University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · Courses
WGST
168 courses with the subject WGST, 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.
WGST 101Introducing Intersectionality: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality3
An interdisciplinary exploration of the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality in American society and internationally. Topics include work; sexuality; gender relations, and images of women in literature, art, and science; and the history of feminist movements. Course readings are drawn from the humanities and the social sciences. Honors version available.
This course introduces students to the broad range of disciplinary perspectives used by the field of sexuality studies to study, teach, and create knowledge about human sexuality in various functions and forms.
This course introduces students to the broad range of disciplinary perspectives used by the field of sexuality studies to study, teach, and create knowledge about human sexuality in various functions and forms.
This Interdisciplinary course introduces tools and methods for learning about the "Latina/o American Experience." Using film, cultural products and technologies, it engages Latino/a and Latin American Studies, geography, and women's and gender studies to learn about, analyze, and reflect on the experience of peoples of Latin American ancestry across the Americas. Students may not receive credit for both LTAM 117I and IDST 117I.
This Interdisciplinary course introduces tools and methods for learning about the "Latina/o American Experience." Using film, cultural products and technologies, it engages Latino/a and Latin American Studies, geography, and women's and gender studies to learn about, analyze, and reflect on the experience of peoples of Latin American ancestry across the Americas. Students may not receive credit for both LTAM 117I and IDST 117I.
Examination of the social differentiation between men and women. Attention to the extent, causes, and consequences of sexual inequality and to changes in sex roles and their impact on interpersonal relations.
This course introduces students to Iranian women's issues through their literary works. To contextualize, we will read articles and essays on the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic backgrounds. In order to approach these literary works in a more effective manner, we will also be reading various secondary materials.
WGST 140Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Culture and Literature3
Introduces students to concepts in queer theory and recent sexuality studies. Topics include queer lit, AIDS, race and sexuality, representations of gays and lesbians in the media, political activism/literature.
This course will survey the history of women, gender relations, and notions of sex difference in the United States from the colonial era to present times, with a special emphasis on women's varied experiences and expectations across divisions of class, race, and region. Key themes will include work, politics, citizenship, reproduction, sociability, and sexuality.
WGST 167Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice in South Asia3
This course explores questions of ethics, justice, and inequality with respect to gender in modern South Asia. Each unit will probe a different aspect of social justice in order to understand the histories, politics, and expressive cultures of various disempowered communities. Intersections between gender and ethics, politics, sexuality, caste, class, and the environment will be studied in depth.
Introduction to the study of gender and sexuality in African societies. Theoretical questions relating to the cross-cultural study of gender will be a primary focus. Topics include historical perspectives on the study of kinship and family in Africa and the impact of colonialism and other forms of social change.
Introduces students to feminist theorizing on debates over gender-based oppression. Gives students tools to pursue academic work in women's studies and to understand the relationships among concepts, activism, and change. Required for majors. Strongly recommended for minors.
WGST 211Introduction to Latina Feminisms: Literature, Theory, and Activism3
Through a variety of texts that span the 20th and 21st centuries, students will be introduced to key concepts, figures, and movements in Latina feminisms. Emphasis will be placed on a diversity of historical and ethno-national perspectives as well as academic interdisciplinarity.
The course is designed to introduce a variety of ways that gender is present in how we define, interpret, and engage the broad categories of the spiritual and spiritualities. Students will learn how to analyze how gender is portrayed by spiritual and religious traditions and reflect on the socially constructed nature of those encounters.
A comparison of men and women as political actors at the mass and elite level in America. Topics considered include the "gender gap," the women's movement, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment.
This interdisciplinary course examines representations of women, concepts of gender, and women's participation in the economic, political, religious, and cultural life of the Middle Ages. Discussion and texts in English.
Examines multiple relationships among gender, communication and culture. Explores how communication creates gender and shapes relationships and how communication reflects, sustains, and alters cultural views of gender. Honors version available.
This seminar will explore the lives and work of women in contemporary art through a combination of readings, films, interviews, studio visits with area artists, and visits to museums and galleries. We will engage questions of identity, gender, sexuality, politics, and cultural representation and how these affect the creativity, media, and final output of women artists.
WGST 232Identity in Transit: Performing the Self through Photography3
This course asks how gendered identity is shaped over time in relation to different cultural, social, and historical circumstances. Examines the practices of photographers who present themselves and others in assumed identities to comment on shifting social roles and challenge stereotypes. Students use photography to document performance and create self-portraits.
