Fall 2026 Course Guide

WGSS 187- Gender, Sexuality, and Culture
Mon/Wed 10:10-11 AM, Friday discussion sections
Beaudelaine Pierre
This course is an introduction to some of the primary issues relevant to the study of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Pulling from a variety of disciplines and fields, this course will consider how gender and sexuality shape and are shaped by multiple interlocking nodes of identity including race, class, nationality, and ability. We will cover topics in feminist history, reproductive health and politics, gendered labor, family structures, queer and trans rights, and disability studies. Contextualizing women’s, gender, and sexuality studies within larger cultural histories of capitalism, colonialism, and globalization, this course will demonstrate the centrality of gender and sexuality to our lives. Required for students who joined the major after Fall 2025, recommended for others. (GenEd DU, I).

WGSS 201- Gender & Difference: Critical Analyses
Tu/Th 1-2:45 PM
Miliann Kang
An introduction to the vibrant field of women, gender, and sexuality studies, this course familiarizes students with the basic concepts in the field and draws connections to the world in which we live. An interdisciplinary field grounded in commitment to both intellectual rigor and individual and social transformation, WGSS asks fundamental questions about the conceptual and material conditions of our lives. What are “gender,” “sexuality,” “race,” and “class”? How are gender categories, in particular, constructed differently across social groups, nations, and historical periods? What are the connections between gender and socio-political categories such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, (dis)ability and others? How do power structures such as sexism, racism, heterosexism, and classism and others intersect? How can an understanding of gender and power enable us to act as agents of individual and social change? Emphasizing inquiry in transnational feminisms, critical race feminisms, and sexuality studies, this course examines gender within a broad nexus of identity categories, social positions, and power structures. Areas of focus may include queer and trans studies; feminist literatures and cultures; feminist science studies; reproductive politics; gender, labor and feminist economics, environmental and climate justice; the politics of desire, and others. Readings include a range of queer, feminist and women thinkers from around the world, reflecting diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives in the field. Required for the major and minor. Typically taken in the sophomore year.

WGSS 205- Feminist Health Politics
Tu/Th 10-11:15 AM
Kirsten Leng
This course serves as a broad introduction to feminist health politics. We will interrogate the concept of health from various perspectives and think about why and how health is a crucial issue for feminists. We will consider how we define health, why health matters, and how politics, economics, social conditions, culture, and historical factors affect health.

WGSS 220- Sustainability, Gender, and the Global Environment
Mon/Wed/Fri 11:15 AM-12:05 PM
Kiran Asher
Sustainability and gender are reemerging as key terms on many agendas in the context of a rapidly warming globe and exacerbated environmental destruction and socio-economic inequities. But mainstream approaches to sustainability seldom focus on how the global political economy and sustainable growth are premised on ecological harm and racial, gender, class, and other inequities. This course is a critical introduction to “sustainability.” It invites students to go beyond pragmatic, technical solutions, and explore issues of sustainability through the lenses of social and environmental justice. Through readings, lectures, and discussions we will examine the following questions.

• Why are sustainability and the environment key ecological and social issues today?
• What are their analytical connections to colonial capitalism and economic globalization?
• What does a feminist engagement with gender and the global political economy bring to our understanding of sustainability and related themes such as nature, work, food, money, energy security, “population,” and reproductive rights?

This course will enable students to participate in 21st-century discussions about these issues in informed and self-reflexive ways. A background in gender or feminist thinking through prior courses in WGSS (such as 187 and 201) is helpful but not required. (4 credits; Gen. Ed. SB, DG)

WGSS 230- Politics of Reproduction
Tu/Th 11:30 AM-12:45 PM
Laura Briggs
From the Black Panther Party and Young Lords in the 1970s to SisterSong and Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice in the 1990s, communities of color and socialist feminists have fought for a comprehensive reproductive freedom platform--birth control and abortion to be sure, but also the right to raise wanted children that are safe, cherished, and educated. The names of these issues have included freedom from sterilization, high quality affordable day care, IVF, immigrant justice, social reproduction and wages for housework, welfare and neoliberalism, foreclosure and affordable housing. This course will explore the history of these issues and present controversies.

WGSS 250- Intro to Sexuality Studies
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45 PM
Angie Willey
This interdisciplinary course will help students to understand what the terms "sexuality studies" and "trans studies" mean, by providing a foundation in the key concepts, historical and social contexts, topics, and politics that inform the fields of sexuality studies, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, and queer studies. Course instruction will be carried out through readings, lectures, films, and discussions, as well as individual and group assignments. Over the course of the semester, students will develop and use critical thinking skills to discern how "sexuality" and "gender" become consolidated as distinct categories of analysis in the late nineteenth century, and what it means to speak about sexuality and transgender politics and categories today. Topics include queer theories and politics, trans theories and politics, LGBTQ social movements within and outside of the U.S., relationships with feminist reproductive justice movements, heterosexuality, gender norms, homophobia, and HIV/AIDS and health discourses. The range of materials covered will prioritize developing analyses that examine the interplay between sexuality and class, gender, race, ethnicity, and neoliberalism. (Gen. Ed. SB, DG)

WGSS 286- History of Race and Sexuality
Tu/Th 9-10:15 AM
Jordan Sanderson
In recent years, books and courses that discuss the history of race, sexuality, gender, and reproduction have been banned and cancelled. While the demand for their silencing is a minority position, represented almost exclusively by non-historians, it has been taken up by people currently with political power. This demand has been couched in the name of the nation, accompanied by the claim that certain people (white, cisgendered, straight, nonimmigrant and male?) constitute the body of the nation, while others are taken to be outside of it.

This course asks: Should we agree that these more limited and narrow histories are a truthful version of who and what the United States is? Is this really the best or only version of the United States? What happens when we learn about histories of racism, abolition, decolonization, eugenics, nonbinary genders, reproduction, LGBTQ liberation, migration, and feminism? Is it possible that these contested histories of people struggling for freedom and rights is in fact a tradition within the United States to which we might aspire? (GenEd HS, DU).

WGSS 301- Theorizing Gender, Race, and Power
Tu/Th 10-11:15 AM
Laura Briggs
This course will explore ways of analyzing and reflecting on current issues and controversies in feminist thought within an international context. Topics may include traditions in Black feminisms, Chicanx feminism, Caribbean feminisms, indigenous feminisms, socialist feminism, Queer theory, feminist science studies, radical feminism, and feminist legal studies. This course counts towards the theory requirement for majors.

WGSS 310- Junior Year Writing
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45 PM
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Fulfills Junior Year Writing requirement for majors. This course will develop your skills in modes of writing and argumentation useful for scholarly, creative, and professional work in a variety of fields. Some of these skills include: performing analyses of primary and secondary texts, seeking out and organizing knowledge effectively, using a range of evidence to articulate ideas for diverse audiences, and honing one's writerly voice. We will work in a variety of genres including, potentially, popular culture reviews, op-eds, manifestos, first-person narratives, research proposals, and research papers. Nonmajors admitted if space available.

WGSS 360- Asian American Feminisms
Tu 4-6:30 PM
Miliann Kang
What is the body of work that constitutes "Asian American feminism(s)" and what are its driving questions and distinctive contributions to the fields of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and Ethnic Studies? How does this scholarship illuminate historical and contemporary configurations of gender, sexuality, race, class, nation, citizenship, migration, empire, war, neoliberalism, and globalization? In exploring these questions, this course examines Asian American histories, bodies, identities, diasporic communities, representations, and politics through interdisciplinary approaches, including social science research, literature, popular culture, film, poetry, and art.

WGSS 392RM/692RM - Black Feminisms/Black Feminist Research Methods
Mon 2:30-5 PM
Beaudelaine Pierre
This course studies a range of Black feminist research methods including but not limited to storytelling, auto/ethnography, surveys, oral history, literary analysis, and archival research. Students will investigate foundational concepts in Black feminisms, formulate a research question, and engage Black feminist methodologies as a questioning of dominant modes of knowledge production. Participants will complicate established feminist, womanist, and anti-racist readings of race and gender oppression; examine how Black feminists discuss standpoint theory, Black nationalism,  liberal feminisms, black Marxism and materialist feminist thought; and study Black women’s trajectory as researchers through their praxis and pedagogies. Students will develop a research project

WGSS 392W/692W- Teaching and Learning in Carceral Spaces
Tu 2:30-5 PM
Laura Ciolkowski
This cohort-based social justice education project focuses on the study of the historical processes, social relations, and material logics of the U.S. prison system.  It also trains students to offer individualized tutoring/mentoring sessions that support the academic goals of students in the Hampshire County Jail and the Franklin County Jail.  Students in this course will engage in research in social justice education and the field of critical prison studies, critical race studies and feminist pedagogy; and they will explore broad questions around equity and access to education in prison and jail.  "Teaching & Learning in Carceral Spaces" will give students an opportunity to develop the knowledge, experience, and practical skills to support justice in education and to work with others to imagine, advocate for, and build a more just society in which all people, regardless of their circumstance, have access to quality higher education. Instructor's permission required.

• APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/HjLuy3hRqhqD26Py9
• NOTE: Graduate students who successfully complete this course are eligible to apply for Jail Education Initiative TA or TO positions in jail.

WGSS 393M- What to Expect While You’re Expecting
Tu/Th 1-2:15 PM
Kirsten Leng
Pregnancy losses are generally resigned to silence. They are not publicly discussed and do not constitute a standard part of pregnancy education. Moreover, different kinds of pregnancy loss are siloed from each other. Within this course, we will hold all forms of pregnancy loss within a common frame. We will think collectively about how we might reimagine and treat reproductive losses—and indeed, reproduction itself—as existing on a spectrum of experiences, and will approach reproduction as a simultaneously biological, social, cultural, political, economic, and subjective phenomenon. Grounded in an approach informed by reproductive justice, and specifically birth justice, this course will draw upon interdisciplinary scholarship and guest talks.

WGSS 395D- Queer/Trans/Feminist Disability Studies
Mon/Wed 4-5:15PM
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field that interrogates how and why “disability” becomes a meaningful category of social organization, political resistance, and lived experience. Beginning from the premise that “disability” is not a fixed or singular category, disability studies attunes us to how historically-contingent norms of embodiment, cognition, comportment, rationality, and so on come to be embedded in the institutions that organize everyday life, limiting the life chances of those whose bodyminds are askance to those norms. *Feminist* disability studies, in particular, is attentive to the way that these processes intersect with and are shaped by regimes of gender, sexuality, race, and colonization. It insists that the struggle for disability justice is, therefore, intimately bound up with struggles for trans/queer/women’s liberation, for black and indigenous freedom, for economic justice, against imperialism, and so on. In this course, we will first ground ourselves in core concepts of feminist disability studies; then we will consider how various institutions have historically disciplined disabled subjects *and* wielded ableism as a mechanism to discipline subjects we might not ordinarily think of as disabled; and, finally, we will turn to consider the kinds of resistance to be found in various forms of art, activism, and cultural/knowledge production. We will approach these questions through a range of critical essays, books, films, artwork, and simple sitting together, working to queer and crip - or further trouble - present ways of conceptualizing disability.

WGSS 491J/ WGSS 691J - Just Economies
Th 4-6:30 PM
Kiran AsherThe modern economy is shaped by uneven capitalist development and premised on exploiting colonialized/raced, gendered, sexualized and non-human Others. That is, racial, sexual and environmental violence are at the heart of social relations of production and reproduction, but they are also invisibilized or undervalued under capitalism.  Thus, critical analyses of the systemic inequities engendered by colonial/racial capitalism, and imagining just economies is fundamental to abolition and climate justice. In this seminar we will read from the work of a wide range of intellectuals and activists—feminists, post-colonial, transnational, black, queer, decolonial, indigenous and others—who are engaged in these tasks.  

Note: This an advanced level interdisciplinary seminar open to undergraduates and graduates. While everyone gets to learn at their level and pace, you will get the most out of it if you have a solid working knowledge (through course work or self-study) of core concepts that are the prerequisites for the course such as political economy of development, feminisms, and social theory.  Please consult material covered in the resources listed below and from past WGSS courses (syllabi for WGSS courses are found via our website) to refresh your understanding of the following background or prerequisites 
•    Feminist approaches to women, gender, sexuality (from WGSS courses such as 187, 201) and feminist theory (from WGSS courses such as 301 and 791)
•    Social theory including ideas about liberalism, justice, rights and law (through prior coursework in philosophy, political theory, or sociology)
•    Political economy of capitalism (from prior course work in STPEC or other majors)
 

WGSS 701- Genealogies of Feminist Thought (Theory)
Wed 2:30-5 PM
Svati Shah
This graduate seminar in feminist theory constitutes a core course for students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. The seminar will be organized around questions that emerge for feminisms from the rubrics of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, transnationalism, human rights, economics and postcolonialism.  Feminist theory is inherently interdisciplinary and we will draw on classic and contemporary writings from the many fields that contribute to the "field" of feminist theory.

WGSS 891P- Critical Feminist Pedagogy
Th 10 AM-12:30PM
Laura Ciolkowski
Feminist pedagogy is a radical philosophy of teaching and learning.  It is an approach, rather than a toolbox of assorted tips and strategies, that is rooted in feminist, anti-racist critiques of power and knowledge and is deeply informed by the values of social justice feminism and feminist practice. This graduate-level course in critical feminist pedagogy will explore the epistemological, methodological, and theoretical foundations of feminist pedagogical approaches, from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed to bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress; from readings in the Black radical tradition to the Latin American experiments with literacy and empowering the poor; and from Bettina Love’s abolitionist pedagogies and Audre Lorde’s pedagogies of social justice and collective dissent to the growing scholarship on participatory methods, and feminist experiments with alternative epistemological frameworks. The course will also explore, from a feminist pedagogical perspective, the obstacles that students face in learning: why some believe we have a ‘push out’ problem more than a ‘drop out’ problem; how pedagogical practices can be painful and harmful to students; and the critiques of the ‘corporate university’ and its metrics. A combination practicum and graduate theory seminar, the course also centers the practice of feminist pedagogy in the classroom. Critical Feminist Pedagogy will create a fully collaborative space for students to interrogate, explore, test out and reshape the methods, methodologies, theories, and critical pedagogies that support our feminist teaching practices.
 

AFROAM 326- Black Women in U.S. History
Section 1: Mon/Wed/Fri 9:05-9:55 AM
Section 2: Tu/Th 1-2:15 PM
Instructor TBA
The history of African American women from the experience of slavery to the present. Emphasis on the effect of racist institutions and practices on women. The ways in which women organized themselves to address the needs of African Americans in general and their own in particular. The achievements of such leaders as Mary Church Terrell, Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, and Mary McLeod Bethune as well as lesser known women.  (Gen.Ed. HS, DU) 

ANTH 205- Power and Inequality in the U.S.
Mon/Wed 11:15 AM- 12:05 PM, discussion sections Friday
Jennifer Sandler
The United States is a culture marked by social inequality- racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia are interwoven throughout our everyday lives. This class explores the historical roots of these phenomena, the ways in which they are imprinted on the human body, in our interactions and institutions, and what people are doing to respond to them.

ANTH 415- Women’s Health Across the Life Course
Tu/Th 2:30-3:45 PM
Achsah Dorsey
This course explores women’s health from an evolutionary, biocultural, and global health perspective. It focuses on the physiological, ecological, and cultural factors shaping health. We will take a life course perspective to examine childhood development, reproductive processes such as pregnancy, birth, and lactation, as well as menopause and aging. Throughout the class, we will draw on findings and concepts from human biology, evolutionary ecology, public health and medical anthropology to explore the multi-faceted determinants of global women’s health. Topics include: women’s reproductive health choices, reproductive ecology, fertility, social and biological perspectives on puberty, eating disorders and body image, and infant nutrition and growth.

CLASSICS 335- Women in Antiquity
Tu/Th 1-2:15 PM
Teresa Ramsby
Lives, roles, contributions, and status of women in Greek and Roman societies, as reflected in classical literature and the archaeological record.  (Gen.Ed. HS)

COMM 209H- LGBT Politics and the Media
Tu/Th 1-2:15 PM
Seth Goldman
This course aims to further understanding about 1) historical trends in media portrayals and public opinion about LGBT issues; 2) the effects of mass media on attitudes toward sexual and gender minorities; 3) the interplay of LGBT issues and electoral politics; and 4) the evolving role of sexuality and gender identity/expression in U.S. politics and society. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

COMM 311- DIY Media and Social Change (Component)
Tu/Th 4-5:15 PM
Joel Saxe
Do-it-yourself media has radically transformed our cultural landscape. Creativity, passion, and determination allows anyone to be a maker. While the term originates in the 1970s UK punk and US hip hop movements, it has been incorporated into mainstream commercial culture. Yet its independent, grassroots spirit remains a critical element in contemporary movements for social change. Online infrastructure allows the explosion of creative-maker content and the mobilization of political opinion in ways that challenge previous paradigms of public communication and social change. This course will integrate the making of DIY media related to social change with readings and media that present context, theory, and case studies. Consider this a laboratory-workshop; learners are active, co-creators of curriculum content and methods. This includes ongoing dialogue on how to balance the teaching of creative maker skills with practical, historical, and academic readings and media. The DIY media produced for in-real-life and online (IRL-URL) display may include signage, zines, memes, podcasts, blogs, short-form videos (Tik-Tok), music, fashion, and other forms of art media.

