will vary with instructor, but sample topics include queer theories, queer of color critiques, queer popular culture, transgender studies, and queer activism. Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies - content course for society and politics of trade. Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies-elective.
Instructor Kaufman In this course, we will examine the sociological meanings and patterns of sex, love, and relationships. We consider the intertwining of sex and sexuality, posing conceptual questions about what sex is and what counts as sex. We look at sex culture on campuses, considering hook culture and dating apps. We then turn to the concept of love, thinking through sociological conceptualizations on a matter that is often seen as a psychological phenomenon, considering how romance narratives shape our expectations. We then consider various forms of relationships, from situationships to cohabitation to marriage, breaking down heteronormative expectations and questioning the stability of marriage as an institution. Finally, we consider arrangements such as living apart together and polyamorous relationships. Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Instructor Kaufman This course focuses on research methods used by scholars to study gender and sexuality, with particular attention to research by and about women, gender-expansive individuals, and sexual minorities. Students will learn about various research methods by engaging in research exercises that allow them to try out different methods, including ethnography, interviews, rhetorical analysis, archival research, and survey research. The end product will be a research proposal that can be used to apply for grant funding, pursue an independent study, or write a senior thesis. Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement
Instructor Utkin Russia is accustomed to playing the role of the “evil empire.” The current ongoing war in Ukraine has resurrected the Cold War-era narratives about Russia as a dark, aggressive, and ruthless military power. The notorious legislation of recent years-whose functions range from barring Americans from adopting Russian orphans to criminalizing the so-called “gay propaganda”-have further solidified Russia’s reputation as a country with little regard for human rights. Yet generations of Russian poets, artists, and writers have transformed the country’s systematic oppression and violence into spectacular forms of protest and self-expression. This course focuses on gender and sexuality in exploring an alternative cultural history of Russia, which highlights its queer legacy from the nineteenth century to the present. We will examine poetry, fiction, art, memoirs, plays, films, performances, and discursive texts that showcase uniquely Russian conceptions of marriage, gender relations, gender expression, and sexual identity. Attention will be paid to the ways in which Russian and Western narratives of queerness align and diverge. In English. No knowledge of Russian is required or expected. Satisfies major and minor requirements in Russian Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement. Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Rhetoric requirement.
Instructor Horowitz Since the early 1990s, many queer theorists have reasserted the centrality of western cities to the formation of queer subjectivities. But more recent scholarship has challenged this assumption, suggesting that not only have LGBTQ identities historically developed in suburban, rural, and non-western locales, but that the dominant urban narrative reinforces white, upper-class maleness as the norm of queer life. This course examines the ways in which space is queered and queerness emerges in response to metropolitan, non-metropolitan, Western, and non-Western space. We will examine the queer convergence of the public and the private, the processes by which space is simultaneously raced and gendered, the relationship between sexuality and built environments, and the role of capitalism and neoliberalism in producing queer individuals and networks. Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies -Histories and Geneologies Track. Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies - elective. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement
Staff Whether it’s Black Gay Pride Atlanta or DC, or activists like black trans femme organizer Micky Bradford, the Black Queer South has always had something to say about race, gender, class, and sexual struggle and liberation. However, southern black queer (or LGBT) culture is frequently overlooked, understudied, and/or misrepresented. Thus, this course will employ the geographical place and conceptual space of “the South” as an entry point for exploring black queer possibilities from “the bottom.” [This course will meet the major’s Sexuality Studies Requirement and will be in the Society & Politics track.] Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Africana Studies major requirement. Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.
