| WS 101s (01) |
Introduction to Women's Studies Tuesday, Thursday 2:40-3:55 p.m. |
Martha Ackmann |
This course offers an overview of women's position in society and culture by examining women's lives from a variety of experiential and theoretical perspectives. The first section examines works by women that illuminate both the shared and the diverse social, psychological, political, and economic realities of their experience; the second section introduces analyses of sexism and oppression, with a focus on different frameworks for making and evaluating feminist arguments. The course concludes with visionary feminist views of women recreating their lives.
| WS 200s (01) Hist 253s |
Magicians, Witches & Demons Monday, Wednesday 1:15-2:30 |
Barbara Stephenson |
White and black magic were practiced in Europe for centuries before the high Middle Ages saw an important shift in the definition of witchcraft. Instead of magicians as healers with herbal lore, in the late medieval period the Church defined them as witches whose power came from the devil. We will explore how, from being a necessary if frightening aspect of life in a magical world, witchcraft became a heresy based on Satanic pacts and rituals, and how the persecution of witches culminated in a violent witchcraze at the same time that many Enlightenment philosophers were advocating rationality as the human ideal.
| WS 200 (02)/ Hist 296 |
The Querelle des Femmes and Feminism Tuesday, Thursday 1:15-2:30 p.m. |
Barbara Stephenson |
The Querelle des Femmes was a centuries-long debate over the nature of women that began by questioning whether women were inherently good or evil before shifting the focus to whether women were capable of rational thought. As education became more important for the ruling aristocracy, the issue of educating women came to the fore. Heavily influenced by both the Querelle and the Enlightenment, early feminist movements in Europe shifted the argument away from rationality to women's ability to contribute to society. How did this intellectual dispute redefine women's political roles? We will use a variety of primary and secondary sources to answer this question.
|
WS203s (01)/ Engl 246 |
Modern Irish Literature Tuesday, Thursday 1:15-2:30 |
Amy Martin |
Introduces students to literature of modern Ireland beginning with Swift and ending with writers of the Irish literary revival and Irish modernists. The syllabus will also focus on Irish women writers and their literary interventions concerning colonial history, nationalism, and Unionism. We will pay particular attention to representations of ideas of Irishness through the categories of religion, race, gender, and culture. The course encourages students to think about how the genres, styles, and forms of Irish writing are determined by the experience of colonial trauma and the imperative to imagine national identity.
|
WS 203s (02)/ Engl 271 |
Twentieth-Century American Women Writers Tuesday, Thursday 1:15-2:30 p.m. |
Elizabeth Young |
Examination of the work of a variety of 20th-century women writers in the United States, focusing on the genre of prose fiction and the themes of gender, race, and sexuality. Particular attention will be paid to developments in African American women's writing, to Southern writers, and lesbian literary representation. Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Gertrude Stein, Alice Walker, Edith Wharton, and Hisaye Yamamoto.
| WS 208 |
Introduction to Feminist Theory Tuesday, Thursday 1:15-2:30 p.m. |
Karen Barad |
This course is an introduction to feminist theories, including an exploration of liberal, radical, socialist, Marxist, materialist, and poststructuralist approaches. Emphasis is on the relationship of gender to race, class, nationality, ethnicity, and other social variables.
| WS 270/ Geog 209s |
Women and the Environment Monday, Wednesday 11:00-12:15 p.m. |
Giovanna Di Chiro |
People's interactions with their environments are socially constructed. In this seminar, some of the ways in which women and girls interact differently with the environment are examined. Topics include: women and nature, women in agricultural systems, women and environment/health/disease, women in earth and environmental movements, and fieldwork and researcher-informant relations.
| WS 333s (01) |
Science and the Body Wednesday 1:00-3:50 p.m. |
Karen Barad |
This course will examine scientific discourses on the body as well as feminist, queer, and antiracist approaches and interventions. 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, (homo)sexualities, intersexualities, transgendered and cyborg bodies, disease and disabilities, as well as reproductive technologies, AIDS, lesbian health issues, and environmental racism.
|
WS 333s (02)/ Engl 321 |
Gender and Colonialism in Victorian Culture Wednesday 1:00-3:50 p.m. |
Amy Martin |
This course will examine the ways in which British colonialism is represented in and shaped by Victorian literature and popular culture. We will investigate the politics of gender and colonialism in nineteenth century cultural production, suggesting that British imperialist discourse cannot be understood unless we use gender as a primary category of analysis. Alongside writings by Carlyle, C. Bronte, Haggard, Eliot, Forster, political cartoons, scientific writing, and advertisements, we will read feminist postcolonial theory by Spivak, Sharpe, McClintock and others.