This course will provide an introduction to Latina literature. We will read a variety of genres from a range of ethno-national perspectives and examine such topics as immigration, identity, mother-daughter relationships, and sexuality.
This course focuses on how institutions and experiences of motherhood are shaped by race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and religion, giving particular attention to popular notions of ''good'' and ''bad'' mothers, explorations of maternal feelings, and examinations of mothering as gendered labor and care.
WGST 237Rebel, Lover, Martyr: Gender and Sexuality in North and South Korean Screen Cultures3
This course introduces students to the history of North and South Korean film and television through the lens of gender and sexuality. In so doing, it explores the multiple forms of the Korean self and the diverse shapes that Korean identity has taken across the modern and contemporary eras.
Course examines law, religion, medicine, social practices, and ideologies in the lives of women in ancient Greece, from Homer to Hellenistic Egypt, using literature, art, and epigraphy. Honors version available.
Course examines the life of women in ancient Rome, from the first beginnings of the organized community in Rome through the early Empire, a period of about 900 years. Also explores aspects of the lives of women in provinces governed by Rome. Honors version available.
Exploration of gender constructs, what it meant to be a woman or a man, in antiquity, as revealed in literary, historical, and archaeological sources. Readings from Homer, Euripides, Plato, Ovid, Virgil, Juvenal, Petronius, and other ancient authors.
WGST 244Gender and Sexuality in Western Christianity3
An examination of the development of teachings on issues of gender and sexuality through the history of Western Christianity, with particular focus on contemporary controversies. Honors version available.
An exploration of gender on the musical stage in the past and present, with an emphasis on female-identified creators and characters, onstage and behind the scenes.
WGST 249Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice3
The first goal of this super course is to give students real tools for how to address multiple modes of difference and identity formations like race, gender, class, and sexuality.
WGST 253A Social History of Jewish Women in America3
This course examines the history and culture of Jewish women in America from their arrival in New Amsterdam in 1654 to the present and explores how gender shaped this journey.
WGST 259Towards Emancipation? Women in Modern Europe3
This course examines and compares the situation of women in politics, the work force, society and family from the French Revolution to the new women's movement in the 1970s with a focus on Britain, France and Germany. One major theme is the history of the struggle for women's emancipation.
A broad based perspective of women's participation in sport including history of participation, physiological differences, and socio-cultural influences including work, politics, family, economics, and gender roles and identity.
An interdisciplinary exploration of how gender shapes participation, representation, and power in sport. Drawing from feminist, historical, scientific, and cultural perspectives, the course examines women's and gender-diverse experiences in athletics, policies like Title IX, and ongoing debates about embodiment, equity, and the gender binary in sport.
Focused study of how issues of gender shape literary themes, characters, and topics, and the composition and reception of literary texts. Honors version available.
Traces the development of sexual identities and changes in masculine and feminine ideals from Tsarist Russia through the post-Soviet period with emphasis on politics, society, and popular culture.
Introduction to feminist theory and its implications for the study and practice of political theory. Topics: women in feminist critiques of the Western political tradition, schools of feminist political theory.
An examination of the individual and collective experiences of black women in America from slavery to the present and the evolution of feminist consciousness.
This course surveys the breadth of the field of transgender studies through an interdisciplinary lens. This course will outline trans history from 16th century to the present as well as current topics addressed by scholars in the field.
Introduction to feminist aesthetics and film theory by the examination of the representation of women in German cinema from expressionism to the present. All materials and discussions in English. Previously offered as GERM/WGST 250.
This class is an interdisciplinary study of masculinities as theorized by feminists and shaped by race, class, sexuality, gender identity, age, ability, and nationality. Meanings of masculinities will be addressed at multiple levels - historical, structural, cultural, and interpersonal - and in multiple sites - childhood, adolescence, the body, education, work, sports, popular culture, immigration, gender violence, and mass incarceration.
WGST 275Moral and Philosophical Issues of Gender in Society3
A survey of feminist perspectives on topics such as the meaning of oppression, sexism and racism, sex roles and stereotypes, ideals of female beauty, women in the workplace, pornography, rape. Honors version available.