Instructor Boyer, Tilburg This course, team-taught by a historian of European gender and a legal and literary scholar of the Hispanic world, will introduce students to the ways that early modern and modern Western societies have intervened in and defined categories of illicit sexual desire, identity, and conduct. Modern European states took an abiding interest in regulating what they considered to be disordered and deviant sexual persons- the Homosexual, the Prostitute, the Intersexed. These same states took a marked interest in enforcing public health and hygiene by way of laws targeting private sexual behavior, from birth control to interracial relationships. These interventions expressed sharp anxieties about the character of modern life: urbanization, industrialization, democratization, the rise of the middle classes, empire. The course will combine an interrogation of primary texts from the early modern and modern periods with secondary and theoretical works dealing with history, law, and sexuality. Satisfies History major and minor requirement. Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Only counted in one track. Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies Only counted in one track. Satisfies a distribution requirement in Historical Thought
Instructor Green This course is an examination of the art, craft, and practice of production dramaturgy. Students will learn how to bring research, script analysis, and interpretation into the theatrical process to support a theatre production’s creative team. Focusing specifically on production dramaturgy, students will gain experience creating materials typically delegated to a production dramaturg. Satisfies a major requirement in Theatre Satisfies a minor requirement in Theatre Satisifes Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement
Instructor Horowitz This course surveys a number of emerging frameworks for rethinking the concept of queerness from a transnational perspective. Our investigations will move between theory and lived experience, within and across national borders, and will challenge key Western assumptions about sexual development, freedom, identity, and citizenship. We will consider questions such as: To what extent do Western paradigms of sex, gender, and sexuality limit our understanding of non-Western sexual cultures? How does the relationship between sexual practice and sexual identity shift across cultures? How do tourists and migrants negotiate, adapt, and remake sexual discourses and economies as they move in and through new spaces? How has the legacy of colonialism shaped and been shaped by sexual practice? How is sexuality used to articulate national, racial, class, and ethnic identities? Transnational Sexualities will run through the Inside/Out Prison Exchange Program. Half of the class will be comprised of traditional Davidson students, and the other half will be comprised of recently incarcerated students on study-release at the Center for Community Transitions (CCT) in Charlotte. Transportation will be provided to class at CCT; we will depart at 12:45pm each week. An interview with the instructor will be required of all students seeking to enroll in this course. Satisfies a requirement in the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor. Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement. Prerequisites & Notes Intructor Permission required.
Instructor Staff This course will explore immigration, exile, and diaspora from the perspective of sexuality and queerness, with a focus on Latin American and Asian subjects. We will study basic theory of immigration, globalization, and queerness, and strive to understand problems of citizenship, politics of (not) belonging, affect of exclusion, and narratives of searching home. In order to develop skills of intellectual and critical analysis on the border issues and queer theory, this class will deploy the methods of transnational feminism, ethnic studies, and critical border studies. The course materials include: ethnography, political theory, documentaries and cutting edge works from the field of “immigration and sexuality.” Needless to say, this class takes an interdisciplinary approach and postcolonial perspective: course topics cover many different cultural and counter-cultural productions, articulation of power and resistance, theory of belonging and displacement. Furthermore, we will examine important key concepts to study immigration and sexuality, such as affect, intimacy, double identity, loss of citizenship, homonormativity, and inquire how various borders are being crossed while sexual (dis)identification becomes an opening for encounters. Through these works, we will question what it means today to be sexual, ethnic, and national minority simultaneously and how contemporary globalization and transnational economic activities affects ways we live and love. Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Instructor Staff As an unconventional expression of gender identity and performance, this course will examine femme formations and cultural productions as a form of patriarchal-masculine resistance. With its discursive origins in lesbian gender and social relations, the term femme has since evolved as an identity and critical practice of femininity beyond heteropatriarchal and binary logics of recognition. Therefore, we will explore its conceptual use and implications by various communities and social movements, including but not limited to, gays and lesbians, feminists and queers of color, and transfeminists. This course will then draw on literature from many of these knowledge paradigms as well as a variety of intellectual modes (art, media, music, dance, novels, etc.) and transnational contexts. Furthermore, we will employ femme as an analytical tool for assessing institutional, political, and social gender dominance at the nexus of race, sexuality, class, and nationality. As such, we will take up the category of femme, to ask not only who is femme, but what does this concept, identity, and/or performance do within these relations? Prerequisites & Notes