COMPLIT 390Q- Queering World Literature
Tu/Th 4-5:15 PM
Corine Tachtiris
In this course, we will read a range of literary representations of what, in the US-Anglophone context, may be called queer or LGBTQIA+ identities. We will pay particular attention to non-Western literatures and cultures and to texts not originally in English. We will study how queer identities have developed separately and in relation to globally dominant US-Anglophone frameworks of queerness, and- with a focus on questions of power- we will examine how the global forces of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism have functioned in the construction of queer identities, often in conjunction with constructions of race and ethnicity. With literary texts as our primary material, we will investigate how authors use aesthetics, style, and genre as means of representing queerness.

ECON 343- Economics of Gender, Race and Work
Tu/Th 10-11:15 AM
Fidan Kurtulus
This course focuses on the economics of women, minorities and work in the labor market and the household.  Using economic theory along with empirical investigation, we will study issues such as employment decisions, earnings determination, occupational choice, discrimination, and family formation.  Emphasis will be placed on public policies related to the labor market experiences of women and minorities.

ECON 345- Stratification Economics
Tu/Th 10-11:15 AM
Luis Angel Monroy Gomez Franco
This course will examine the economics of socially constructed groups and the inequalities in income, wealth, and power between them. The course will include, as a central feature, an examination of inequalities based on race and ethnicity. However, the course will also explore economic dynamics and disparities between a range of socially constructed groups, including those based on gender, caste, nationality/citizenship, different concepts of class, and sexuality. This course will introduce students to key concepts and analytical approaches in stratification economics and the economics of identity.

ECON 348- The Political Economy of Women
Mon/Wed 1-2:15 PM
Katherine Moos
A critical review of neoclassical, Marxist, and feminist economic theories pertaining to inequality between men and women in both the family and the firm.

ECON 790D/SPAN 790D- Decolonizing Child-Raising: Public Narratives of Parenting, Care, and Gender
Wed 2:30-5 PM
Katherine Moos
Bringing together economics and linguistics, this course will critically examine public narratives around parenting and the raising of young children in a global context, drawing from intersectional, decolonial feminist political economy as well as a new line of linguistic inquiry examining the relationship between language and attachment. We will explore the theories from three distinct but overlapping feminist epistemologies: intersectionality, decolonial feminism, and social reproduction feminism. These traditions will be put into conversation with one another to highlight potential synergies. We will draw on feminist political economy which emphasizes how the care of future generations of workers represents a source of working-class women's exploitation, as well as their revolutionary potential. From the language side, students will be introduced to attachment theory, exploring to the various roles that language plays in attachment. We will explore the ontogeny of language with respect to attachment, the role of language in the survival of human infants and caregiver response to language, and the role of specific "niches" (e.g. breastfeeding, sleeping) in language development, paying attention to fundamental differences between Western and non-Western societies. Within this context, students will take a critical look at public discourses around childcare (including language development) and parenting advice by "experts."

EDUC 210- Social Diversity in Education (Component)
Tu 11:30 AM-12:45 PM, Thursday discussions
Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin
Focus on issues of social identity, social and cultural diversity, and societal manifestations of oppression.  Draws on interdisciplinary perspectives of social identity development, social learning theory, and sociological analyses of power and privilege within broad social contexts.  (Gen.Ed. I, DU)

FRNCH 280- Love and Sex in French Culture
Tu/Th 11:30 AM-12:45 PM
Patrick Mensah
Is love a French invention? How do we explore, through literature, the substance behind the stereotypical association of love, romance, and sexual pleasure with French culture? Do sex, passion, and love always unite in the pursuit of emotional fulfillment in human relations, according to this literature? What affiliations does this literature interweave between such relations of love, requited or unrequited, and pleasure, enjoyment, freedom, self-empowerment, on the one hand, and on the other hand, suffering, jealousy, crime, violence, negativity, notions of perversion, morbidity, and even death? How are problems of gender roles and human sexuality?i.e. Hetero-, bi-, homo- and other forms of sexuality--approached in this literature? What connections or conflicts are revealed in this literature between human love relationships and the social norms and conventions within which they occur, as well as the forms of political governance that have been practiced in France over the centuries?

Those are some of the issues that are investigated in this course, which offers a broad historical overview of selective ways in which love, passion, desire and erotic behavior in French culture have been represented and understood in Literature and, more recently, in film, from the middle ages to the twentieth century. Readings are from major French authors drawn from various centuries such as Marie de France, Beroul, Moliere, de Sade, Flaubert, Gide, and Duras. They will be supplemented with screenings of optional films that are based on those texts or are pertinent to them in important ways. (Gen. Ed. AL)

GERMAN 270- From the Grimms to Disney (Component)
Mon/Wed 11:15 AM-12:05 PM, Friday discussions
Sara Jackson
This course focuses on selected fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm (Hansel & Gretel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Iron Hans) and Hans Christian Andersen (Little Sea Maid, The Red Shoes), locating them in the 19th-century German or Danish culture of their origins and then examining how they became transformed into perennial favorites of U.S. popular culture through their adaptations by Disney (feature animation films), Broadway (musicals), or bestselling self-help books (Iron John, Women Who Run With the Wolves).  As a point of comparison, this course will also introduce popular fairy-tale films of the former East Germany (GDR) from the UMass DEFA archives & library, which present the same stories as popular fare in a Cold War communist cultural context.  Conducted in English.  (Gen. Ed. ALDG)

GERMAN 363- Witches: Myth and Reality
Mon/Wed/Fri 1:25-2:15 PM
Kerstin Mueller Dembling
This course focuses on various aspects of witches/witchcraft in order to examine the historical construction of the witch in the context of the social realities of women (and men) labeled as witches.  The main areas covered are:  European pagan religions and the spread of Christianity; the "Burning Times" in early modern Europe, with an emphasis on the German situation; 17th-century New England and the Salem witch trials; the images of witches in folk lore and fairy tales in the context of the historical persecutions; and contemporary Wiccan/witch practices in their historical context.  The goal of the course is to deconstruct the stereotypes that many of us have about witches/witchcraft, especially concerning sexuality, gender, age, physical appearance, occult powers, and Satanism.  Readings are drawn from documentary records of the witch persecutions and witch trials, literary representations, scholarly analyses of witch-related phenomena, and essays examining witches, witchcraft, and the witch persecutions from a contemporary feminist or neo-pagan perspective.  The lectures will be supplemented by related material taken from current events in addition to visual material (videos, slides) drawn from art history, early modern witch literature, popular culture, and documentary sources.  Conducted in English.  (Gen Ed. I, DG)

HIST 268/LEGAL 268- Women and the Law
Tu/Th 1-2:15 PM
Jennifer Nye
This course examines the legal status of women in the United States, focusing specifically on the 20th and 21st centuries. How has the law used gender, sex, sexuality, and race to legally enforce inequality between women and men (and among women)?  We will examine the legal arguments feminists have used to advocate for legal change and how these arguments have changed over time, paying specific attention to debates about whether to make legal arguments based on formal equality, substantive equality, liberty, or privacy. We will also consider the pros and cons of using the law to advocate for social justice. Specific issues that may be covered include the civil and political participation of women (voting, jury service), employment discrimination, intimate relationships, reproduction, contraception and abortion, violence against women, women as criminal defendants, and women as law students, lawyers, and judges.  Prior law related coursework helpful, but not required.

HIST 357- Women and Revolutions
Tu/Th 1-2:15 PM
Diana Sierra Becerra
In the twentieth-century, working-class women built revolutions to dismantle oppressive systems and create a free society. They organized workers, waged armed struggle, and built alternative institutions. Why did women join revolutionary movements? How did gender shape their participation? How did women define the theories and practices of revolutionary movements? We will consult diverse sources to understand the experiences and dreams of radical women. Historical case studies from Latin America will be our main focus. These histories offer critical lessons that can inform our present-day struggles to get free.

HIST 378G- Rape Law: Gender, Race, Justice
Tu/Th 10-11:15 AM
Jennifer Nye
The history of the legal response to rape has often resulted in injustice for both the victim/survivor and the alleged perpetrator.  This course will examine the evolution of the U.S. legal system's treatment of rape, paying particular attention to the movement against lynching in the post-civil war era, the rise of the feminist anti-rape movement in the 1970s and the student movement against campus sexual assault.  Through an analysis of court cases, legislation, and other texts we will consider the role sexual violence has played in maintaining gendered and racialized power relationships.  We will examine how and why such violence came to be seen as a crime, including who is worthy of the law's "protection" and who is subject to the law's "punishment." We will explore issues such as:  rape as a form of racialized and imperial violence, especially against black and Native American women; the criminal legal treatment of rape and the evolution of the legal concepts of force, resistance, and consent; and the civil responses to rape under the Violence Against Women Act and Title IX.  We'll also look at the international law responses to rape as a weapon of war.  Finally, we'll think about how the legal responses, or non-responses, to rape have differed over time depending on factors such as the race/ethnicity, income level, immigration status, sexual orientation/gender identity, age, and marital status of the victim/survivor and the perpetrator.  Finally, we'll consider how the legal system can or should respond to rape, particularly in this age of mass criminalization and mass incarceration, and whether restorative justice responses might be preferable.  Prior law-related coursework is helpful, but not required.