Examines what it means to be male, female, and other gendered categories in different societies. Focus on institutions, groups, and individuals that both shape and challenge how gender is understood, organized, and enacted.
The role of women in scientific domains throughout history and a consideration of the status of women and men as scientists. The development of science as a cultural practice.
WGST 280Women and Gender in Latin American History3
Examines the experiences of women and gender relations in Latin American societies from pre-Columbian times to the present, providing a new perspective on the region's historical development.
Through a diverse set of texts, students will examine the role of armed conflict in forming United States empire in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will also consider the gendered contradictions of freedom and historical embodiments of war and violence.
This course will acquaint students with how African American women have been depicted (and depicted themselves) in 20th- and 21st-century media. The course will examine representations of African American women in several aspects of culture including film, art, print, television, theater, and music.
Topics are announced in advance and reflect the interest of the particular instructor. Each course will concern itself with a study in depth of some problem or issue in women's studies.
Subject
WGST
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credits
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 9 total credits.
WGST 299Special Topics in Women's and Gender Studies, FC-GLOBAL3
Topics are announced in advance and reflect the interest of the particular instructor. Each course will concern itself with a study in depth of some problem or issue in women's studies.
Subject
WGST
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credits
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 9 total credits.
This course provides an overview of language and power studies. Issues: sexist and sex-neutral language; languages of subcultures defined by gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity; hate speech; "politically correct" language.
WGST 313Women and the Law in Africa and the Middle East3
Explores women's and men's engagement with colonial and post-colonial legal systems with a focus on the 19th through 21st centuries. Topics include customary law, Islamic law, women's rights as human rights, disputation and conflict resolution. We will ask the question: "how does gender influence how women and men navigate legal systems?" Course previously offered as WMST 289.
In Christianity and Islam, bodies populate the afterlife. What those bodies look like, how they act, what they feel are subjects of popular and scholarly contentious, long standing debates. The various answers that have been offered in these debates deeply affect Christian and Muslim responses to the body, sexuality, race, and gender in this life. This course examines how theories about sex, gender, and identity are constructed within two religious traditions' histories, ideas, and theories.
WGST 325Encountering Art in the Unexpected: Borderlands and Story in Contemporary American Visual Art3
This course focuses on the contemporary art and social change movement. We will learn how to use site-specific and performative art interventions to make invisible borders, boundaries, and other issues visible and innovatively to create engaged and sustained dialogue.
We examine works written by Middle Eastern women. We will begin with reading speeches and short stories in the 1860s. We will focus on topics such as Middle Eastern women and feminism and the West; women and nationalism; women and colonialism; women and patriarchy; women, sexuality, and religion.
WGST 330Women's Health Activism in Twentieth Century America3
Course examines the history of women's health activism and advocacy in the 20th century United States. Course materials and discussions will trace the development of several women's health movements and causes, health activists' tactics and rhetoric, and the complex dynamic between lay activists and medical professionals.
Required preparation, at least one AAAD or WMST course. This course seeks to familiarize students with scholarly debates on the importance of gender as a category of analysis, while gaining a greater sense of the African past.
Examines interpersonal violence, the factors that enable it, and prevention strategies. The course examines violence on both individual and structural levels, considering perpetrators, victims/survivors, and bystanders and drawing upon the expertise of local organizers and service providers in the system of care.
WGST 350Spitting in the Wind: "American" Women, Art, and Activism3
This course uses films, novels, and essays to engage with various notions of activism (as represented in art and social justice organizations) at play in hemispheric America.
WGST 352Rahtid Rebel Women: An Introduction to Caribbean Women3
This course uses films, novels, and essays to move beyond sun, sand, and sex representations of Caribbean women to examine how they negotiate imperial and national definitions of their place.
The course examines and compares the images of war and gender that movies from different time periods and countries propagate and explores the different factors that influence these images and thereby the perception and recollection of war. Honors version available.
This course will explore women's experiences in America from 1500 to 1865. Topics will include the ways in which women have shaped American politics, economy, society, and culture.
WGST 356American Women's History, 1865 to the Present3
This course will examine the changing lives of women in the United States after 1865: Their contribution to economy, society, cultural change, and political struggles.
WGST 360Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Histories in the United States3
This course investigates the history of people who might today be defined as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) in the United States. Key themes will include identity formation, culture, politics, medical knowledge, discrimination, and community.