Instructor Horowitz When we think about queer and feminist politics, we typically think of the processes by which women and LGBT people have effected change through legislation, court cases, and supporting candidates friendly to their causes. But much U.S. queer and feminist thought and activism has taken root outside the bounds of liberal electoral politics. This course centers on the fringes. It surveys the writings of less-palatable political actors: punks, anarchists, communists, anti-capitalists, sex workers, black radicals, and prison abolitionists. In exploring these political genealogies, we will ask: How does the personal constitute the political? What counts as (legitimate) political action according to whom? (How) can social change be effected outside of electoral politics and state institutions? What should be the role of the state in regulating labor and distributing rights and entitlements? What priorities have animated the various radical traditions within queer and feminist thought, and how have they addressed or failed to address race, class, ethnicity, and disability? How have these traditions intersected and diverged? Why have contemporary queer radicals come to focus on issues less obviously connected to gender and sexuality like global capitalism, drone warfare, and police militarization? Satisfies a requirement for the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor. Satisfies a Social-Scientific Thought requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Instructor Staff As an unconventional expression of gender identity and performance, this course will examine femme formations and cultural productions as a form of patriarchal-masculine resistance. With its discursive origins in lesbian gender and social relations, the term femme has since evolved as an identity and critical practice of femininity beyond heteropatriarchal and binary logics of recognition. Therefore, we will explore its conceptual use and implications by various communities and social movements, including but not limited to, gays and lesbians, feminists and queers of color, and transfeminists. This course will then draw on literature from many of these knowledge paradigms as well as a variety of intellectual modes (art, media, music, dance, novels, etc.) and transnational contexts. Furthermore, we will employ femme as an analytical tool for assessing institutional, political, and social gender dominance at the nexus of race, sexuality, class, and nationality. As such, we will take up the category of femme, to ask not only who is femme, but what does this concept, identity, and/or performance do within these relations? Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement
Instructor Horowitz A political platform, identity, field of study, and more, “transgender” holds many different meanings for different people today. This course explores the history and present of an expansive sense of trans- transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, and more- through an array of texts, including memoir, fiction, film, television, and scholarly writings. By thinking trans in these different contexts and through different concepts, trans studies/politics connects to queer studies, explores and challenges “umbrella”-type understandings, and critically interrogates the inheritances that shape trans activisms today. Topics that focus our work together include histories of sexology and activisms, disability and trans politics, trans people’s experiences with prisons and carceral violences, trans people’s participation and representation in larger projects for racial justice, environmental justice and trans activisms, and more. Satisfies a requirement in the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor (society and politics track). Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
GSS 370Global South Feminisms and Social Justice Movements
Instructor Staff This course is about contemporary feminist movements in parts of the world that are often overlooked or labeled as “primitive”. With a particular, though not exclusive, focus on parts of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), north Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, etc.,) and countries of the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, etc.,), we will explore how women are social justice leaders in their daily lives, in individual and collective acts of resistance, in local communities as well as transnationally. We will examine some of the significant issues that poor women, women of color, racialized immigrant women, incarcerated women, confront and resist around the world. Rather than understand feminism as emanating from the “West” or the global north, this course focuses instead on what the “West” or the global north has yet to learn from feminist movements from other parts of the world. We will examine recent social movement histories, as well as considers contemporary social justice issues that impact, and are impacted by, multiple genders (with a particular though not exclusive focus on women and queer peoples), through various means of resistance and grassroots community organizing. These include organizing against reproductive rights abuses, globalization, and for immigrant, labor, and civil rights. Satisfies South Asian Studies minor requirement Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought Ways of Knowing requirement Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement
GSS 390Sexuality and Public Discourses in the United States
Instructor Hillard This course examines the history of sexuality in the United States from 1642 to the present through the lens of primary documents, analyzed using rhetorical methods. Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Historical Thought requirement.