JAPAN 235- Performing Arts of Japan (Component)
Tu/Th 2:30-3:45 PM
Bruce Baird
Examination of various Japanese performance aspects: literary texts on stage, architecture of traditional and modern theaters, gendered acting, social backgrounds of actors and audiences, music and dance.  We'll read plays, a history of Japanese theater, and an anthropological study of gendered acting. We'll see films based on plays, and educational videos. Field trips to Japanese performing arts on stage. (Gen. Ed. AL, DG)

JOURNAL 410- Social Issues Journalism (Component)
Mon/Wed 12:20-1:35 PM
Razvan Sibii
This is an explanatory journalism class with an emphasis on the intractable structural issues confronting contemporary American society. Each iteration of the course will focus on one such issue (e.g., immigration, mass incarceration, gender inequality, racism in higher education), and will seek to work in collaboration with at least one NGO and one media institution. Students will report and produce a variety of journalistic stories pertaining to the chosen issue. They will also read and discuss professional and scholarly literature on subjects related to social justice/advocacy journalism (such as the question of journalistic objectivity, framing, media effects & agenda setting).

LABOR 203/SOCIOL 203- Sports, Labor & Social Justice
Tu/Th 5:30-6:45 PM
Jerry Levinsky
Protests by professional and amateur athletes against racial and gender discrimination are not new or isolated events in U.S. history. In fact, sports have long been connected to the social, economic, and political issues of the day. With a particular focus on labor and civil rights struggle, our goal is to better understand the history of sports as it relates to social class, race, and gender. Students will analyze current controversies through this critical approach to sports and society.

LABOR 620- Labor History (Component)
Th 10 AM- 12:30 PM
Jasmine Kerrissey
This course examines labor and work in the U.S., from colonial America to the present. We will consider: 1) the relationship between workers, employers, and the state; 2) the strategies that workers’ movements have used to build power, along with employers’ strategies to minimize that power; 3) the internal workings of unions, such as democracy, politics, and union structure; and 4) the roles of workers’ organizations in reproducing (or changing) inequalities stemming from gender, race, citizenship status, and other identities. We’ll situate these discussions in the changing political, economic, and cultural contexts over time.

LEGAL 359- Law, Poverty and Class (Component)
Mon 4-6:30 PM
Jennifer Dieringer
This course will explore the impact of law on the lives of poor people in the United States.  We will examine how and why ‘poverty’ has been defined, and the history of private and public responses to poverty. A review of various theories of the causes of poverty will lead us to an analysis of how the different forms of governmental response-- federal, state and local; legislative, judicial and regulatory­-- have been rationalized by the decision-makers involved. Finally, we will delve into the lived experiences of poor people themselves and how the web of law and regulations that affect their lives are woven into their daily lives. Throughout the course, special attention will be paid to the intersections of race and gender with issues of poverty.

LEGAL 362- Human Trafficking (Component)
Mon/Wed/Fri 1:25-2:15 PM
Tania DoCarmo
This course involves in-depth study of the topic of human trafficking, often referred to as "modern day slavery." The course will explore the definition of the crime of human trafficking in the US and internationally and study the debates surrounding anti-trafficking laws and policies. We will examine the similarities and differences between slavery and human trafficking in the popular imagination and the law. Readings will focus on recent debates among scholars, activists, and policy makers over the nature and meaning of choice, coercion, and victimization in exploitative labor situations, migration, and commercial sexual activities. We will also discuss how the phenomenon of human trafficking is measured and quantified, how victimhood is defined and understood by various constituents, and how law enforcement officers investigate and respond to trafficking in persons.

LEGAL 391GL- Gender and the Law
Mon/Wed/Fri 12:20-1:10 PM
Brenda Garcia
This class explores the socially constructed norms and frameworks enabling the legal regulation of gender. The course emphasizes on the United States but turns to international law to examine a number of areas of juridical areas such as equal protection, reproductive rights, the sex trade, work family issues, and sexual and domestic violence. From the perspective of legal cases, legal theory, and sociolegal scholarship, the class explores important topics including, the construction of gender identity through law; the meaning and manifestations of inequality; the intersection of gender with other identity categories such as race, religion, and sexuality; the public/private divide; and, how law reproduces hierarchies while also having the ability to participate in significant social change.

POLISCI 395F- Women and Politics
Mon/Wed 1-2:15 PM
Sarah Tanzi
Women have made tremendous gains in every aspect of social, economic and political life in the United States, particularly since the second wave of the women's movement in the 1960s.  Yet, women's progress in terms of achieving elected office has reached a puzzling plateau since the 1990s. 

We will examine the course of women's movements towards achieving political incorporation in the United States. We consider the debate over why women's political progress has stagnated and we consider the impact of the gender imbalance in American electoral politics - to what extent do these disparities matter?

We begin by exploring women's suffrage campaigns and voting behavior in the period immediately following their achievement of the right to vote and beyond. We then turn to the relationship between women and party politics before discussing the challenges women face as candidates in American politics. We will focus on understanding why women remain underrepresented as legislators. We then consider the extent to which women's participation in campaigns and elections makes a substantive difference in policy making.

PORTUG 309- Brazilian Women
Mon/Wed 4-5:15 PM
Tal Goldfajn
Mixing biography, literary criticism and cultural history this course will explore women's experience through Brazilian history as well as introduce the achievements and contributions of women to the cultural and intellectual history of Brazil. Moreover, we will discuss not only what Brazilian women have achieved but also how fundamental issues in Brazilian history have hinged on specific notions of gender. From Anita Garibaldi to Chiquinha Gonzaga and Nise da Silveira among others, the present course will examine the role of women in Brazilian history and culture, discuss the ways in which women have shaped Brazil's past and present, and analyze some of the ideas and experiences of women in Brazil.

SOCIOL 222- The Family
Mon/Wed 9:05-9:55 AM
Ana Villalobos
First part: historical transformations in family life (relationships between husbands and wives, position and treatment of children, importance of kinship ties); second part: the contemporary family through life course (choice of a mate, relations in marriage, parenthood, breakup of the family unit). (Gen.Ed. SB, DU)

SOCIOL 283- Gender & Society
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45 PM
Ana Villalobos
Analysis of: 1) historical and cross-cultural variation in positions and relationships of women and men; 2) contemporary creation and internalization of gender and maintenance of gender differences in adult life; 3) recent social movements to transform or maintain "traditional" positions of women and men.  Prerequisite:  100-level Sociology course.

SOCIOL 320- Sociology of Eating Disorders
Tu/Th 8:30-9:45 AM
Megan Relin
This course is designed to look at eating disorders through the lens of Sociology. We will be discussing relevant topics such as social narratives around body image and media (including social media), gender norms, race, feminism, socioeconomic influences related to weight, the history of some of these variables and how they've evolved over time. We will also look at issues related to development and mental health including self-esteem, peer relationships, family systems/environment, mood disorders, trauma, diagnoses, healthcare policy and treatment. Lastly, as its relevant to you as students, we will look at college life and eating disorders as it is often a time when eating disorders develop or peak.

SOCIOL 384- Sociology of Love
Mon/Wed 4-5:15 PM
Ana Villalobos
The Sociology of Love looks at a subject that we all take for granted, but none of us understand.  Love is both a physiological state and a socially constructed experience.  We will examine the major bio-chemical, psychological, and sociological theories that have attempted to explain the causes and nature of love and attraction.  We will also look at the social construction of love through Western history, as well as in other cultures, and at the complex relationships that exist between love, "courtship", marriage, and sexuality.  We will conclude with a look at contemporary social constructions of love, sex and relationships.

SOCIOL 395K- Domestic Violence (Component)
Tu 4-6:30 PM
Maria Puppolo
This course looks at domestic, partner, and family violence as a social problem. Students will learn about the feminist social movement that brought domestic violence to national attention, how protections were codified into law, and the major critiques that have since arisen. Final project will combine your experiences in the community with what you learn in class, as you and a small group propose a potential intervention into the social problem of domestic violence.