|
WS 333s (03)/ Psych 319 |
Gender and Domestic Labor Wednesday 1:00-2:50 p.m. |
Francine Deutsch |
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 333s (04)/ Soci 305 |
Sociology of Gender Tuesday, Thursday 1:15-2:30 p.m. |
Eleanor Townsley |
This course focuses on the social production of gender relationships across a range of institutional, interactional, intellectual, and cultural contexts. The syllabus is structured around selections from major social, political, economic, and cultural theories of gender in addition to several exemplary empirical studies. Weekly topics include kinship and socialization, the contemporary moral orders of masculinity and femininity, family organization, legal systems and nation-states, war and rape, and the gendered organization and deployment of "expert" authority in a range of social settings.
|
WS 333s (05)/ Relig 332 |
The Shakers Tuesday, Thursday 11:00-12:15 p.m. |
Jane Crosthwaite |
This course will examine the historical and cultural creation of the Shaker society, the religious vision of an alternative society whose birth and development paralleled that of the new American nation. By contrast and by imitation, the separate Shaker route thus offers an intriguing critique of American society and its values and an unusual laboratory for examining a religious community based on a dual-godhead.
| Polit 207 |
Women and the Law Monday, Wednesday 11:00-12:15 p.m. |
Walter Stewart |
This course is an assessment, in terms of political power, of how the legal order impinges on women in American society, with an examination of the legal rights of women in a number of areas of substantive law; equal opportunity in education, employment, and credit; selected aspects of the law governing marital status, the family, and property.
| Psych 211 |
Psychology of Women Tuesday 1:00-3:50 p.m. |
Gail Hornstein |
A multicultural feminist analysis of women's lives. Emphasizing the diversity of women's experience across ethnicity, social class, and sexuality, this course assesses the adequacy and scope of existing psychological perspectives on women. Students will examine women's lives through essays, autobiographies, memoirs, and fictional works.
| Relig 241 |
Women & Buddhism Monday, Wednesday 2:40-3:55 p.m. |
Susanne Mrozik |
The course examines Buddhist representations of women and women's representations of Buddhism. We will study materials by and about Buddhist women from Thailand, India, China, Tibet, Japan, and the U.S. Some of the questions we will ask are: How are women portrayed in Buddhist literature? How do they portray themselves? How have Buddhist women responded to sexism in their communities? How have Buddhist women contributed to the development of new Buddhist institutions?
|
Relig 306 Component |
Sex and the Early Church |
M. Penn |
This course examines the various ways first- through fifth-century Christians addressed questions regarding human sexuality. We will concentrate on the rise of sexual asceticism and pay particular attention to the relationship between sexuality and issues of gender, culture, power, and resistance. Primary readings will include letters, narrative accounts of female and male ascetics, monastic rules, and "heretical" scriptures. These will be supplemented by modern scholarship in early Christian studies and history of sexuality.
| Theat 315 (02) |
Feminism & Theatre: Theory, History, and Practice Tuesday 11:00-12:15 Thursday 10:00-12:15 |
Joyce Devlin |
This class will examine how feminist theory has shaped theatre studies and practice. As such, the course will interrogate and stage the relationship between theatre and performance, between text and the body, between theory and praxis. We will engage the perils of performance for women, as well as the potential for empowerment through feminist theatre. In addition to performance projects, course requirements will include extensive theoretical reading and writing.
| Anthr 316 (02) |
The Anthropology of Kinship, Marriage, and the Family Monday 1:00-3:50 |
Julia Jean |
Kinship, marriage, and the family are cultural contexts (and constructs) within which the drama of human life takes shape. To make sense of these complexities, we begin with early anthropological studies and then move to present debates about the power of patrilines, the matrilineal puzzle, double descent, monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry. Grounded in dialogue with feminist scholarship and using cross-cultural ethnographic methods, we examine variations in families, kin systems, and marriage patterns as well as the force of these institutions on individuals. Topics include: marital power, strategies of resistance within families, love, families as they change, and the families we choose.
| Engl 339 |
Race, Romance, and Reform: 19th C. African American Women's Literature Tuesday 1:00-3:50 p.m. |
Lois Brown |
This course will consider the literary efforts and accomplishments of nineteenth-century African American women writers. We will consider the representations of ante- and postbellum communities; conceptions of womanhood, masculinity, femininity, and sexuality; and discussions of social, political, and racial reform. Works will include novels, poems, slave narratives, autobiographies, travel narratives, essays, speeches, and additional readings in literary criticism. Writers may include Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Nancy Prince, Ida B. Wells, Emma Dunham Kelley, Pauline Hopkins, and Frances Harper.
| Fren 351 |
Mothers and Daughters Wednesday 1:00-3:50 p.m. |
Elissa Gelfand |
Study of this crucial and problematic relationship as presented in selected novels and films by French-speaking women. We will analyze the mother-daughter bond as literary theme, social institution, psychological dynamic, and metaphor for female creativity. Preliminary readings will examine conceptions of motherhood and the family across time and diverse francophone societies. Principal texts will be grouped cross-culturally by theme so that affinities and differences among them can emerge. Authors may include: La Fayette, Charriere, Sand, Colette, Cardinal, Beauvoir, Ernaux, Darrieusecq, Roy, Hebert, Chen; Schwarz-Bart, Pineau; Beyala, Biouraoui; and films.