GSS 394Latinx Sexual Dissidence and Guerilla Translation (=LAS 394)
Please email Melissa Gonzalez ( megonzalez@davidson.edu ) if you are interested in this course. Instructor González Despite local differences and sociocultural contexts, there are also remarkable convergences in subcultural minority activisms focused on liberation from intersecting oppressions related to sexuality, race, gender, ability, citizenship status, and class in North and South America. In this upper-level bilingual seminar, students will translate guerilla-style-functionally and in a non-literary fashion-texts by activists and cultural producers focused on intersectional sexual dissidence. Working in teams, students will have the opportunity to consult with some of their target texts’ authors, and the course’s final product will be an online archive of English and Spanish translations of texts related to intersectional, feminist, and queer Latinx American activisms and cultural productions. First, students will study the rhetorics and aesthetic strategies of feminist and queer activist collectives focused on social issues such as immigration, transgender rights, anti-racism, economic equality, anti-speciesim, body positivity, and prison abolition with a pro-pleasure, leftist perspective. Second, students in the course and I will elaborate a list of the principles and goals informing our functional, guerrilla translations. In the third unit, students will work exclusively on the translation projects they have been developing throughout the semester. They will have the opportunities to interview at least one of the authors whose work they are translating. Collectives, authors, and artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and the U.S. that we will study include: Colectivo Lemebel; Colectivo Universitario de la Disidencia Sexual (CUDS); TransLatina Coalition; Biblioteca Fragmentada; Lino Arruda; Constanzx Alvarez Castillo; Jorge Díaz; Valeria Flores; Daisy Hernández; Jennicet Gutiérrez; Claudia Rodríguez; Ignacio Rivera; Julio Salgado; and Susy Shock. Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies Satisfies a major requirement in Latin American Studies Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Latin American Studies Satisfies the Justice, Equality and Community requirement Satisfies the Literary Thought, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement Prerequisites & Notes Requires permission from the instructor.
Instructor Fackler With its roots in the gendered domestic suburban household, television has a longstanding investment in questions of gender and sexuality. Pushing back against the assumption that LGBTQ characters did not appear on our screens in a sustained way until the 1980s, this course will investigate how TV representations of queer life have changed with the evolution of the medium since the 1950s. Recent work in the field of queer TV studies has unearthed queer characters from previously invisible archives, charted changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity in broadcast programming, and documented the organizational strategies employed by television narrative that disclose and contain expressions of nonnormative sexualities. Indeed, in one of the foundational texts on queer TV, Lynne Joyrich argues that “U.S. television does not simply reflect an already closeted sexuality but actually helps organize sexuality as closeted.” Extending Joyrich’s line of reasoning, we will seek to understand the dynamics of visibility and invisibility that structure representations of televised queerness. How might we understand the contemporary series Transparent alongside or against the representation of a trans character on All in the Family (1975)? Why might The New Normal, a seemingly positive portrayal of new kinship structures, have failed as a series in 2013? Even as we watch the problematic take on villainous lesbian characters in the Angie Dickinson vehicle, Police Woman (“Flowers of Evil,” 1974), we will move beyond diagnoses and critiques of “bad” versus “good” queer representations to acknowledge the pleasures that may attend the viewing of even ideologically corrupt programming. Which shows and episodes became lightening rods for desire despite their failure to produce fully realized queer characters? And what genealogy (or genealogies) of queer TV might take us from the groundbreaking episodes of Ellen (“The Puppy Episode”) and Roseanne (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) in the 1990s to the moment at which a Vanity Fair cover declared that with “Gay-per-view TV” shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, prime time had “come out” (2003)? As we historicize such developments, we will consider the contributions of writer-producers and series creators such as Alan Ball and Ryan Murphy, and analyze a variety of programs from “quality television” to animation, from the sit-com to reality TV, and from sci-fi to the game show. Satisfies a major requirement in English Satisfies a minor requirement in English Fulfills the Diversity requirement in the English major. Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Film and Media Studies Satisfies Digital and Screen Media major requirement. Satisfies the Justice, Equality and Community requirement
Instructor Staff Racism has long been permeated through ideologies of gender and sexuality. However, historically, black political and social movements have often only marginally addressed issues of gender and sexuality. Furthermore, in the post-Civil Rights era, many feminist and queer scholars of color have noted the evolving and increasing emphasis placed on gender and sexual differences to propagate “new” forms of racism. Therefore, this course will explore the role and relationship of gender and sexuality in contemporary racism and anti-racist black politics. This course will pay particular attention to black subjectivity, such as what bodies or embodiments are il/legitimized politically and to what effect? Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Africana Studies major requirement. Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement. Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Instructor Gonzalez Latinx Sexual Dissidence Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major and minor. Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement. Prerequisites & Notes Permission of instructor required.
