12 courses with the subject GSST, 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.
GSST 001Intro to Gender and Sexuality Studies1
Not what is gender and sexuality-but with whom, where, when, and how do gender and sexuality direct our sense of life, politics, and desire? With a focus on perspectives from QTBIPOC (queer, trans, black, indigenous, and people of color) and feminist-of-color cultural politics, this introduction to gender and sexuality studies surveys how the notions of “gender” and “sexuality” have become both commonplace and culturally re-defined and re-invigorated in the 20 th and 21 st centuries. Case studies in law, medicine, performance, literature, visual art, film, and contemporary media will demonstrate how the inter- and trans-disciplinary field of gender and sexuality studies can enrich how we come to know things. Through an emphasis on the critical evaluation and contextualization of personal experience, this course will familiarize students with how an increasing awareness of oppression’s complexity generates productive limits to what we think we already know and how we could know more and better. Required course for GSST minors and special majors. Humanities. W. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Fall 2026. Li. Fall 2027 Staff.
GSST 015Current Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies: Transgender Worlds1
(Cross-listed as LITR 015 ) Transgender Worlds explores transgender in diverse and transdisciplinary representational contexts such as film, literature, medical and political discourses, popular media, feminist theory and activism. We will address, among other things, the following overarching questions: How does transgender function as an umbrella term? What is transfeminism? How do transgender studies and queer theory inform each other and how do they differ? How do trans identity politics work in transnational literary, medical, psychoanalytic, political, and media representations? What does trans have to do with post-colonial discourses and intersectionality? This class is eligible for GSST and GMST majors and minors. Non-distribution. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST
(Cross-listed as ENGL 090, FMST 046 ) The history of avant-garde and experimental media has been intertwined with that of gender non-conformity and sexual dissidence. Queer theory has developed in relation to queer film texts and cultures. How do lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (lgbt) filmmakers queer sexual norms and standard media forms? Challenging classic Hollywood’s heterosexual presumption and mass media appropriations of lgbt culture, we will examine lgbt aesthetic strategies and modes of address in contexts such as the American and European avant-gardes, AIDS activism, and transnational and diasporan film. *Under special circumstances particularly well-prepared freshmen can request instructor permission to take course. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for INTP Spring 2027. Li.
GSST 021Trans Lifeworlds in a Virtual Age: Intimate Media and Desiring Spectators1
(Cross-listed with FMST 019) How do trans experiences shape the meaning of media? This seminar explores how trans-at the intersection of collective social possibility and individual embodiment-radically changes our relationships with technology. Paying particular attention to the role of spectatorial counterpublics as they emerge through histories of minoritarian performance forms and media technologies of the 20 th and 21 st centuries, we’ll explore topics like queer social dance, home video archives, somatechnologies, vlog culture, lockdown media, and queer experimental film. *Under special circumstances particularly well-prepared freshmen can request instructor permission to take course. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FMST
cross-listed with FMST 047 and DANC 039 . What does it mean to be moved? To see movement on screen? This advanced undergraduate course looks at filmic representations of dance throughout the 20 th and 21 st centuries. Treating dance on film as more than just a spectacle of entertainment or mere affirmation of cultural identity and history, we will develop critical toolkits for understanding how the politics of race (primarily Black and Asian diasporic) and gender shape interpretations of dance on film. Humanities 1 Eligible for GSST; BLST; ASAM; ESCH
How do you heal an unrecognized wound? What is the role of the aesthetic in this ethical and political dilemma? This advanced undergraduate course draws on feminist and queer psychoanalytic theory to examine over a century of inadequately-addressed violence. Running the gamut from racial, colonial, gendered, sexual, and economic violence, we will look at examples of literary, filmic, visual, and performance-based artworks that turn to varying forms of “love” to attempt mediating and re-membering unspeakable violence. *Interested students are encouraged to write to the instructor (dli3@swarthmore.edu) to indicate relevant prior courses and student research interests/motivations for taking the course. Humanities 1 Eligible for ESCH
Cross-listed with THEA 009. This hybrid practice and discussion based seminar draws on vernacular and everyday performances of repair to ground the work of intellectual inquiry. Although repair and reparations seem increasingly like impossible societal goals and foregone political ideals, feminist and queer cultural life nonetheless persists in its pursuit of mending what’s broken. This hybrid seminar will introduce to students to small-to-mid-scale practices of repair sourced from seemingly-mundane practices of feminist and queer everyday life (cosmetology, textile work, culinary arts, collage, repotting) as they offer different embodied ways of navigating a collapsing social world. Together we will practice feminist/queer intellectual repair by contextualizing and re-narrating the force of these practices within denigrated and disregarded global-south histories of labor, memory, and world-making. While previous experience with art practice and/or theory is appreciated, it is not required as long as you come with an open mind. Final projects can take the form of traditional papers or more creative projects with instructor consultation. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Li.
GSST 056Outbreak Narratives: A Medical Humanities Exploration of Literature on Germs, Vampires, and Other Plagues1
Crosslisted GMST 056/LITR 056G This Medical Humanities course invites students to pause and think about the contradiction inherent in human contact: on the one hand, we need it in order to flourish, while on the other hand, it poses potential risks. Informed by a theoretical framework that draws on insights from fields such as Disability Studies, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, this course offers students the opportunity to analyze literature depicting both contagious outbreaks and life in isolation. This literary examination will also allow students to explore the ethics of cure and human experimentation. As part of a larger focus on the ways in which cultural representations of contagion are informed by cultural norms and how, in their turn, these representations have an impact on shaping and building cultural communities, students will be asked to consider the many connotations and valences of the term “contagion.” Most simply, the word “contagion” denotes a risk of contamination, a potentially lethal danger to the exposed subject. This course invites students to go beyond this literal interpretation of the word in order to contemplate the ways in which contagion challenges the notion of an isolated, self-contained self. We will find that outbreak narratives enable us both to explore the intriguing possibility of a self with fluid boundaries that is constantly shaped by a community, and to cultivate empathy for other community members in the face of shared vulnerability. Using literature in English translation to explore contemporary reactions to cholera, tuberculosis, HIV, as well as to vampires, we will consider how race, gender, class, and historical époques shape illness stories. Authors include Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Elfriede Jelinek, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Heine, Fanny Lewald, Namwali Serpell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bertha von Suttner. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-Paired Access the class schedule to search for sections.
This course offers a deep immersion in theory in practice. Moving across the spheres of art, social activism, political theory, and medical anthropology, we will explore how intersectional and global approaches to gender and sexuality can reshape common-sense assumptions about social life. As a capstone seminar, students will be asked to bring their own interdisciplinary research projects. Students can expect to leave with a sharpened sense of interdisciplinary critique and practice, as well as methods for pursuing collaborative intellectual/political endeavors after graduation. Required for GSST Special Major.
GSST 001 . Juniors with permission of instructor. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Spring 2027. Li. Spring 2028 staff. Catalog chapter: Gender and Sexuality Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/gender-sexuality-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