In certain eras, Mary has been more central to Catholic devotion than Christ. This course explores doctrine, liturgy, and popular devotion centering on the Virgin in medieval European Christianity, her impact on colonial religion in the New World, and her roles in Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islam. Honors version available.
Public policies affect men and women differently, and they participate differently in the policy-making process. This course examines several key areas of public policy, some expressly related to gender or sexuality and others that have significantly gendered impacts, organized around four themes: family, labor, body, and the world.
WGST 368Women of Color in Contemporary United States Social Movements3
This course will examine the role of women of color as grassroots activists, leaders, and thinkers in the new social and community movements of the postwar period.
WGST 370Race, Sexuality, and Disability in the History of Western Christianity3
Over time, Christian institutions and traditions have helped constitute contemporary narratives of race, sexuality, and disability in society. This course examines shifting definitions and specific case studies from the premodern era through to contemporary discourses and polemics in America. Honors version available.
An investigation of the forms, characteristics, and variety of the mystical experiences of women in medieval and modern Christianity, with comparative consideration of women mystics and spiritual leaders in at least two other religious traditions.
The development of a women's literary tradition in the works of such writers as George Sand, George Eliot, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Yourcenar.
This course will explore how Americans from 1600 to the present have defined what is masculine and what is feminine and how they have constructed their identities around those definitions.
WGST 380Almost Despicable Heroines in Japanese and Western Literature3
Authors' use of narrative techniques to create the separation between heroines and their fictional societies and sometimes also to alienate readers from the heroines. Austen, Flaubert, Ibsen, Arishima, Tanizaki, Abe.
Trajectory of women writers of the Portuguese-speaking world, with main focus on texts of the 20th and 21st century. Analysis of works within a social-historical and literary context.
The course covers the history of black women in the United States from the 18th century to the present. It deals with such themes as work, family, community, sexuality, politics, religion, and culture. Previously offered as HIST/WGST 569.
WGST 383Black Feminist Thought & the Speculative Imagination3
This class places transnational Black feminist thought in conversation with Black speculative fiction from across the diaspora, particularly emphasizing sci-fi and fantasy narratives set in dystopic or post-apocalyptic worlds. By reading these two traditions of writing together, we study how both genres theorize the potential sources of, responses to, and preventative measures against forms of political, social, and environmental catastrophe.
WGST 386Comparative Studies in Culture, Gender, and Global Forces3
Examines participatory development theory and practice in Africa and the United States in the context of other intervention strategies and with special attention to culture and gender.
WGST 388The International Politics of Sexual and Reproductive Health3
Permission of the instructor. Takes a feminist political economy perspective on debates over current health issues of international concern, including abortion, population control, and sexually transmitted infections. Focuses on the United States, Mexico, and Kenya, as well as on international organizations and social movements.
Permission of the instructor. A supervised internship designed to provide experience working in organizations concerned with women's or gender issues. Must be arranged with a faculty advisor during the semester prior to the internship. See the department's website for important information.
Permission of curriculum chair. Faculty supervison required. Independent reading and research. A student can repeat the course as long as they work on a different topic each time they enroll.
WGST 399Special Topics in Women's and Gender Studies, FC-PAST3
Topics are announced in advance and reflect the interest of the particular instructor. Each course will concern itself with a study in depth of some problem or issue in women's studies.
Subject
WGST
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credits
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 9 total credits.
This course has two main purposes. First, it will build on the work students have done in WGST 202; students will explore more deeply significant trends, key theoretical texts, and epistemological and methodological debates in feminist thought. Second, by emphasizing connections among theory, method, evidence, and analysis, it will prepare students for the senior capstone course in which they develop and carry out a major research project.
WGST 405Gender, Sexuality, Empire and Asian Pacific America3
This advanced undergraduate course examines the diverse terms by which empire and sexuality have produced and reflected gender in Asian Pacific America. This seminar brings together two strains of politicized critical analysis: queer/feminist studies and postcolonial studies through the interdisciplinary standpoint of Asian American studies. Close readings are drawn from the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
Permission of the instructor. Compares the histories, experiences, identities, and political struggles of sexual and gender minorities in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Américas and at the United Nations.
This course examines the differing philosophical approaches in queer theory (psychoanalytic, cultural, transnational) in order to understand how scholars have incorporated discussions of sex, sexuality, gender, and race into their own work on religions.
