| Women's Studies | 109 Dickinson | 538-2257 |
Politics of Patriarchy
Examines women's position in contemporary society through a variety of
experiential and theoretical perspectives. The first section examines women's
lives through the writings of women of diverse historical, political, and economic
experience. The second section examines women's lives as defined by others and
examines sexism and other oppressions manifested in various sociopolitical
arenas. The course concludes with feminist views of women recreating their lives.
WS 200 (01)/ HIST 276
This course examines the history of women and the cultural construction of gender
in the United States since the end of the last century. How have class, race, and
ethnicity shaped the history of women's work, debates over female sexuality,
women's attempts at social change, and representations of women in cultural and
political contexts? In what ways has gender contributed to racial consciousness
and class formation in the United States? Using primary and secondary material,
we will examine "women's experience" in the realms of work, politics, sexuality,
and reproduction.
WS 200 (02)/ HIST 296
An exploration of the roles and values of Chinese women in traditional roles and
values of Chinese women in traditional and modern times. Topics will include the
structure of the family and women's productive work, rules for female behavior,
women's literature, and the relationship between feminism and other political and
social movements in revolutionary China. Readings from biographies, classical
literature, feminist scholarship, and modern fiction.
WS 203 (01)/ ENG 270
In this cross-cultural examination of nineteenth-century American women writers,
we will compare a number of works of fiction, prose, poetry and autobiography. We
will discuss how writers created sophisticated and insightful critiques of
American culture, and imagined or re-presented new American identities and
histories. We will also consider tensions between "sentimental" idealism and
political pragmatism, restrictive domesticity and dangerous autonomy, and
passionless femininity and expressed sexuality. Authors may include Alcott,
Child, Fuller, Harper, Hopkins, Stowe, Taylor, and Wilson.
WS 203 (02) / FRENCH 220
Study of this crucial and problematic relationship as it is presented in works by
selected French and Francophone women writers. Analysis of the mother/daughter
bond as literary theme, social institution, psychological dynamic and metaphor for
female creativity.
WS 218/ REL 218
This course is a critical study of significant women (Anne Hutchinson, Mother Ann
Lee, Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen Gould White, Aimee Semple McPherson, Dorothy Day, and
others) and their roles in the pluralistic character of American religion. It
raises central questions concerning leadership, marginality, deviant behavior, and
criticism of women. Students are expected to contribute to the course by their
participation and individual research.
WS 236
This course attempts to explore "public anxiety" with sexuality and sexual
representation. Sexuality and gender are explored not only in terms of the
"pornography debates" or "queer sexuality" rather the persistent negotiation of
sexuality in everyday life. The course will be structured in two parts. Part one
will examine the negotiation of sexuality "structurally." In other words,
attention will be in examining sexuality in structures such as the state. For
instance, policies surrounding "sexual harassment" in workspaces will be on eof
the sites that draw on this linkage. Here we will look at the maintenance of
heterosexual narratives and the policing of "deviancy." The second part will
explore gender and sexuality in popular visual narratives such as film and
television. These narratives will be explored as generative mechanisms for public
anxiety and policy control of sexuality through structures. Popular visual
narratives are, therefore, considered as sites that allow for multiple sexual
representations deemed threatening towards the maintenance of normative
heterosexuality.
WS 250/(Wags 44)
This course is an examination of the political economy of Third World countries
concentrating on the interlinked impact of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy
on women's lives; the organizational base of women's political activity in those
countries. The course aims to examine the possibilities of global feminism as an
international movement for political and economic transformation.
WS 333 (01)/ ENG 373
American writers have had a particular fascination with environmental issues.
This theme becomes especially interesting in the context of gender study,
revealing patterns of difference in the way men and women depict their
relationship to nature and its preservation. A study of selected works by writers
such as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Earnest Hemingway, and William Faulkner
beside the works of women writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Willa
Cather and Zora Neale Hurston.
WS 333 (02)/ PSYCH 319
This course examines social psychology and sociological theories and research
addressing why women do more housework and child care than men. It pays special
attention to the situation of dual earner families and considers class and ethnic
differences on the nature of this inequality and the barriers to full equality at
home.
WS 333 (03)/ HIST 351
This course explores how some women expressed, in writing and by other action,
their understanding of the social, ideological, and political struggles in which
they were engaged between the early fourteenth and late seventeenth centuries. It
asks what roles they played in the construction of the public discourse and the
state, the reshaping of the family, the reconstruction of Christianity, and the
change from medieval feudal estates to early modern agrarian capitalism. Readings
will include the works of writers such as Christine de Pisan, the Paston women,
Anne Askew, Lady Mary Wroth, Elizabeth Carey, Lady Eleanor coronation pageants,
public ceremonies, household accounts, and diaries.
WS 333 (04)
In this course, we examine scientific discourses on the body as well as feminist,
queer, and antiracist approahes, interventions, and responses. Drawing on the
literatures from cultural studies of science, technology, and medicine, gay and
lesbian and queer studies, the history of science and medicine, anthropology,
biology, and feminist theory, we will consider such topics as: scientific
constructions of raced-sexed-gendered bodies, scientific constructions of
(homo)sexualities, mainstream and counter-discourses concerning hermaphrodism and
intersexuality, transgendered bodies, cyborg bodies, scientific constructions of
disease, disabilities, and abnormalities, reproductive technologies, medical
ethics, AIDS, lesbian health issues, and environmental racism.
WS 333 (05)
Questions of power, agency, structure, materiality, bodies, subjectivities, and
discursive practices have been central to both feminist and queer theories. In
this course, we will focus on these issues, exploring in particular the tensions
among poststructuralist, Marxist, and materialist approaches. In analyzing
contemporary theories of gender and sexuality, we will pay particular attention to
issues of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and globalization. Key
problematics include: the nature and operation of power, the relationship between
materiality and discourse, and the relationship between theory and practice.
Theorists to be discussed include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Rosemary
Hennessey, Jacqui Alexander, Leela Fernandex, Elizabeth Grosz, John E'Emilio,
Monique Wittig, Gayatri Spivak, Steve Seidman, Stuart Hall, and Gayle Rubin.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 11:00-12:15 p.m.
J. Grossholtz
U.S. Women Since 1890
Tuesday, Thursday 8:35-9:50 a.m.
Mary Renda
Women in Chinese History
Monday, Wednesday 2:30-3:45 pm
J. Lipman
19th Century American Women Writers
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
L. Brown
Mothers and Daughters
Monday, Wednesday 11-12:15 p.m.
E. Gelfand
Women in American Religious History
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00-12:15 p.m.
Jane Crosthwaite
Sexuality and Gender
Monday, Wednesday 11:00-12:15 p.m.
R. Oza
Women's Activism in Global Perspective
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00-3:30 p.m., Class to be held at Amherst College
Margaret Hunt
Kristin Bumiller
Amrita Basu
Nature and Gender
Thursday 1:00-3:50 p.m.
L. Glasser
Gender & Domestic Labor
Wednesday 1:00-2:50 p.m.
F. Deutsch
Gender, Language & Power
Tuesday 1:00-3:50 p.m.
C. Collette
Harold Garrett-Goodyear
Beyond Nature/Culture: Feminist, Queer
Monday 1:00-3:50 p.m.
K. Barad
Feminist and Queer Theory
Tuesday 1:00-3:50 p.m.
K. Barad
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WOST Program Departmental Component |
Women of Color Graduate Level Winter 2000 |
Amherst College Hampshire College Smith College |