SUSTCOMM 225- Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Equitable Communities
Mon/Wed 10:10 AM- 12:05 PM
Darrel Ramsey-Musolf
Inequity is defined as a "lack of fairness or justice" and refers to a system of privilege that is created and maintained by interlocking societal structures (i.e. family, marriage, education, housing, government, law, economics, employment, etc.). In capitalist societies, inequity creates winners and losers, profits and losses, and the privileged and the marginalized. Alternatively, equity is defined as "the state, quality or ideal of being just, impartial and fair." To achieve and sustain an equitable community, equity needs to be thought of as a concept that requires action. In this course, we will question society’s values and deepen one’s understanding of agency as we examine how people create community when such communities are defined by their race, gender, and/or sexuality. As a Sustainable Community Development course, this seminar is geared for students who may pursue careers in architecture, community development, landscape architecture, planning, and policy analysis because these professions influence whether inequity persists in our social policies and within the built environment. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

WGSS 691J - Just Economies
Th 4-6:30 PM
Kiran Asher

The modern economy is shaped by uneven capitalist development and premised on exploiting colonialized/raced, gendered, sexualized and non-human Others. That is, racial, sexual and environmental violence are at the heart of social relations of production and reproduction, but they are also invisibilized or undervalued under capitalism.  Thus, critical analyses of the systemic inequities engendered by colonial/racial capitalism, and imagining just economies is fundamental to abolition and climate justice. In this seminar we will read from the work of a wide range of intellectuals and activists—feminists, post-colonial, transnational, black, queer, decolonial, indigenous and others—who are engaged in these tasks.  

Note: This an advanced level interdisciplinary seminar open to undergraduates and graduates. While everyone gets to learn at their level and pace, you will get the most out of it if you have a solid working knowledge (through course work or self-study) of core concepts that are the prerequisites for the course such as political economy of development, feminisms, and social theory.  Please consult material covered in the resources listed below and from past WGSS courses (syllabi for WGSS courses are found via our website) to refresh your understanding of the following background or prerequisites 
•    Feminist approaches to women, gender, sexuality (from WGSS courses such as 187, 201) and feminist theory (from WGSS courses such as 301 and 791)
•    Social theory including ideas about liberalism, justice, rights and law (through prior coursework in philosophy, political theory, or sociology)
•    Political economy of capitalism (from prior course work in STPEC or other majors)

WGSS 692RM - Black Feminisms/Black Feminist Research Methods
Mon 2:30-5 PM
Beaudelaine Pierre
This course studies a range of Black feminist research methods including but not limited to storytelling, auto/ethnography, surveys, oral history, literary analysis, and archival research. Students will investigate foundational concepts in Black feminisms, formulate a research question, and engage Black feminist methodologies as a questioning of dominant modes of knowledge production. Participants will complicate established feminist, womanist, and anti-racist readings of race and gender oppression; examine how Black feminists discuss standpoint theory, Black nationalism,  liberal feminisms, black Marxism and materialist feminist thought; and study Black women’s trajectory as researchers through their praxis and pedagogies. Students will develop a research project

WGSS 692W- Teaching and Learning in Carceral Spaces
Tu 2:30-5 PM
Laura Ciolkowski
This cohort-based social justice education project focuses on the study of the historical processes, social relations, and material logics of the U.S. prison system.  It also trains students to offer individualized tutoring/mentoring sessions that support the academic goals of students in the Hampshire County Jail and the Franklin County Jail.  Students in this course will engage in research in social justice education and the field of critical prison studies, critical race studies and feminist pedagogy; and they will explore broad questions around equity and access to education in prison and jail.  "Teaching & Learning in Carceral Spaces" will give students an opportunity to develop the knowledge, experience, and practical skills to support justice in education and to work with others to imagine, advocate for, and build a more just society in which all people, regardless of their circumstance, have access to quality higher education. Instructor's permission required.

APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/HjLuy3hRqhqD26Py9

NOTE: Graduate students who successfully complete this course are eligible to apply for Jail Education Initiative TA or TO positions in jail.

WGSS 701- Genealogies of Feminist Thought (Theory)
Wed 2:30-5 PM
Svati Shah
This graduate seminar in feminist theory constitutes a core course for students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. The seminar will be organized around questions that emerge for feminisms from the rubrics of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, transnationalism, human rights, economics and postcolonialism.  Feminist theory is inherently interdisciplinary and we will draw on classic and contemporary writings from the many fields that contribute to the "field" of feminist theory.

WGSS 891P- Critical Feminist Pedagogy
Th 10 AM-12:30PM
Laura Ciolkowski
Feminist pedagogy is a radical philosophy of teaching and learning.  It is an approach, rather than a toolbox of assorted tips and strategies, that is rooted in feminist, anti-racist critiques of power and knowledge and is deeply informed by the values of social justice feminism and feminist practice. This graduate-level course in critical feminist pedagogy will explore the epistemological, methodological, and theoretical foundations of feminist pedagogical approaches, from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed to bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress; from readings in the Black radical tradition to the Latin American experiments with literacy and empowering the poor; and from Bettina Love’s abolitionist pedagogies and Audre Lorde’s pedagogies of social justice and collective dissent to the growing scholarship on participatory methods, and feminist experiments with alternative epistemological frameworks. The course will also explore, from a feminist pedagogical perspective, the obstacles that students face in learning: why some believe we have a ‘push out’ problem more than a ‘drop out’ problem; how pedagogical practices can be painful and harmful to students; and the critiques of the ‘corporate university’ and its metrics. A combination practicum and graduate theory seminar, the course also centers the practice of feminist pedagogy in the classroom. Critical Feminist Pedagogy will create a fully collaborative space for students to interrogate, explore, test out and reshape the methods, methodologies, theories, and critical pedagogies that support our feminist teaching practices.

SWAG 160 / POSC 160: Sexualities in IR
MW 11:35 AM – 12:50 PM
Karl Loewenstein Senior Lecturer Picq

From abortion to gay rights, sexuality is deeply entangled in world politics. As LGBT rights become human rights principles, they not only enter the rights structure of the European Union and the United Nations but are also considered a barometer of political modernity. If some Latin American nations have depicted their recognition of gay rights as symbolic of their progressive character, certain North African nations have depicted their repression of homosexuality symbolic of their opposition to western imperialism. The results of sexual politics are often contradictory, with some countries enabling same-sex marriage but criminalizing abortion and others cutting aid in the name of human rights. This course explores the influence of sexual politics on international relations. We analyze how women and gay rights take shape in the international system, from the UN to security agendas, and evaluate how sexuality shapes the modus operandi of contemporary politics. Limited to 30 students.

This course fulfills a requirement for the Five College Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice (RHRJ) certificate.
 

SWAG 188 / BLST 288: Sex, Race, and Empire
TT 10:05 AM – 11:20 AM
Professor Shandilya and Associate Professor Polk

How might we connect the U.S.’s current economic, social, and military dominance over much of the world to empires of the past such as the nineteenth century British empire in India, Africa and the Caribbean? What does the existence of human zoos of the nineteenth and early twentieth century tell us about how empires thought of colonized peoples? How might we connect imperial legacies to the current immigrant crisis in the U.S.? How have the gendered performances of American military women during the US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan been instrumentalized for counterinsurgency warfare? This course looks at a global range of responses to empire and colonization by activists, artists, writers, and filmmakers — from the artwork of Kara Walker to the historical romantic film Bajirao Mastani (2015), and the television series Queen Charlotte (2023), among others. 

 

SWAG 233 / FAMS 373: Feminist Computing
MW 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM
CHI Fellow and Visiting Lecturer Rowson

In this course we pay close attention to historical conjunctions in the development and dispersion of information technologies as they relate to women and the feminist movement. Our class consists of three interrelated strands: women’s labor history in the design, production, and use of computing machines; feminist methods for the study of history; and speculative, theoretical texts and media concerned with women identifying with and/or functioning as computing machines. Via these three strands, this class challenges, firstly, male centered histories of computing; secondly, linear historical models of technological development; and thirdly, the enduring concept of the computer revolution itself. Moving through women working with mainframe computers in the 1940s, to women in factories constructing computer components in the 1980s, to women forming close relationships with their personal devices, students can expect to become well-versed in histories of computing that emphasize issues of labor, race, gender difference, and reproductive health.

 

SWAG 235 / BLST 236: Black Sexualities
TT 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM
Associate Professor Polk

From the modern era to the contemporary moment, the intersection of race, gender, and class has been especially salient for people of African descent—for men as well as for women. How might the category of sexuality act as an additional optic through which to view and reframe contemporary and historical debates concerning the construction of black identity? In what ways have traditional understandings of masculinity and femininity contributed to an understanding of African American life and culture as invariably heterosexual? How have black lesbian, gay, and transgendered persons effected political change through their theoretical articulations of identity, difference, and power? In this interdisciplinary course, we will address these questions through an examination of the complex roles gender and sexuality play in the lives of people of African descent. Remaining attentive to the ways black people have claimed social and sexual agency in spite of systemic modes of inequality, we will engage with critical race theory, black feminist thought, queer-of-color critique, literature, art, film, “new media” and erotica, as well as scholarship from anthropology, sociology, and history. Limited to 25 students.

 

SWAG 252 / HIST 252: Hist Race Gender Comics
WF 1:05 PM – 2:20 PM
Assistant Professor Peralta

What can we learn about MLK and Malcolm X and from Magneto and Professor X? What can we learn about gendered and racialized depictions within comic books? As a catalyst to encourage looking at history from different vantage points, we will put comic books in conversation with the history of race and empire in the United States. Sometimes we will read comic books as primary sources and products of a particular historical moment, and other times we will be reading them as powerful and yet imperfect critiques of imperialism and racial inequality in U.S. history. Besides comic books, this course uses a wide range of material including academic texts, traditional primary source documents, and multi-media sources. Limited to 25 students. 

SWAG 262 / LJST 260: Feminist Legal Theory
TT 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM
Visiting Assistant Professor Siegel

In the twentieth century, American feminist movements made significant strides in securing suffrage, formal equality under the law, reproductive justice, and the possibility of economic independence through paid labor.  And yet, the entry of (some) women into the public sphere has only intensified the urgency of a series of underlying questions: Is it desirable to demand legal transformations in the name of the identity “woman,” and if so, how should we incorporate considerations of gender and queerness, class, race, ability, and nationality? What is the relation between the formal emancipation of some women and intensified forms of domination of other women, for example, in the sphere of care work? What are the histories, logics, and political economies of these relations?  What is the family, what is its relationship to reproduction, and how should its legal attachments, obligations, and relationships be understood from a feminist perspective? How did individual choice become the privileged legal mechanism for feminist forms of freedom and what is the status of choice today? We will aim to develop our understanding of these distinct but deeply linked questions of feminist thinking and methodology, with an emphasis on American writers and their postcololonial and anti-racist critics, and to appreciate conflicting points of view and longer histories within these debates.

Thinkers include Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Aleksandra Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Betty Friedan, Catherine Mackinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Adrianne Rich, Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Eve Sedgewick, Sylvia Federici, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Donna Haraway, Hortense Spillers, Patricia J. Williams, Judith Butler, Kim TallBear, José Muñoz, Melinda Cooper, Sophie Lewis, M.E. O’Brian, and Amia Srinivasan, as well as materials from intersectional movements and jurisprudence that demanded legal and more-than-legal transformation, including the Atlanta Washer Women Strike of 1881, the Jane Collective, Wages for Housework, the Combahee River Collective, ACT-UP, INCITE!, sex worker unions, and the #MeToo movement. Limited to 30 students.

 

SWAG 277 / POSC 277: Democracy and Dissent
TT 4:05 PM – 5:20 PM
Professor Basu 

This course depicts dissent as a defining and contested feature of democratic life and explores the complex relationship between democracy and dissent. Drawing on theories of democracy and protest, as well as a range of historical and contemporary case studies, it analyzes how dissent can both strengthen and erode democratic systems. It also studies the diverse strategies that states employ to manage, redirect, criminalize, and suppress dissent. Limited to 25 students.
 

SWAG 286 / ARHA 286: Photography and the Body
TT 10:05 AM – 11:20 AM
Visiting Assistant Professor Fein

How have changing modes of representation reflected and contributed to shifting conceptions of embodiment and identity? This course explores the complex relationship between photography and the human body since the introduction of photography in 1839, with particular attention to the United States. Moving decade by decade, this course traces the development of photography alongside social and political change that altered how human bodies were understood, represented, controlled, and inhabited. We will study a variety of photographic genres that figure the body, including personal portraits, ethnographic images, documentary photography, identification images, and fashion photography. Alongside the close examination of photographs, we will read key primary sources, scholarship in art history, and theoretical texts. Visits to local collections will give us an opportunity to have our own embodied encounters with historical photographs. Although the course considers the period between 1839 and 1970, we will reflect upon the enduring legacy of historical photographic practices and conceptions of embodiment in the contemporary world. Limited to 25 students.

 

SWAG 300: Feminist Queer Research
Tuesday 1:05 PM – 3:50 PM
Professor Shandilya

This seminar prepares students to conduct independent research in gender studies. Feminist and queer research methods can be utilized by students in nearly any field regardless of major. The first part of the course will teach students how to access information and conduct research through a series of readings, exercises, and discussions. The second part of the course will introduce feminist and queer research methods including: historical and cultural analysis such as literary analysis, film studies and archival research as well as qualitative and interpretive methods such as ethnography, interviews, and discourse analysis. Faculty members of the SWAGS Department, departmental affiliates, and visitors will offer instruction, drawing on their own expertise and methodologies. Students will also meet individually with the professor to develop their own research projects. The third part of the course will focus on shaping  these projects through in-class workshops facilitated by the Writing Center. Here students will learn how to formulate a research question, develop and annotate a bibliography, and draft a research prospectus.

Recommended: One 100-level SWAGS course. Limited to 20 students. Not open to first-year students.
 
 

SWAG 324 / GERM 324: Literature After Fascism
TT 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM
Assistant Professor Rosenbrück

Can there be literature “after Auschwitz”? This class investigates how German literature attempts to come to terms with the atrocities committed under National Socialism and produce a new understanding of German identity after 1945. If Nazi politics centered on a “purification” of the German nation along racial, sexual, and gendered lines, we will then ask how post-war Germany reworked notions of racialization, gender, and nationhood to overcome fascist legacies. How did literary works contribute to the construction of a post-fascist nation and its transition to a liberal democratic state? To answer this, we will explore the various ways in which German-language authors after 1945 articulated new notions of “Germanness,” masculinity and femininity, as well as normative and non-normative sexualities. Throughout, our focus will be on the possibilities and limits of literature in participating in these processes. Literary works may include texts by Wolfgang Koeppen, Günter Grass, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Gerhard Fritsch, and Thomas Bernhard. In addition to literary and historical research, writers of critical theory, political philosophy, and psychoanalysis will help us think through fascism and its aftermath, in particular Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Klaus Theweleit, and Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich. Small-group work and frequent writing exercises will allow students to develop their oral and written fluency in German. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent.

 

SWAG 338 / BLST 339 / ENGL 361: Toni Morrison
MW 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM
Professor Bailey

This course examines a significant portion of Toni Morrison’s body of work. Taking a primarily thematic approach, we will read several novels, essays, and other writings by Morrison. Our readings will also include critical reception of, and the wide-ranging scholarly reflections on Morrison’s work and her contribution to American and Black Diasporic literatures. Assignments will include: oral presentations, essays, and a research project. Limited to 15 students.

 

SWAG 339 / ENGL 339: Early Women Writers
TT 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM
Professor Nelson and Associate Professor Worsley

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Virginia Woolf famously said in 1929. But what did the landscape of women’s writing look like before women were allowed these liberties, and what effects did their social conditions have on their writing? This course focuses on the work of early female-identifying writers, from the medieval to the Victorian period–many of whom are still overlooked today.  What does a literary history that fully includes women’s writing look like, and how does it differ from standard literary histories? Does women’s writing have specific formal or stylistic characteristics, and are these affected by women’s social standing and access to education? We will attempt answers to these questions as we survey a wide range of writing by women from 1350 to 1850, moving through various genres. Poets, political agitators, religious mystics and martyrs, and novelists, will all feature on the syllabus. Our readings will include well-known works by writers such as Margery Kempe, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Brontë, along with lesser-known women-authored poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Secondary readings by feminist critics and historians will also frame our discussions. Limited to 25 students.

 

SWAG 342 / FREN 342: Women of Ill Repute
MW 11:35 AM – 12:50 PM
Professor Katsaros

Prostitutes play a central role in nineteenth-century French fiction, especially of the realistic and naturalistic kind. Both widely available and largely visible in nineteenth-century France, prostitutes inspired many negative stereotypes. But, as the very product of the culture that marginalized her, the prostitute offered an ideal vehicle for writers to criticize the hypocrisy of bourgeois mores. The socially stratified world of prostitutes, ranging from low-ranking sex workers to high-class courtesans, presents a fascinating microcosm of French society as a whole. We will read selections from Honoré de Balzac, Splendeur et misère des courtisanes; Victor Hugo, Les Misérables; and Gustave Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale; as well as Boule-de-Suif and other stories by Guy de Maupassant; La fille Elisa by Edmond de Goncourt; Nana by Emile Zola; Marthe by Joris-Karl Huysmans; La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils; and extracts from Du côté de chez Swann by Marcel Proust. Additional readings will be drawn from the fields of history (Alain Corbin, Michelle Perrot) and critical theory (Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva). We will also discuss visual representations of prostitutes in nineteenth-century French art (Gavarni, Daumier, C. Guys, Degas, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec). Conducted in English.

 

SWAG 348 / HIST 348: Hist Asian Amer. Women
MF 10:05 AM – 11:20 AM
Assistant Professor Peralta

This seminar will explore the intersections of gender, migration, and labor, with a particular focus on Asian American women in the United States (broadly defined to include the U.S.’s territories and military bases), from 1870 to the present. Through transnational and woman-of color feminist lenses, we will investigate U.S. colonial and neo-colonial formations which disrupt local economies, compelling women to migrate from their homes across national borders and then channeling them into limited employment opportunities in some of the most exploitative industries in the United States, including manufacturing, agricultural, and domestic work. Students will do close analysis of historical evidence, including written documents, images, film, and newspapers. There will also be intensive in-class discussion and varying forms of written work, which will culminate in a final research paper on a topic chosen by the student.

Recommended: a 100 or 200-level course in US history or SWAGS on race, gender, and sexuality. Limited to 20 students.

Please consult the Hampshire Course Guide for more information

AMP 2234- Cyberpunk: Queer Scifi Studies
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:50 PM
Caoimhe Harlock
This course is for students interested in both analyzing and writing science fiction. We'll explore the genre of cyberpunk through a lens of queer theory, unpacking what this realm of science fiction has to tell us about the body and its relationship to queerness, race, gender, capital, disability, and more. One half of our class sessions will be devoted to theory and media analysis, learning how the works we're looking at slot within the historical framework of the genre and how they offer responses to the real world concerns of their authors. The other half of our class sessions will focus on writing craft and aesthetic analysis of the works in question, with the goal of allowing students to carry this knowledge forward into their own creative practice, developing science fiction characters and stories with something to say about the world we live in. Possible readings / screenings include Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, William Gibson's Neuromancer, Samuel Delany's Babel-17, James Tiptree Jr's The Girl Who Was Plugged In, selections from the anthology Cyberpunk and Indigenous Futurisms, and more. Please note that while we will explore a mix of different media, this class will require reading at least a few full-length novels. Please also note that while bolstering creative practice is one major goal of this course, it is not a workshop class.

DGS 1113- Trans Literatures
Mon/Wed 4-5:30 PM
Reuven Goldberg
When Joe Biden was asked in 2019, at a campaign stop in Iowa, how many genders there are, he stumbled on a compelling response: "There are at least three." Beginning from this premise-from the indeterminacy of the "at least" and its refusal of a certain taxonomy-we will read from various trajectories of trans literature and theory and engage what it means to read "difference" in literary accounts of trans. Investigating how discourses of power and institutions of normativity have come up against trans embodiment, narratives, and politics, we will consider how such encounters are historically situated in relation to national formations, carceral states, and racial capitalism. As we work through texts that range across both region and time, we will pay close attention to the ways in which desire, gender, and sexuality are queerly narrativized and mediated by and through trans geographies.

DGS 2100- Feminist Futures Lab
Tu/Th 9-10:20 AM
Jina Fast
In this class, we will experiment with the future by producing our feminist visions through writing, art making, and speaking, as well as by helping others manifest their feminist visions through editing, publishing, and web design. This class will be linked to the work of maintaining a feminist open-educational resource collection: The Women's and Gender Studies Collection. Students will learn and apply feminist theories within their own work, in editing and journal review processes, and in maintaining an open-educational resource collection. Feminist Futures Lab will function as an innovative space where students will collaborate to create their own work, submit it to the collection, and/or participate in the selection and curation process of the resource collection.

DGS 2102- Indigenous Feminism
Mon/Wed 9-10:20 AM
Noah Romero
This course offers a survey of Indigenous feminisms- transnational and transdisciplinary theorizing from a new and emerging generation of femme, queer, trans, and Two-Spirit, Indigenous scholars. Indigenous feminisms make crucial interventions in our collective understanding of colonialism, empire, race, gender, sexuality, identity, democracy, personhood, migration, environmental justice, human rights, and multiculturalism. Centering Indigenous feminisms and the fact that Indigenous knowledge is vibrant, dynamic, and pertinent to issues of universal concern, this course aims to develop a broad and deep appreciation for Indigenous modes of analysis and contestation that allow us to transgress and transcend colonial traumas, borders, states, and fictions.

DGS 2103- Girl Groups Medieval to Motown
Mon/Wed 1-2:20 PM
Allison Monroe
The term "girl groups" typically refers to the close-harmony all-women pop groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet groups like the Andrews Sisters, the Shirelles, and, most famously, the Supremes, represent only one manifestation of a centuries-long musical practice in which groups of young women have sung together, from enslaved women of the medieval Islamic world to the concerto delle donne of Renaissance Italy to Vivaldi's young pupils at the Ospedale della Pieta. For centuries, these groups have enthralled listeners and inspired composers. This course looks at the history of this musical phenomenon, with critical attention to its spaces, reception, and relationships and what they tell us about gender and musicking over time.

DGS 2500- Trans and Disability Studies
Mon/Wed 1-2:20 PM
Reuven Goldberg
In Transness, Disability, and Psychosomatic Dentistry, we will consider the historical relationship between trans studies and disability studies--and their midcentury intersection. Reading theory, literature, and archival documents, we will collectively ask: how are discourses around trans and disability mutually constituted? Where are pressure points? And how does thinking about them together deepen our engagement with both fields?

For the most up to date information about Mt Holyoke GNDST's Fall 2026 course offerings, please use the Five College Course Schedule. 

GNDST 204CW- Androgyny and Gender Negotiation in Contemporary Chinese Women's Theater
Wed 1:30-4:20 PM

Yin Wang

Yue Opera, an all-female art that flourished in Shanghai in 1923, resulted from China's social changes and the women's movement. Combining traditional with modern forms and Chinese with Western cultures, Yue Opera today attracts loyal and enthusiastic audiences despite pop arts crazes. We will focus on how audiences, particularly women, are fascinated by gender renegotiations as well as by the all-female cast. The class will read and watch classics of this theater, including Romance of the Western Bower, Peony Pavilion, and Butterfly Lovers. Students will also learn the basics of traditional Chinese opera.

GNDST 210JD- Women and Gender in Judaism

Tu/Th 9-10:15 AM

Mara Benjamin

This course examines gender as a key category in Jewish religious thought and practice. Students examine different theories of gender and intersectional feminisms, concepts of gender in a range of Jewish sources, and feminist Jewish responses to those sources. Students work with the Judaica collection at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and consider material culture as a source for women's and gender studies. Topics may include: how Jewish practice and law regulate sexuality and desire; feminist, queer and trans methods of engaging patriarchal texts; methods of studying women and gender in Jewish cultures; racialization.

GNDST 221- Feminist and Queer Theory

Tu/Th 1:45-3 PM

Sarah Stefana Smith

We will read a number of key feminist texts that theorize sexual difference, and challenge the oppression of women. We will then address queer theory, an offshoot and expansion of feminist theory, and study how it is both embedded in, and redefines, the feminist paradigms. This redefinition occurs roughly at the same time (1980s/90s) when race emerges as one of feminism's prominent blind spots. The postcolonial critique of feminism is a fourth vector we will examine, as well as anti-racist and postcolonial intersections with queerness. We will also study trans-theory and its challenge to the queer paradigm.

GNDST 290KM- Transdisciplinary Hybridity: Exploring Possibilities for Queer Feminist Knowledge-Making

Tu 1:30-4:20 PM

Jacquelyne Luce

Students will learn about and experiment with a variety of possibilities for queer feminist knowledge-making. First, we'll engage with "transdisciplinarity" and "hybridity" as concepts and practices in activist-scholar projects of disciplinary disentanglement. Then, accompanied by the work of writers, artists, scientists, and organizers involved in queer feminist knowledge-making along and against the borders and boundaries of genre, time, and expectation, we'll experiment with methodological and representational eclecticism. Course activities foreground collaboration and reflexivity as tools for sustainable community, racial, and disability justice centered activist-scholarship.

GNDST 333AD- Abolitionist Dreams and Everyday Resistance: Freedom Memoirs, Struggles, and Decolonizing Justice

Tu 1:30-4:20 PM

Ren-yo Hwang

This seminar will offer close theoretical readings of a variety of anti-colonial, abolitionist, anti-imperialist, insurgent and feminist-of-color memoir, autobiographical and social justice texts. We will read works from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Assata Shakur, Patrisse Cullors, Grace Lee Boggs, Audre Lorde, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinna, Leila Khaled, Fannie Lou Hamer, Sarah Ahmed, Lee Maracle, Kai Cheng Thom, Angela Davis, Sojourner Truth, adrienne maree brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Mary Brave Bird, Jamaica Kincaid, Gabby Rivera and Haunani-Kay Trask. We will center the interlinking and capacious concepts of liberation, revolution, freedom, justice and decolonization.

GNDST 333FM- Latina Feminism(s)

Wed 1:30-4:20 PM

Vanessa Rosa

In this seminar, we will explore the relationship between Latina feminist theory and knowledge production. We will examine topics related to positionality, inequality, the body, reproductive justice, representation, and community. Our approach in this class will employ an intersectional approach to feminist theory that understands the interconnectedness between multiple forms of oppression, including race, class, sexuality, and ability. Our goal is to develop a robust understanding of how Latina feminist methodologies and epistemologies can be tools for social change.

GNDST 333ME- Feminist Media Studies

Tu 1:30-4:20 PM

Li Cornfeld

How is pop culture a site of social struggle? This course engages students in the scholarly field of feminist media studies in order to illuminate how popular culture indexes complex political terrains. With attention to intersections of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability and disability, we will analyze representation across wide-ranging media forms. What can feminist theory tell us about media's production and reception? What can media theory tell us about feminist discourses, movements, and activism? Throughout, students will assess their own roles as consumers and producers of media and also as critical thinkers navigating shifting political landscapes and mediated environments.

GNDST 333 PC- Pregnancy and the Placenta

Mon/Wed 10:30-11:45 AM

Sarah Bacon

Pregnancy is a stunning feat of physiology. It is a conversation between two bodies -- parental and fetal -- whose collective action blurs the very boundaries of the individual. In this course we will explore such questions as: what is pregnancy, and how does the ephemeral, essential organ known as the placenta call pregnancy into being? How is pregnancy sustained? How does it end? We will consider the anatomy of reproductive systems and the hormonal language of reproduction. We will investigate the nature of "sex" hormones, consider racial disparities in pregnancy outcome, and weigh the evidence that the intrauterine environment influences disease susceptibility long after birth.-

For the most up to date information about Smith SWG's Fall 2026 course offerings, please use the Five College Course Schedule. 
 

SWG 211- Girls in the System
Tu/Th 7-8:15 PM
TBA
This interdisciplinary course considers the issue of gender, race, sexuality and class in the juvenile justice system. Drawing on gender and sexuality studies, criminal justice and sociological literature, social critiques, policy papers, case law, documentary film, personal narratives and fiction, the course critically examines the history of the juvenile justice system; what it means to be in "the system"; the role of "justice" in the juvenile system; and reviews some of the major issues faced by the youth who are subject to this system. In addition, the course considers the role of youth action and resistance against the system.

SWG 222- Gender, Law and Policy
Mon/Wed/Fri 10:50 AM-12:05 PM
Carrie N. Baker
This course explores the impact of gender on law and policy in the United States historically and today, focusing in the areas of constitutional equality, employment, education, reproduction, the family, violence against women and immigration. Students study constitutional and statutory law as well as public policy. Topics include sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, pregnancy and caregiver discrimination, pay equity, sexual harassment, school athletics, marriage, sterilization, contraception and abortion, reproductive technologies, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and gender-based asylum. We will study feminist efforts to reform the law and examine how inequalities based on gender, race, class and sexuality shape the law. We also discuss and debate contemporary policy and future directions.

SWG 241- White Supremacy in the Age of Trump
Tu/Th 2:45-4 PM
Loretta Ross
This course analyzes the history, prevalence and current manifestations of the white supremacist movement by examining ideological components, tactics and strategies, and its relationship to mainstream politics. Students research and discuss the relationship between white supremacy and white privilege, and explore how to build a human rights movement to counter the white supremacist movement in the U.S. Students develop analytical writing and research skills while engaging in multiple cultural perspectives. The overall goal is to develop the capacity to understand the range of possible responses to white supremacy, both its legal and extralegal forms.

SWG 245/ CCX 245- Collective Organizing
Mon/Wed 10:50 AM-12:05 PM
Elizabeth Brownell Armstrong
This course introduces students to key concepts, debates and provocations that animate the world of community, labor and electoral organizing for social change. To better understand these movements’ visions, students develop an analysis of global and national inequalities, exploitation and oppression. The course explores a range of organizing skills to build an awareness of power dynamics and learn activists’ tools to bring people together towards common goals. A central aspect of this course is practicing community-based learning and research methods in dialogue with community-based activist partners. 

SWG 267/ AMS 267- Queer Ecologies: Race, Queerness, Disability and Environmental Justice
Tu/Th 9:25-10:40 AM
Evangeline Heiliger
What is learned by reading Queer Ecologies alongside Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, or Over the Hedge as environmental racism? The class considers what it means to have a racialized and sexualized identity shaped by relationships with environments. How is nature gendered, racialized and sexualized? Why? How are analytics of power mobilized around, or in opposition to, nature? How are conceptions of “disability” and “health” taken up in environmental justice movements? Students investigate the discursive and practical connections made between marginalized peoples and nature, and chart the knowledge gained by queering our conceptions of nature and the natural.

SWG 271- Reproductive Justice
Tu/Th 10:50 AM-12:05 PM
Loretta Ross
This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of reproductive health, rights and justice in the United States, examining history, activism, law, policy and public discourses related to reproduction. A central framework for analysis is how gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability and nationality intersect to shape people’s experiences of reproductive oppression and their resistance strategies. Topics include eugenics and the birth control movement; the reproductive rights and justice movements; U.S. population control policies; criminalization of pregnant people; fetal personhood and birth parents’ citizenship; the medicalization of reproduction; reproductive technologies; the influence of disability, incarceration and poverty on pregnancy and parenting; the anti-abortion movement; and reproductive coercion and violence.

SWG 290- Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture
Mon 1:40-2:55 PM, Wed 1:20-2:35 PM
Jennifer M. DeClue
This course considers the manner in which norms of gender and sexuality are reflected, reinforced and challenged in popular culture. The class uses theories of knowledge production, representation and meaning-making to support an analysis of the relationship between discourse and power; the engagement with these theoretical texts helps track this dynamic as it emerges in popular culture. Key queer theoretical concepts provide a framework for examining how the production gender and sexuality impacts cultural production. Through a critical engagement with a selection of films, music, television, visual art and digital media, the class discusses mainstream conventions and the feminist, queer and queer of color interventions that enliven the landscape of popular culture.

SWG 300GV- Women Fighting Back: Gender and Violence
Th 1:20-4 PM
Carrie N. Baker
Patriarchal societies are permeated with gendered violence. Across time and place, men and boys have perpetrated multiple forms of violence against women and girls, including intimate partner violence, sexual assault and harassment, and reproductive coercion—usually without legal or social consequences. This course explores how women and girls fight back against male violence historically and today, using a wide range of strategies, including collective resistance, legal challenges, art, film, humor and, sometimes, physical violence. Using intersectional feminist theory, the class reflects on how and why patriarchal societies allow male violence against women and girls, and punish female resistance to male violence.

SWG 300LR- Beyond the Grind: Feminist and Disability Theories of Care, Love, and Resistance
Tu 1:20-4 PM
Jina Boyong Kim
This course turns to disability justice, Black feminist, feminist-of-color and Marxist feminist thought in order to explore the revolutionary potential of care, love and rest. Additionally, the course examines the complications and contradictions of care work under U.S. racial capitalism. Rather than viewing practices of love and care as a sideline to activist movement work, the course takes these practices seriously by engaging a range of texts from the late 20th and 21st centuries. Discussions include mutual aid, disability justice, queer forms of kinship, Black feminist love-politics, global economies of care work and anti-work politics.

SWG 314- Documenting Queer and Trans Lives
Tu 1:20-4 PM
Jennifer M. DeClue
This course examines visual and literary documentations of queer and trans life by reading memoirs and screening short and feature-length documentaries films. The course considers the power dynamics imbued in documenting queer & trans lives while contending with the politics of visibility, representation, and embodiment as they are impacted by race, class, and gender.  The course considers the performativity of gender and the fluidity of sexuality while also engaging with storytelling and the politics that lie therein. Students have the option of producing a short film, creating a short memoir, writing a research paper, or proposing another mode of documenting experiences of queer and trans life.

University + (Online) Courses - Summer 2026

For information about enrolling in Summer University+ Classes, please see the University+ website.

Feminist Health Politics
Summer Session 1 (May 18, 2026 - Jun 30, 2026)
Nic Le Roux
What is health? What makes health a matter of feminism? And what might a feminist health politics look like? These questions lay at the heart of this course. In Feminist Health Politics, we will examine how health becomes defined, and will question whether health and disease are objectively measured conditions or subjective states. We will also consider why and how definitions and standards of health have changed over time; why and how standards and adjudications of health vary according to gender, race, sexuality, class, and nationality; and how definitions of health affect the way we value certain bodies and ways of living. Additionally, we will explore how knowledge about health is created; how environmental conditions, social location, politics, and economic conditions affect health; how various groups have fought for changes to health care practices and delivery; and how experiences of health and illness have been reported and represented.