WGST 418Family and Gender in Early Modern China and Korea3
This course explores family and kinship in early modern China and Korea through the lens of gender and sexuality. In particular, it invites students to think beyond the bias that women in premodern East Asia were victims of patriarchy to understand their active participation in their world-making as well as their dynamic imagination and expression through writing, working, learning, loving.
WGST 438Gender and Performance: Constituting Identity3
Examines the culturally and historically variable ways in which individuals constitute themselves as cis- or transgendered subjects or nonbinary subjects, drawing upon extant expressive resources, modifying them, and expanding options available to others. Performance of self as the product of esthetically marked or unmarked, everyday actions.
WGST 440Health in Socialist, Liberal, and Illiberal Upheavals3
This course examines the health ideals and outcomes produced by historical experiences of socialism, liberalism, and authoritarianism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will learn about anthropological frameworks examining health in political-economic and socio-cultural contexts. Cases will address reproductive and sexual health, infectious disease, and others.
WGST 441The Anthropology of Gender, Health, and Illness3
The course explores cultural beliefs, practices, and social conditions that influence health and sickness of women and men from a cross-cultural perspective.
The media play a critical role in the construction and contestation of ideas about gender, class, and race. Using a range of methods, students will analyze media messages past and present to understand how gender, race, and class influence media production and consumption.
This course takes a cross-cultural approach to understanding how reproduction and associated phenomena become arenas where political debates are played out, and where global and local social relations are contested.
Conceptualizations of gender, race, and class and how, separately and in combination, they are interpreted by the wider society. Emphasis on how black and working-class women make sense of their experiences at work and within the family.
This course examines the intersections between migration processes and the political, economic, and social dimensions of health and well-being among migrants, their families, and their communities.
WGST 447IGender, Space, and Place in the Middle East3
Examines gender, space, and place relationships in the modern Middle East. Investigates shifting gender geographies of colonialism, nationalism, modernization, and globalization in this region. (GHA)
This course examines the history of women's involvement in the political process in the United States from the founding to the present. Students will examine women's historical role in the political process, the different ways that women have engaged as political actors (even when disenfranchised), and the issues that became defined as women's issues.
WGST 450Sexuality in Jewish Tradition and History3
This course deals with various topics related to sexuality and marriage in Jewish tradition and history: sex outside of marriage, wedding ceremonies, regulations of marital sex, menstruation, homosexuality, and more.
Required preparation, at least one ANTH or one WMST course. A discussion of gender and sex roles and sexuality in past cultures; a cross-cultural examination of ways of knowing about past human behavior.
WGST 465Gender, (Im)migration, and Labor in Latina Literature3
Students will explore the representation of intersections between gender, identity, immigration, and migration in Latina/o literature. Emphasis will be placed on the intersections between labor, migration, and United States immigration policy.
WGST 471Gender and Sexuality in Middle Eastern Literature3
We examine gender and sexuality in literature written by various authors from the Middle East. Our discussions will focus on the significance of sexuality, harems, same-sex desire and homosexuality, construction of female sexuality, masculinity, contraception and abortion, the institution of marriage, gay/lesbian underground subcultures, and social media as sexual outlet.
WGST 475Philosophical Issues in Gender, Race, and Class3
Examines in greater depth and complexity one or more of the issues addressed in PHIL 275, investigating issues of gender, race, and class within the dominant theories of philosophy.
This course will examine the unprecedented surge of feminist thought and activism in the postwar United States. Course materials and discussions will trace feminists' varied conceptions of empowered womanhood and their expectations of the state, society at large, and each other. Honors version available.
Examines in greater depth and complexity current issues in feminist political theory. Topics: theories of subjectivity and solidarity, feminist poststructuralist and post-Marxist thinking, gender in the public sphere.
Spanning the ancient, medieval, and modern West, this course explores normative and non-normative female sexualities, ideas about female bodies, and the regulation of female sexuality by families, religions, and states.
This course explores "queer" expressions in Chinese literature and visual culture from 1949 through the twenty-first century. It surveys a combination of all-time classics and lesser-known cultural texts featuring non-heteronormative sexual desire and gender-bending performance. We mobilize queer as a broad site of critique beyond Western models of the concept, asking not only how queer challenges normative bodyminds, but also how it negotiates notions of time, space, affect, and the neoliberal order.
This seminar draws on feminist and philosophical theory, including the works of Plato, Butler, and Foucault, as well as postcolonial theory, to explore the categories of sex and gender in South Asian religions. We also analyze the moral cultivation of the self in relation to gender identity in South Asia.
WGST 486Exploration of Russian "Women's Prose" and Svetlana Alexievich (Nobel Prize in Literature 2015)3
Using Alexievich as our beacon, we will explore the writers behind the term "Russian Women's Prose": Valeria Narbikova, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya. The course will delve into gender identity and body politics as they manifest themselves in the literary texts of lasting aesthetic quality and social relevance. Taught in English; some readings in Russian for qualified students.
WGST 489Women, Margin, Writing, and Transnational Japan3
This course explores literary and media art produced by women from various political and social margins of Japan, voiced from their transnational subjectivities. The transnational situations include: immigration, colonialism, diaspora, and international coalition as well as globalizing feminist alliance. By focusing on literature, film, and performance, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to women's creative political statements.
This course explores the growing body of research on gender, empire, and nation/nationalism in modern European history by focusing on problems of national belongings and citizenship, state and nation building and empire formation, and the gendered discourses and representations of nation and empire.
Classic writings and debates relating to gender and development, with emphasis on recent work that critiques conventional development models. The scope is global, with special attention to Latin America and to such questions as how alternative approaches to gender, culture, and development may be more inclusive of diverse peoples and grassroots movements for change.
WGST 51First-Year Seminar: Race, Sex, and Place in America3
This first-year seminar will expose students to the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, and gender and how these have shaped the American city since 1945.
This course introduces students to new research on the history of gender, the military, and war in a comparative perspective. It explores the interrelations between changing military systems, types of warfare, the gender order, as well as political, social, and cultural currents in modern history.
Course examines the speeches and other texts that announced and embodied the goals and political strategies of multiple branches of three waves of feminist activism in the United States.
This course examines historical developments in the study of women and gender in Judaism. We will discuss efforts to challenge and revitalize Jewish tradition through the lens of gender theory and other critical interpretive approaches. Topics to be addressed include biblical interpretation, Jewish law, feminist Jewish theology and liturgy, the renewal of ritual, the rabbinic ordination of women, gender identity, race, sexuality, queer, trans, and non-binary approaches, and representations of these themes in various media.
Introduction to the theoretical and practical contributions of African American feminists who maintain that issues of race, gender, sexuality, and social class are central, rather than peripheral, to any history or strategy for bringing about social justice in the United States.
This course will present an overview of the variety and diversity of contemporary American women's experiences of creative expressions. We explore how women have been historically excluded from the arts.
WGST 56First-Year Seminar: Writing Women in Modern China3
Compares the rhetoric of equality between the sexes presented by late Qing, May Fourth, and communist thinkers to perspectives on gender and society by 20th-century Chinese women writers. Honors version available.
Explores through performance contemporary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and feminist thought by women of color in the United States. Honors version available.
This course combines readings and field work in oral history with the study of performance as a means of interpreting and conveying oral history texts. Honors version available.
This course will discuss theories, methods, and empirical research findings on the physical, cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of the psychology of women, as well as topics such as feminist psychology, intersectionality, bias in psychological research, sexual orientation, sexuality, lifespan development, work, and health. Men and masculinity, the psychology of transgender persons, and a critique of the gender binary are also discussed.
Required preparation, one course in gender or non-Western societies. Permission of the instructor for students lacking the preparation. Focuses on feminist perspectives on imperialism, the effects of imperialism on colonized and European women, women's participation in anti-imperialist movements; and the legacies of imperialism for feminism today.
The image of woman in 16th- and 17th-century Hispanic literature. A study of texts by Spanish and Spanish American authors. Readings in Spanish or in English translation. Lectures in English.
WGST 64Plantation Lullabies: Literature by and about African American Women3
This course introduces students to different ways of understanding plantation culture and how that culture persists today, using close reading strategies and gender analysis. The class will examine film, literature, music, and poetry.
WGST 66First-Year Seminar: Growing Up Girl, Globally3
Course introduces students to literature by women from around the world, particularly stories of a girl's transition to womanhood. Close reading strategies are used to examine films, novels, and poetry.
WGST 662Gender Issues in Planning and Development3
Permission of the instructor required for undergraduates. Examination of the environmental and health risks, policy institutions, processes, instruments, policy analysis, and major elements of American environmental policy. Lectures and case studies.
WGST 664Body and Suffering in Christian Mysticism3
Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Medieval Christians consistently focused on the suffering body as a means of reflecting on Christ's sacrifice. This course considers how medical theories of cognition, gender, and pain influenced the potential role of the body in medieval mystical experience.
WGST 665Queer Latina/o Literature, Performance, and Visual Art3
This course explores literature, performance art, film, and photography by Latinas and Latinos whose works may be described as "queer" and that question terms and norms of cultural dominance.
WGST 666Queer Latina/o Photography and Literature3
This course explores Latina/o literature about photography in relation to photography by "queer" Latina/o artists and, through this double focus, poses certain questions about identity, subjectivity, and culture.
WGST 67HFirst-Year Seminar: Sexuality and Salvation3
In Christianity and Islam, bodies populate the afterlife. What those bodies look like, how they act, what they feel, and who they engage with are subjects of contentious and long-standing debates. The various answers offered in these debates deeply affect Christian and Muslim responses to the body, sexuality, race, and gender in this life. This course examines how these two religious traditions' diversity of histories and ideas construct theories of identity.
WGST 68First-Year Seminar: Assumed Identities: Performance in Photography3
Uses photography and its aspects of role playing, performance, and documentation to understand the construction of identity. Looks at historical and contemporary photographers who use assumed identities to explore their changing identity roles and challenge society's stereotypes. Individual and group performance/photography projects working with still photography, video, and the Internet.
Senior standing and permission of the department. The first semester of the yearlong honors thesis in women's and gender studies. Completing WGST 691H fulfills the WGST 695 requirement for the major.
WGST 695Senior Seminar: Principles of Feminist Inquiry3
Required preparation, at least one additional WGST course and senior standing or permission of the instructor. Required for majors; strongly recommended for minors. An advanced writing-intensive course drawing on a student's interests and background. Major research of specific topics utilizing feminist perspectives. Honors version available.
WGST 70First-Year Seminar: Feminism and Food Justice3
This course will explore feminist perspectives on food justice. We will focus on the gendered labor of food production and current problems, including the role of agriculture in climate change and consumption patterns. Material will cover both historical and contemporary periods but focus on 20th and 21st century United States. Students will complete several short writing assignments, one interactive project, and a final project.
An introduction to feminist literary theory, focusing on feminist writings from France (in translation) and their sources in psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Anglo-American counterparts and adaptations of the French theorists in the United States will also be treated.
WGST 730Feminist and Gender Theory for Historians3
Readings in contemporary feminist and gender theory, focused especially on theories that address the construction, writing, and general practice of history.
This seminar deals in depth and cross-culturally with the nature of gender and the ways in which social comprehension of gender, gender status, and gender relationships impinge upon differential experience of health and sickness of men and women from a historical and contemporary perspective.
WGST 776Gender, Race, and Class Issues in Education3
Provides an understanding of (and remedies for) the racism, sexism, and class divisions that schools can perpetuate. Examines curriculum, counseling, and interaction in classrooms; structure and leadership; and fundamental assumptions.
WGST 777Gender, Policy, and Leadership in Education3
Covers feminist critiques of organizational and political power structures in readings and discussions leading to group and individual research projects.
Explores the complex interaction between women's studies, feminist studies and gender studies as these fields have evolved within and across academic disciplines, intersecting with issues of race, class, ethnicity, masculinity, sexuality, and with practices of queer theory and cultural studies.
WGST 796Graduate Independent Reading and Research1-3
Permission of the instructor. Intensive reading and research in a student's chosen area of interest under faculty supervision. Results in a written report.
WGST 820Critical Ethnic Studies (CES): New Perspectives3
This course is devised to provide graduate students interested in theoretical interdisciplinary work with a sense of prevailing questions and critiques important to CES. CES takes on the more difficult questions of intersectional work, as it thinks through sovereignty and emancipation, identity and ontology, place, space and temporality. Each iteration of the course works itself through new perspectives in the field, challenging students to create new methodologies for their own work.
WGST 858Seminar in Feminist Studies of Film and Television3
Graduate standing required. This graduate seminar explores theoretical and practical points of contact between feminism, film, and television using psychoanalysis, narrative analysis, ideological analysis, and cultural studies.