Instructor Staff Contemporary understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality are shaped by a long history of scientific work in fields as diverse as sexology, genetics, phrenology, eugenics, biology, and more. This course traces how these understandings shaped and were shaped by sex, gender, and sexuality. The course begins with early work in the field of feminist science studies, then turns to questions of taxonomy and difference before interrogating the role of nationalisms in sex-related sciences. The class also explores American eugenics, early work in sexology and the study of homosexuality, sex and the brain in the contemporary U.S., problems with sex differentiation, the role of sex in current ecological sciences, assisted reproductive technologies, posthuman bodies, and feminist interventions in technosciences. Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies
GSS 432Prison Abolition, Transformative Justice, and Queer/Feminist Practice
Instructor Branson For those who belong to marginalized communities, there is often intimate knowledge that the so-called state “justice” system is really a system of punishment grounded in injustice. We can look to movements from these communities to learn alternatives to state discipline. To combat systemic abuses of power that perpetrate wide-scale violence based on gender/sexuality, racialization, income, and education, there is a two-pronged approach: abolition, on the one hand; and transformative “justice” or transformative relations, on the other hand. In this course, we will gain a foundation in the history of abolition-from the fight against slavery and the settler colonial project of the US to the current movement to end prisons and punishment that reproduce anti-black racism nationwide-as well as a foundation in theories and practices of transformative justice or relationships. In our survey of history, theory, and practice, we will focus in particular on gender and sexuality and how transformative justice has risen out of feminist and queer liberation movements. Transformative models of accountability are grounded in community building, developed out of the ways marginalized people have had to function outside of state apparatuses that don’t serve them. Therefore transformative justice is intimately tied to the dismantling of the power relations of cis-hetero-patriarchy and capitalism. In this course, we will read widely in the history of abolition and transformative justice, emphasizing the queer and feminist roots of these models. We will encounter the limitations and complexities of these efforts, and work together to collectively imagine a world where people are both irreplaceable and accountable. Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
GSS 435Brown, Black, and Blue: Queer of Color Critiques of Policing and Prisons
Instructor Horowitz The United States incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate than any country on earth. Although it comprises only 5% of the world’s population, it is home to 25% of the world’s prisoners-a population that is disproportionately black, Latino, transgender, and queer. This course begins by asking why and how racial, sexual, and gender minorities have historically been criminalized and targeted for state surveillance. We will explore the social framing of crime and criminality through examples like COINTELPRO, police raids on gay bars, the War on Drugs, the school-to-prison pipeline, the birth of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the prohibition of sex work, and the militarization of police forces. Finally, we will examine the burgeoning prison abolition movement led by queer and trans people of color and investigate alternatives to the carceral state such as restorative justice and community anti-violence projects. This course will be conducted entirely online with synchronous and asynchronous components and will feature regular guest visits from scholars, formerly incarcerated people, and community activists. Satisfies a requirement for the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement
