Spring 2022 Course Guide : Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies : UMass Amherst

WGSS

Attention Majors and Minors! Students who entered the major or minor Fall 2020 or after are under new requirements. For those of you that declared before Fall 2020, use this list to see what counts towards the distribution requirements. Courses in yellow count towards the theory requirement for majors. Courses in green are UWW/Online.

WGSS 187 – Gender, Sexuality and Culture
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m. – Derek Siegel
UWW Section – Adina Giannelli

This course offers an introduction to some of the basic concepts and theoretical perspectives in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Drawing on disciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies, students will engage critically with issues such as gender inequities, sexuality, families, work, media images, queer issues, masculinity, reproductive rights, and history. Throughout the course, students will explore how experiences of gender and sexuality intersect with other social constructs of difference, including race/ethnicity, class, and age. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which interlocking systems of oppression have shaped and influenced the historical, cultural, social, political, and economical contexts of our lives, and the social movements at the local, national and transnational levels which have led to key transformations. (Gen. Ed. I, DU)

WGSS 201 – Gender & Difference: Critical Analyses
Monday, Wednesday 2:30-3:45 p.m. – Signe Predmore
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m. – Jude Hayward-Jansen

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.

WGSS 205 – Feminist Health Politics
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Laura Briggs

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.

WGSS 240 – Introduction to Transgender Studies
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Cameron Awkward-Rich

This survey of transgender studies will introduce students to the major concepts and current debates within the field. Drawing on a range of theoretical texts, historical case studies, and creative work, we will track the emergence of “transgender” as both an object of study and a way of knowing. In particular, we will ask: what does it mean to “study? ?transgender?? This guiding question will lead us to consider the varied meanings of ?trans? and how these meanings have been shaped by regimes of gender, racism, colonization, ableism, and medical and legal regulation; the tensions and intimacies between trans, disability, anti-racist, queer, and feminist theory/politics; and how `trans? might help us to imagine other, more just worlds. This course was previously numbered WGSS 297TC.

WGSS 286 – History of Sexuality and Race in the U.S.
Tuesday 8:30-9:45 a.m.
Angie Willey

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary feminist study of sexuality. Its primary goal is to provide a forum for students to consider the history of sexuality and race in the U.S. both in terms of theoretical frameworks within women's and gender studies, and in terms of a range of sites where those theoretical approaches become material, are negotiated, or are shifted. The course is a fully interdisciplinary innovation. It will emphasize the links rather than differences between theory and practice and between cultural, material, and historical approaches to the body, gender, and sexuality. Throughout the course we will consider contemporary sexual politics "from the science of sex and sexuality to marriage debates" in light of histories of racial and sexual formations. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU)

WGSS 295D – Democracy Works
Monday, Wednesday 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Jo Comerford

Civil Rights leader, Dolores Herta, is famous for saying, "The only way Democracy can work is if people participate." With this in mind, class participants will take a deep dive into Massachusetts state government to explore the legislative and budget processes focusing on where people - as individuals and as part of social movements - are powerful. This course will start with the basics and move on to the intersection of inside and outside strategy and organizing.

WGSS 294E – Envisioning/Enacting Social Change
Monday, Wednesday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Karen Cardozo

The 1970s feminist mantra "the personal is political" remains apt. How do our everyday choices reify or resist the current social order, which by many measures is dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust? At this advanced stage of global capitalism, many people engage the world primarily as consumers, a process inseparable from personal, professional, and commercial branding across various media platforms. How might we use our purchasing power as well as our creative capacity as producers to realize feminist futures? Yet we cannot enact what we cannot imagine. Reviewing the work of revolutionary thinkers behind various feminist movements, we will explore ways to envision and enact change at both the micro/personal and macro/societal levels. As we do, we will expand narrow notions of leadership for more inclusive and intersectional frameworks of activist impact.

WGSS 340 – Critical Prison Studies
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Laura Ciolkowski

There are currently over 2 million people living in prisons and jails across the United States - more incarcerated people per capita than any other country in the world. What is the carceral state and how do particular gendered and racialized bodies get caught up in its logics? How do gender, race, sexuality, and class shape systems of discipline, punishment, surveillance, and control? What is "anti-carceral feminism" and what are some of the abolitionist critiques of the prison industrial complex? This course approaches the issue of mass incarceration through the lens of feminist social justice theory, gender and sexuality studies, and critical race theory. An intersectional and deeply interdisciplinary exploration of the carceral, the course draws on literature, memoir, film, history, social science, psychology, art and popular media to interrogate and explore the many dimensions of mass incarceration in the US.

WGSS 393V – Rewilding Feminisms
Wednesday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Karen Cardozo

2020 was unprecedented for four simultaneous "super-disruptors" - economic recession, mass protests, election instability, and a pandemic. In other words, "civilization" isn't all it's cracked up to be. This course will examine the rising discourse of "rewilding" in ecological, social and feminist contexts, exploring attempts to reduce the damaging effects of global capitalism as we strive for environmental justice in a more sustainable world. Through an intersectional and interdisciplinary lens, we will explore how concepts of gender, genre and genera shape the naturecultural configuration of our lives and habitats and explore alternate ways of knowing and living. How might we reclaim our inherent author-ity to write more "untamed" stories, imagining freer, wilder lives in a more humane and thriving ecosystem? This class counts towards the theory requirement for WGSS majors.

WGSS 492E/692E – Trans & Queer of Color Thought
Wednesday, 2:30-5:00
Cameron Awkward-Rich

Since its coining at the turn of the twenty-first century, queer of color critique (and later trans of color critique) has come to name the vital project of queer/trans theorizing attentive to the racial and colonial histories that undergird the categories of “gender” and “sexuality.” In this mixed grad/undergrad seminar, we will first trace the development of trans/queer of color critique in the United States as simultaneously a continuation of black and woman of color feminism as they were articulated in the 1970s/80s; a site of disidentification with queer and trans theory; and a practice emerging from trans/queer of color expressive culture and world-making. In the second half of the class, we will ask after how trans/queer of color thought helps us to know about disability, migration, settler colonialism, sex, erotics, and aesthetics, among other key terms. This class counts towards the theory requirement for WGSS majors.

WGSS 492G/692G – Gender and U.S. Empire
Thursday 2:30-5:00 p.m.
Laura Briggs

There is an old debate among historians of the United States over whether to consider the US an empire; the answer turns, basically, on how you define "empire." This course is not very interested in that question. Rather, it begins with the problem of how to collapse two very different faces of the analysis of US imperialism. One is public/boy/policy/official: the military, diplomacy, NGOs, and medicine and science. The other is private/girl/racialized/marginal: questions of gender, children, race, indigeneity, sexuality. The course, asks, then: how has the United States gained influence globally through settler colonialism, territorial government, military interventions, counterinsurgency, the rule of experts, military bases, and U.S. global markets? What is the relationship of enslavement and debt in the context of the Americas? How have scholars in a variety of fields, including particularly history, anthropology, and interdisciplinary queer, feminist, ethnic, and American Studies, shed light on how gender, racialization, and sexuality are configured and reconfigured in relationship to US empire? This seminar will be reading-intensive.

WGSS 494TI - Unthinking the Transnational
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Svati Shah

This course is about the framework of transnational women's and gendered activisms and scholarship. We will survey the field of transnational feminist research and praxis, locating structures of power, practices of resistance, and the geographies of development at work in a range of theories and social movements. The course will not only examine the implementation of feminist politics and projects that have sought to ensure some measurable social, cultural, and economic changes, but also explore the ways conceptions of the `global' and `transnational' have informed these efforts. Students will have the opportunity to assess which of these practices can be applicable, transferable, and/or travel on a global scale. We will focus not only on the agency of individuals, but also on the impact on people's lives and their communities as they adopt strategies to improve material, social, cultural, and political conditions of their lives. Satisfies the Integrative Experience for BA-WoSt majors.

WGSS 695W – Work Matters
Monday 10:00-12:30 p.m.
Karen Cardozo

As a concept larger than employment, work is any mental or physical effort expended toward a particular purpose. Given that the global pandemic has profoundly reshaped what was already a highly disruptive economy under global capitalism, the time is ripe to investigate how (and whether) we, and our society, work. In this interdisciplinary consideration of work in economic, historical, philosophical, sociological and scientific contexts, with special attention to the Detroit-based "New Work, New Culture" movement, we will turn to intersectional feminisms and queer theory to interrogate concepts of good work and productivity while asking: Why do we work? What work needs to be done? Who cares? And finally: What is your ideal work?

WGSS 705 – Feminist Epistemologies and Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Tuesday 2:30-5:00 p.m.
Laura Ciolkowski

This course was formerly titled “WGSS 691B - Issues in Feminist Research”. This is a required course for students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies. Those students will be given priority enrollment. Certificate students can contact @email if the class is full.

This course will begin from the question, "what is feminist research?" Through classic and current readings on feminist knowledge production, we will explore questions such as: What makes feminist research feminist? What makes it research? What are the proper objects of feminist research? Who can do feminist research? What can feminist research do? Why do we do feminist research? How do feminists research? Are there feminist ways of doing research? Why and how do the stories we tell in our research matter, and to whom? Some of the key issues/themes we will address include: accountability, location, citational practices and politics, identifying stakes and stakeholders, intersectionality, inter/disciplinarity, choosing and describing our topics and methods, research as storytelling, and the relationship between power and knowledge.

UMASS

UMass Courses Outside of WGSS (Departmental)

Departmental courses 200-level and above automatically count towards the WGSS major. 100-level and above automatically count towards the minor.

ART-HIST 391F – Topics in African Art
Tuesday, Thursday 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Alexandra Thomas

Focusing on modern and contemporary visual culture, we will ask: what does it mean to see, imagine, and witness Black queer feminisms? Topics include formerly enslaved drag artist-activist William Dorsey Swann, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, Mickalene Thomas’s mixed media collages, and a vast range of other Black visual culture.

CHINESE 394WI – Women in Chinese Cultures
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Elena Chiu

This course focuses on the representation of women and the constitution of gender in Chinese culture as seen through literature and mass media. It focuses on literary and visual representations of women to examine important issues such as the relationship between gender and power, self and society, and tradition and modernity. This course has a dual goal: to explore how women's social role has evolved from pre-modern China to the present and to examine important issues such as women's agency, "inner-outer" division, and the yin-yang dichotomy in Chinese literature and culture. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Chinse majors.

COMM 209H/COMM 597L – LGBT Politics and the Media
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
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 394EI – Performance and the Politics of Race
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Kimberlee Perez

This course looks at the ways race, racial identities, and interracial relations are formed through and by communication practices in present-day U.S. America. Though focusing on U.S. America in the current historical moment, the course takes into account the ways history as well as the transnational flows of people and capital inform and define conversations about race and racial identities. Race will be discussed as intersectional, taking into account the ways race is understood and performed in relation to gender, sexuality, class, and nation. The course will focus on the performance and communications of race, ranging from everyday interactions, personal narratives and storytelling, intra- and inter-racial dialogue, and staged performances.

COMM 494GI – Media and Construction of Gender
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
Rachel Briggs

This Communication course draws on research and theory in communication, psychology, sociology, gender and cultural studies, education, and anthropology to examine how various forms of media shape our understandings of ourselves and others as gendered beings. We will discuss how media messages not only influence our behaviors, but also permeate our very senses of who we are from early childhood. Through a critical examination of fairy tales, textbooks, advertisements, magazines, television, movies, and music, students will explore the meanings and impacts of gendered messages as they weave with cultural discourses about race, class, sexuality, disability, age, and culture. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Comm majors.

COMM 497* - Stories of Race in the United States
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
Porntip (Ploy) Israsena Twishime

This course examines contemporary issues of race, including the erasure of Indigenous people in a settler society, anti-Black racism, and the racialization of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as how these issues of race intersect with constructions of gender, sexuality, class, and migration. We will approach these issues through stories, a prevalent and familiar mode of communication. Stories of race in the United States abound, and through these stories, our understanding of race continues to evolve. Dominant stories of race assign and affix individuals and communities of people with particular meanings that often recycle tropes and stereotypes, as in Asians are like this or Black people are like that. Using a performative lens, we will turn to Black, Indigenous, People of Color storytelling practices as an alternative entry point into the stories of race. We will examine fiction, short stories, poetry, plays, and other forms of storytelling as communicative strategies that generate alternative stories about the history and culture of race in the United States. Our primary texts will be paired with selected readings from performance, postcolonial, ethnic, feminist, and queer studies.

ECON 397WM – Economics of Women, Minorities and Work
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
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 397EL – Equity Lab
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Lee Badget

The Equity Lab course uses economic research and thinking to propose solutions to important social and economic equity problems, including inequality based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disabilities. To design those interventions, we will also draw on ideas about fairness, as well as data analysis, communication strategies, and policy methods. Some likely projects for our Equity Lab will include reparations for African Americans, differential taxation of urban and rural farms, and employment discrimination against transgender and nonbinary people, as well as other issues. Open only to Econ/STPEC/ResEc/MgrEcon primary majors until after juniors enroll, then open to all on April 14th.

ENGLISH 132 – Gender, Sexuality, Literature, and Culture
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m. – Tyler Smart
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:10-11:00 a.m.- Molly Hennigan
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 11:15-12:05 p.m. – Mitia Nath
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m. – Shwetha Chandrashekhar
UWW Section – Sally Luken

Literature treating the relationship between man and woman. Topics may include: the nature of love, the image of the hero and heroine, and definitions, past and present, of the masculine and feminine. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)

ENGLISH 300 – Junior Year Writing
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
Jordy Rosenberg

Topic: Trans Fiction and Theory. In this course, our focus will be on gaining a basic understanding of the aesthetic forms, literatures, and political questions surrounding the articulation of transgender subjectivity in the 20th and 21st centuries within a U.S. context. Readings will introduce students to the central discussions and debates within the emergent field of transgender studies, ranging from defining what "trans" has meant in different historical and institutional contexts, to looking at the intersections of transgender concerns with the politics of health care, discourses of disability and embodiment, colonialism and neocolonialism, racial oppression and the imperial state. Readings will be drawn from critics such as C. Riley Snorton, Susan Stryker, Aren Aizura, Kai M. Green, Jules Gill Peterson, and Kadji Amin; and from authors and filmmakers such as Charlie Jane Anders, Madsen Minax, Yoon Ha Lee, Ryka Aoki, Leslie Feinberg, Andrea Abi-Karam, Kay Gabriel, Jos Charles, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and others. Students will be prepared to engage in the production of their own writing, either critical analyses of the readings, or more experimental forms of non-fiction/essay-writing. We will also engage in peer review, and learn to be thoughtful, generative editors of our own and our colleagues' work.

ENGLISH 378 – American Women Writers
Monday, Wednesday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Gloria Biamonte

Fiction by women exploring the social and sexual arrangements of American culture.

HISTORY 265 – LGBT and Queer History
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m. – Shay Olmstead
UWW Section – Tanya Pearson

This course explores how queer individuals and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities have influenced the social, cultural, economic, and political landscape in United States history. With a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the course covers topics such as the criminalization of same-sex acts, cross-dressing, industrialization and urbanization, feminism, the construction of the homo/heterosexual binary, transsexuality and the "lavender scare" during the Cold War, the homophile, gay liberation, and gay rights movements, HIV/AIDS, and (im)migration. We will often look to examples from the present to better explore change over time and the modes and influences that shape both current and past understandings of gender and sexual difference. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU)

HISTORY 349H – Topics in European History: Sex and Society
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Jennifer Heuer

This honors course examines the social organization and cultural construction of gender and sexuality. We will look at how women and men experienced the dramatic changes that have affected Europe since 1789 and consider how much these developments were themselves influenced by ideas about masculinity and femininity. We will explore topics such as revolutionary definitions of citizenship; changing patterns of work and family life; fin-de-siecle links between crime, madness, and sexual perversion; the fascist cult of the body; battle grounds and home fronts during the world wars; gendered aspects of nationalism and European colonialism, and the sexual revolution of the post-war era.

HISTORY 397JL – Social Justice Lawyering
Tuesday 2:30-5:00 p.m.
Jennifer Nye

From fighting Jim Crow segregation to challenging the recent Muslim travel ban, judicial review has historically been used as a strategy to reign-in executive and legislative over-reach and protect Constitutional rights. This course will examine how lawyers, social movements, and everyday people have used litigation to advocate for social justice in the United States. Through reading in-depth studies of important civil and criminal cases, we will explore such questions as: What is the history of social justice lawyering in the United States and how, why and when have social movements turned to litigation to advance their causes? What are the pros and cons of using litigation to achieve social justice, versus other tools like direct action, lobbying for political change, and community organizing? How effective is litigation in achieving the goals originally envisioned by lawyers, activists, and litigants? How have lawyers constrained or expanded the vision of social justice movements? What dilemmas do lawyers?who are ethically bound to zealously advocate for the interests of individual clients” face when they are additionally interested in advancing "a cause"? Cases explored may include issues such as civil rights, women's rights, free speech, LGBT/Queer rights, disability rights, environmental justice, criminal justice, poverty and people's lawyering, immigration rights, and the rise of conservative social movement lawyering. Prior law-related coursework helpful, but not required.

HISTORY 397RR – History of Reproductive Rights Law
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 p.m.
Jennifer Nye

This course will explore the history of reproductive rights law in the United States, centering the reading of statutes, court decisions, amicus briefs, and law review articles. We will look at the progression of cases and legal reasoning involving a wide variety of reproductive rights issues, including forced sterilization, contraception, abortion, forced pregnancy/c-sections, policing pregnancy (through welfare law, employment policies and criminal law), and reproductive technologies. We will pay particular attention to how differently situated women were/are treated differently by the law, particularly on the basis of age, class, race, sexual orientation, and ability. We will also examine the role lawyers have historically played in advancing (or constraining) the goals of the reproductive rights movement(s) and explore the effectiveness of litigation as a strategy to secure these rights. Finally, we will consider the question of reproductive rights versus reproductive justice and whether reproductive justice can be obtained through advocating for reproductive rights

HISTORY 397WG – Women and Gender in Latin America
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 p.m.
Diana Sierra Becerra

This course uses gender as an analytical lens to understand key themes and periods of Latin American history, from the conquest of the Americas to the present-day neoliberal era. The course will illuminate how gender has shaped social relationships, institutions, identities, and discourses in the region. It will prioritize the role of women and how their individual and collective actions have shaped and transformed Latin America. Special attention will be paid to women's participation in social movements.

HONORS 499DN – Women Organize for a Better World, Second Semester
Tuesday, Thursday 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Graciela Monteagudo

Throughout the planet, women create common spaces for a better world in response to threats to their livelihood. This course uses the concept “woman” to refer to bodies feminized by power, to include both transgender and cis women. Students will analyze the axis of oppression and resistance that sit at the core of women’s experiences. Focusing on gender, sexuality, the economy, and ethnic/racial oppression will help students zero on the structural aspect of women?s organizing. Students will prepare to write their thesis by learning about a wide range of movements, such as movements against gender violence, against racism, for access to full reproductive rights, for living wages, and to de-naturalize domestic work’s hidden unpaid labor. HONORS 499DN is designed to encourage and support students as they focus on writing a 40-60 page-long thesis on a topic of their choice.

HP 582 – Reproductive Justice
Monday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Aline Gubrium

The interface of social and clinical issues, health policy, research, and community health education in the area of women's health across the lifespan. Also open to seniors from the Five Colleges.

HISTORY 397WR – Women and Revolutions
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
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 revolutionary theories and practices? We will consult primary and secondary sources to understand the experiences and dreams of radical women. We will focus on historical case studies primarily from Latin America.

LABOR 201/SOC 201 – Women and Work
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Clare Hammonds

This course will examine the role of women at a variety of workplaces from historical, economic, sociological, and political points of view. Among areas considered: discrimination, health care, women in the labor movement and in management, and civil rights legislation. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

LEGAL 297WJ – Women in the Justice System
Thursday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Maria Puppolo

This course explores the intersection between women and the criminal justice system. The nature and extent of women as offenders, as victims, and as professionals in the criminal justice system will be explored, as well as theories related to offending and victimization. Also integral to the course is the relationship between victimization and offending and the intricacies of women's intersectionality with the criminal justice system as offenders, law enforcement and probation officers, correctional personnel, lawyers and judges.

POLSCI 291U – UMass Women in Leadership
Tuesday 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Michelle Goncalves

UMass Women into Leadership (UWiL) is a series of hands-on workshops designed to educate participants on the existence and causes of gender disparities in public service, to provide leadership training to prepare participants to enter public service careers, and to offer mentoring and networking programs to help launch public service careers. Open to students who have been accepted into the UWiL program. Instructor's email: uwil@umass.edu

POLSCI 392AP – Activism, Participation and Protest
Wednesday 4:006:30 p.m.
Sonia Alvarez

This course examines contemporary forms of political activism, participation, and protest. Drawing on select case studies, principally from Latin America, the U.S, and Europe, we will pay particular attention to the dynamic development of feminisms, anti-racist/Black mobilizations, anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests, and LGBTQ organizing.

PSYCH 391LB – Psychology of the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Experience
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
John Bickford

Students in this course will explore psychological theory and research pertaining to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Topics include sexual orientation, sexual identity development, stigma management, heterosexism & homonegativity, gender roles, same-sex relationships, LGB families, LGB diversity, and LGB mental health.

PUBHLTH 372 – Maternal and Child Health
UWW Section
Kelsey Jordan

This course is designed to give students a broad overview to pertinent topics in the field of global maternal and child health. Topics covered include causes of maternal and infant mortality, treatment of malaria in pregnancy, HIV and pregnancy, infant nutrition, maternal and child nutrition, gender roles, and cultural and religious concepts in relation to working in a global setting. This course will explore approaches to public health programming that acknowledge and incorporate cultural differences.

PUBHLTH 465 – Global Perspective on Women’s Health
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Serena Houghton

In this seminar, students will discuss a variety of issues affecting women's health around the world. Topics include maternal mortality, family planning, infectious disease, sex trafficking, and gender-based violence. Open to sophomore, junior, and senior Public Health students and Public Health graduate students. PreRequisite: PUBHLTH 324

PUBHLTH 490J – Reproductive Justice
Wednesday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Susan Shaw

Reproductive Justice course is designed to explore social scientific, feminist, and critical approaches to reproductive health issues. It looks at reproduction in the broader structural (socioeconomic and political) contexts in which it is situated. In particular, in the course we explore the gendered, racialized, cultural, sexual, and classed dimensions that underlie women’s reproduction, with special attention to the long-term health effects of racism, poverty, and sexism.

SOC 106 – Race, Gender, Class & Ethnicity
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 11:15-12:05 p.m.
Kathleen Hulton

Introduction to Sociology. Analysis of the consequences of membership in racial, gender, class and ethnic groups on social, economic and political life. (Gen.Ed. SB, DU)

SOC 385 – Gender and the Family
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Ana Villalobos

This course explores the family as a gendered social construction. It considers how the family reflects and reproduces gender roles that are woven into the social norms of our society.

SOCIOL 297D – Crime, Race & Gender
UWW

This course examines the influence of gendered race relations on crime and justice. That is, we address the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, age, and geographic region. We also challenge common perceptions about the criminal justice system. We cover victimization and criminal behavior patterns, theoretical explanations, and the dynamics of differential involvement of specific groups in the criminal justice system. Designed to be a critical thinking course, the main focus will be to assess each of the main topics intensely and thoughtfully.

SPANISH 487LA – Latin American Women Writers
Monday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
TBA

~~See department for description.~~

UMass Courses Outside of WGSS (Component)

For component courses, majors and minors must focus their work on WGSS topics in order for these courses to count. 100-level courses only count towards the minor.

AFROAM 297D – African American Image in Film
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Christian Woods

This course focuses on the cinematic representations of African Americans in film from the 1890s to the present day. What were the dominant racial and gender images of African Americans that emerged during the slavery era? Why did such images achieve such popularity in film? How did black filmmakers engage with and refute dominant cultural and Hollywood images of African Americans while creating a cinematic language specific to African American experiences? What transformations have occurred in the images of African Americans in film since World War II, and especially since the 1960s?

COMM 271 – Humor in Society
Monday, Wednesday 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Stephen Olbrys Gencarella

This course examines humor as a significant form of creative expression in social and political life. In recent decades, scholars of all persuasions from the humanities, social sciences, and even hard sciences have examined this subject through a critical lens, leading to the development of an interdisciplinary field known as humor studies. This course provides an introduction to that burgeoning field. Topics include theories of humor, the differences and relationship between humor and comedy, the use of both in the redress of political and social tensions, the importance of the body in humor and comedy, and their role in the negotiation of identity and community. (Gen Ed SB)

COMM 284 – Possible Futures: Science Fiction in Global Cinemas
Friday 10:10-1:10 p.m.
Kevin Anderson

There are multiple growing concerns regarding issues of climate, class, race, gender identity, and the nature of democracy in our contemporary world. Science fiction has proven to be a thought-provoking genre to help raise awareness to many of these social and environmental issues. This course takes a global perspective on such pressing issues by examining science fiction films from around the world. As such, the course uses science fiction films as primary texts, accompanied by weekly readings. Students will engage in a critical analysis of the assigned films and readings in order to better appreciate what we can begin to anticipate regarding our future. (Gen. Ed. SB, DG)

COMM 338 – Children, Teens and Media
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Erica Scharrer

In this seminar, we will explore the role of media (television, Internet, video games, mobile media, film, etc.) in shaping the lives of children and teens. We will consider how much time children devote to various media, what they think about what they encounter through media, and the implications of media for children's lives. We will draw on social science research to examine a wide range of topics, including: depictions of race, class, gender, and sexuality in ads, programming, and other media forms; the role of media in the development of adolescent identity; media uses and effects in the realms of educational TV and apps, advertising and consumer culture, violence, and sex; and the possibilities of media literacy, parental rules and dialogue, and public policies to shape children's interactions with media.

COMM 495A – Performance and Ethnography
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
Claudio Moreira

What is Ethnography? What is Performance (auto) Ethnography? How can we think about Performing Ethnography? Drawing heavily on the works of Dwight Conquergood, Norman Denzin, and D. Soyini Madison, we give a rest to traditional forms of qualitative inquiry as we disrupt the notion of "business as usual" in the academic space. We will examine the interpenetrating relationships among performance, ethnography, and culture. The readings and assignments forefront localized critical pedagogy, critical personal narratives, decolonizing and interpretive inquiry as moral, political discourse. From the everyday space where gender, race, class, and performances intersect, we will examine how the practices of critical inquiry can be used to imagine, write and perform a free democratic society.

ECON 397MI – City, Industry, and Labor in Colonial India, 1750-1950
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00 11:15 p.m.
Priyanka Srivastava

Focusing on Calcutta (present day Kolkata) and Bombay (present day Mumbai), the two most important port cities and industrial centers of British India, this course examines how trade and industrialization shaped urban society and politics in colonial India. We will explore themes that include the following: colonial trade, the gendered history of colonial labor migration, beginning of factory industries, the emergence of a class of industrial entrepreneurs and wage earners, the built environment of colonial cities, industrial housing, the development of labor unions and their interactions with the anti-imperialist nationalist politics.

ENGLISH 279 – Introduction to American Studies
Tuesday, Thursday 2:20-3:45 p.m.
Hoang Phang

Interdisciplinary approach to the study of American culture. Focus on issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Readings drawn from literature, history, the social sciences, philosophy and fine arts. Supplemented with audio-visual materialsofilms, slides of paintings, architecture, photography and material culture, and music. Required for students with a concentration in American Studies. (Gen. Ed. AL, DU)

ENGLISH 300 – Junior Year Writing
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45
Janis Greve

Topic: Picture This: Lives in Graphic Form. Asking “What does it mean to capture a life by both drawing and writing?,” this course will examine the lively exchange between “written pictures and drawn words” in graphic memoirs from the 21st century. We will explore the diverse methods employed by comic creators when fashioning their personal memories, while engaging concepts of remembering, knowing, and identity, pushed in new directions through the graphic medium. We will also examine a wide breadth of social issues within the genre, including disability, gender, and ethnicity. Students in the course should be ready to try their hand at their own autobiographical comic; drawing ability is not required. Texts likely to include: One! Hundred! Demons! by Linda Barry, Dark Room: A Memoir in Black and White, by Lila Quintero Weaver, Quitter by Harvey Pekar, Blankets by Craig Thompson, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming, Cancer Vixen by Marisa Accocella, and more. Other assignments will include a presentation, a book review, and a 10-page research paper, with plenty of informal writing as well.

ENGLISH 494MI – Virtual Medieval: Fictions and Fantasies of the Middle Ages
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:25-2:15 p.m.
Jenny Adams

What is medieval? Most people learn very little about the foggy period that lies between the end of the Classical era and the start of the Renaissance. What we do learn usually consists of stereotypes. Jousting, chivalry, repression of women, religious fervor, medical ignorance, lice, Crusades, King Arthur, economic injustice, knights, ladies, and plague: such words, concepts, images predominate. How were these stereotypes produced? How are they reinforced or challenged on-line? What is their relationship to the ways the medieval world saw itself? In each module we will take up texts, objects, and concepts that have constructed and reconstructed our ideas about the Middle Ages. Our goals: to consider the ways we use objects and texts to construct history; to explore the relationship between academic and popular depictions of the medieval; and to think about the ways we might work across the academic/popular divide in order to offer competing views of the past. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Engl students.

FILM-ST 497J/PORTUG 497J/697J – Social Justice in Contemporary Lusophone Literature and Culture
Tuesday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Patricia Martinho Ferreira

In this course we will learn about how cultural production from Brazil, Lusophone Africa and Portugal imagines and represents society, the environment, and the human impact on the world. We will draw on literature, film, and visual arts to engage in a conversation around topics and issues such as social and environmental (in)justices, different forms of violence and human rights violations, gender, race, class, politics and memory. We will study cultural practices that resort to different aesthetic and ideological approaches in order to respond, denounce, and creatively resist to.

HISTORY 397CL/ECON 397MI – City, Industry, and Labor in Colonial India, 1750-1950
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00 11:15 p.m.
Priyanka Srivastava

HISTORY 493M – Policing in Modern America
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
Jennifer Fronc

In this course we will investigate and analyze major trends in the history of policing, broadly conceived, in the 20th century United States. This course is not meant as a chronological survey of U.S. history; instead, we will take a thematic approach, each week studying an issue or set of issues through a historical perspective. We will begin with an introduction to general theoretical approaches to the study of policing and the state, then turn to study the development of several different kinds of police forces in their historical contexts; private police in labor conflicts; the Bureau of Prohibition; and the Border Patrol. The course will also explore how evolving ideologies of race, class, gender, and sexuality have shaped understandings of what qualifies as criminal behavior in need of policing.

HPP 490B – The Social and Political Economy of Health Inequities
Wednesday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Airin Martinez

The focus of this course is to learn how economic, political and social policies produce health inequities. We analyze domestic and international policies through theories of political economy and how they have produced inequities among racial/ethnic, class, gender, and sexual minorities. More importantly, as future public health practitioners, healthcare providers, and community organizers, having some familiarity with the health implications of social and economic policy will allow students to create primary prevention strategies and structural interventions.

JOURNAL 326 – The Politics of Sport
Tuesday, Thursday 4:00-6:00 p.m.
Nicholas Mcbride

This course examines how the politics of gender, sexual identity and race play out in the arena of sports. Through readings, writing, documentary viewing and discussion, students will explore the ways in which sports either constructs or breaks down barriers among individuals and groups and how journalism is involved in the process.

LEGAL 297RL/POLISCI 797RL – Rights, Liberties and the American Constitution
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Rebecca Hamlin

This course examines the critical role that the Supreme Court has played in shaping the landscape of rights and liberties in the United States over time. We begin with a discussion about the power and potential of textual rights protections. Then, we examine the historic rise of an organizational structure that supported legal mobilization to protect individual rights in the United States, and learn about why certain rights were protected before others. Then, we will look thematically at the topics of: religious freedom, speech, guns, rights of the criminally accused, and gender and sexuality discrimination, reading and analyzing many of the Court's landmark decisions. We will close the semester by looking at some of the most recent constitutional controversies involving personal freedom.

LEGAL 394SI – Family and the State
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 p.m.
Diane Curtis

Why and how is the state involved in the definition of families, access to marriage, and intervention on behalf of children? This course will address these and other questions as we explore the ways in which the legal boundaries and connections between government and family have evolved over the last century in the United States. Issues of gender, race, class and sexual orientation will naturally play a significant role in these explorations.

LEGAL 397EQ – Law & Inequality
Wednesday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Tania DoCarmo

This course examines the persistence of inequality based on race, class, gender and/or citizenship as it relates to law, both in the U.S. and internationally. We will examine the legal system from a critical perspective, incorporating material from law, history, sociology, and other disciplines. We will map some of the ways legal regimes and concepts contribute to the production, recognition and maintenance of power hierarchies, exploring and discussing questions such: as how and why the legal system has historically favored the rich and discriminated against the poor, nonwhites, women and immigrants; as well as the extent to which the legal system can be used to achieve social change.

POLSCI 340 – Latin American Politics
Tuesday, Thursday 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Sonia Alvarez

Overview of major approaches to the study of Latin American politics and survey of historical and contemporary democratic, populist, authoritarian, and revolutionary regimes. Special attention to local, national and global forces shaping development strategies and public policies; changing institutional arrangements and shifting discourses of domination; and, social movements and strategies of resistance among subaltern social groups and classes.

PUBLHLTH 389 – Health Inequities
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45
Luis Valdez

While the health and wellbeing of the nation has improved overall, racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality disparities in morbidity and mortality persist. To successfully address growing disparities, it is important to understand social determinants of health and translate current knowledge into specific strategies to undo health inequalities. This course will explore social justice as a philosophical underpinning of public health and will consider the etiology of disease rooted in social conditions. It aims to strengthen critical thinking, self-discovery, and knowledge of ways in which socioeconomic, political, and cultural systems structure health outcomes. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

STPEC 101 – Introduction to STPEC
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Shemon Salam

This course will familiarize new students with the program and its vision. STPEC is a rigorous, democratically run, interdisciplinary academic program. STPEC is also a community of students, staff, instructors, alumni, and friends that will help you navigate your time at UMass. Ideally this course will also familiarize us with each other. The content of this course is organized around concepts students will encounter in their other STPEC requirements, as well as in the STPEC community and the greater world. It will provide an introduction to social theory, political economy, race and ethnicity, gender, masculinities and femininities, globalization and inequality in the Global North and the Global South. Assignments facilitate exploration of these and related topics. Students will have the opportunity to learn the value of social theory and how to make an argument; communicate for effective dialogue, and how to begin to identify social justice issues.

STPEC 391H – STPEC Core Seminar I
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Shemon Salam

STPEC Core Seminar II focuses on a series of interrelated political, social and theoretical movements of the 20th and 21st Century with an emphasis on how political practices and philosophies relate to the successes and catastrophic failures of modernism in complex and contradictory ways. Theories addressed include Autonomist Marxism, poststructuralism, and decolonial theory. We will research the connection between race, class, gender, sexuality, able-bodyness and other axes of oppression resistance under neoliberalism, including violence against women. A major research paper of the student's choosing will be produced over the course of the semester. This allows for deep engagement with a topic and to practice applying the critical methodological and theoretical tools developed through the STPEC curriculum.

STPEC 392H – STPEC Core Seminar II
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Graciela Monteagudo

STPEC 492H – STPEC Focus Seminar II
Wednesday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Jorge Daniel Vasquez Arreaga

This seminar addresses how ethno-racial hierarchies and racism produce exclusionary citizenship and structural inequality across the Americas. Using analytical tools from Historical Sociology, African American Studies, Latin American Marxism, and Postcolonial Studies, the seminar analyses the discourses on the nation, the matrix of coloniality, gender in Nation building, the formation of interracial alliances in the construction of non-exclusionary citizenship, and the anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles covering events from the late 19th century until the early 21st century. The seminar analyzes the work of classical actors such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Ellen Irene Diggs, C.L.R. James, José Carlos Mariátegui, Fernando Ortiz, Gustavo Urrutia, Lélia González, René Zavaleta Mercado, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and addresses particularly the case of United States, Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Students will research and present on the configuration of race and nation in one country of the Americas of their choice.

STPEC 494PI – Praxis
Wednesday 11:15-1:45 p.m.
Shemon Salam

This course tackles the latest developments in racial capitalism by analyzing social struggles and organizations since the economic crisis of 2007. Using the latest research on gender, class, race, empire, and sexuality this course looks at how crisis and struggle are simultaneously shaping the world. For the final project students build their own organizational website. Students will construct their own organization based on the readings from this semester, STPEC courses, and other courses they have taken. As an integrative experience (IE) course students are encouraged to draw on knowledge from prior courses, life experiences, and readings from outside the class. Praxis will be driven by applying theory to the real world. This course is highly student driven: composed of presentations, small group discussions, debates, and self-reflection.

STPEC 320 – Writing for Critical Consciousness
Monday 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Graciela Monteagudo

Students hone skills necessary to write in the genres that STPEC majors encounter most often in the course of their academic and professional careers. Contact department for details.

SOC 330 – Asian Americans and Inequalities
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Moon-Kie Jung

At least since the 1960s, sociology and the other social sciences have largely sidestepped questions of inequality in relation to Asian Americans, simplistically and indiscriminately positing them as a "model minority." This course examines various forms of social inequality between Asian Americans and other groups as well as among Asian Americans, including those based on race, gender, class, citizenship, and sexuality.

SPANISH 324 – Introduction to Latina/o Literature
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15 p.m.
Stephanie Fetta

In this course students will think critically about the various "wild tongues" that have defined U.S. Latinx literature and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Our analysis will center on issues of power as they are experienced by diverse U.S. Latinx populations. Specifically, we will focus on Latinx writers, performers, and scholars that push the boundaries of acceptable gender, sexuality, and racialization within U.S. Latinx cultures, focusing specifically on Caribbean and Chicanx populations in the United States. Students will be required to engage critically with primary texts, as well as reflect on the ways in which these issues exist in the world around us. Because Latinx thinkers often blur the boundaries of traditional literary and scholarly genres, we will consider pinnacle works of Latinx studies - such as those of Pedro Pietri, Gloria Anzaldua, and Junot Diaz - alongside other forms of cultural production, such as performance art and film. We will also try our hands at these art forms in an effort to find new, embodied ways to interact with expressions of Latinx culture. Course texts are written in both English and Spanish. Class discussion will take place in Spanish. All assignments must be completed in Spanish. (Gen. Ed. AL, DU)

Graduate

WGSS 692E/492E – Trans & Queer of Color Thought
Wednesday, 2:30-5:00
Cameron Awkward-Rich

WGSS 692G/492G – Gender and U.S. Empire
Thursday 2:30-5:00 p.m.
Laura Briggs

WGSS 705 – Feminist Epistemologies and Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Tuesday 2:30-5:00 p.m.
Laura Ciolkowski

This course examines genealogies of black visual culture from the age of slavery to the present day. It also offers an introduction to black visual theory. We will consider multiple genealogies, including the visual rhetoric of the abolitionist movement; the role of visuality in regimes of enslavement and its afterlives; black women's friendship albums and other visual ephemera; the data visualizations created by W. E. B. Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University; the use of ekphrastic techniques in black avant-garde prose and poetry; intermedia and radical black aesthetics; black portraiture and other trends and conversations in contemporary art. We will be particularly interested in black feminist, queer, and trans theorizations of the possibilities and pitfalls of visual representation.

UWW Winter / Spring

UWW WINTER/SPRING

Any courses not designated as “component” that are 200-level and above count automatically towards the major in WGSS and all courses not designated as “component” count towards the minor. To count component courses, WGSS majors and minors much focus their work on WGSS topics. Contact department with questions!

COMM 288 – Gender, Sex and Representation
Sut Jhally

This course will examine the relationship between commercialized systems of representation and the way that gender and sexuality are thought of and organized in the culture. In particular, we will look at how commercial imagery impacts upon gender identity and the process of gender socialization. Central to this discussion will be the related issues of sexuality and sexual representation (and the key role played by advertising).

COMM 394EI – Performance the Politics of Race
Kimberlee Perez

ENGLISH 132 – Gender, Sexuality, Literature, and Culture
Maria Ishikawa

HISTORY 154 – Social Change in the 1960s
Julia Sandy-Bailey
component

This course focuses on the "Long Sixties," a period stretching from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. We will look in new ways at topics you are probably already familiar with: the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, counterculture, sexual experimentation, and never trusting anyone over 30. We will also explore aspects of the Sixties you may not know about or associate with a different era, such as the Great Society, a thriving conservative movement, environmentalism, and gay rights. Students will view online lectures, participate in online discussions, and complete assignments which include reviewing music, movies, and books from the sixties. For more information or to request a syllabus, contact Professor Sandy: jsandybailey@admin.umass.edu. (4 credits, HS DU)

PUBHLTH 372 – Maternal and Child Health
Kelsey Jordan

SOCIOL 222 – The Family
Whitney Russell
component

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 287 – Sexuality & Society
Skylar Davidson

The many ways in which social factors shape sexuality. Focus on cultural diversity, including such factors as race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity in organizing sexuality in both individuals and social groups. Prerequisite: 100-level Sociology course. (Gen.Ed. SB, DU)

STPEC 187 – Introduction to Radical Social Theory
Graciela Monteagudo
component

This is an introductory course to radical social theory (formerly STPEC 190A). Our focus is the history of social thought in the West, and the post-colonial critiques of some of these ideas. In this course, students will learn that "radical" means "at the root," and radical social theory is theory that explains the roots of social inequalities and proposes ways of transforming society to achieve justice. (Gen. Ed. HS, DG)

Five Colleges

Amherst

SWAG 200 – Feminist Theory
Monday, Wednesday 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Professor Katrina Karkazis

In this course we will investigate contemporary feminist thought from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. We will focus on key issues in feminist theory, such as the sex/gender debate, sexual desire and the body, the political economy of gender, the creation of the "queer" as subject, and the construction of masculinity, among others. This course aims also to think through the ways in which these concerns intersect with issues of race, class, the environment and the nation.

SWAG 203/BLST 203/ENGL 216 – Women Writers of Africa and the African Diaspora
Monday 2:00-5:00 p.m.
Professor Carol Bailey

The term “Women Writers” suggests, and perhaps assumes, a particular category. How useful is this term in describing the writers we tend to include under the frame? And further, how useful are the designations "African" and "African Diaspora"? We will begin by critically examining these central questions, and revisit them frequently as we read specific texts and the body of works included in this course. Our readings comprise a range of literary and scholarly works by canonical and more recent female writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and continental America. Framed primarily by Postcolonial Criticism, our explorations will center on how writers treat historical and contemporary issues specifically connected to women’s experiences, as well as other issues, such as globalization, modernity, and sexuality. We will consider the continuities and points of departure between writers, periods, and regions, and explore the significance of the writers’ stylistic choices. Here our emphasis will be on how writers appropriate vernacular and conventional modes of writing.

SWAG 228/ SOCI 228/ANTH 228/HIST 228 – Feminist Approaches to COVID-19
Monday, Wednesday 4:00-5:20 p.m.
Katrina Karkazis/Christine Peralta

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to COVID, including approaches from ethnic studies, history, gender studies, bioethics, and more, this course will critically examine and understand our current global health crisis. Themes that we will be exploring include vaccine access, vaccine hesitancy, necropolitics, and racial inequality such as the rise of Asian/Asian American violence and health disparities.

SWAG 229/ARHA 229/HIST 229/RELI 229 – The Virgin Mary: Image, Cult, Syncretism (ca. 400-1700)
Tuesday, Thursday 3:00-4:20 p.m.
Professor Jutta Sperling

When, in 431, the Council of Ephesus declared the Virgin Mary to be Theotokos or God-Bearer, she had already been venerated in Egypt since the third century as a re-instantiation of Isis. The syncretism of her cult explains her ubiquitous popularity in medieval Byzantium and the Latin West, but also in early Islamic Syria and colonial Latin America. Her frequent depiction on moveable wooden panels (icons) and mosaics accompanied her early rise to liturgical prominence. By 1200, she rivaled Jesus Christ in religious importance, not only through her role as intercessor, but also as dispenser of divine grace in the form of breastmilk. She was the most active miracle-working saint in all of Christianity. Her frequent depiction on icons, altarpieces and devotional panels accompanies – and, in part, explains – the development of figurative art in the West. In colonial America, the introduction of her cult ended prior religious forms of expression, but also helped them to partially survive in a new context. In this seminar, students will produce a 15-page research paper based on a careful analysis of textual and visual sources as well as pertinent scholarship. Two class meetings per week. This course will be conducted in class but also include remote students via zoom.

SWAG 239/RELI 261 – Jewish Identity and MeToo: A Study of Women in Judaism
Tuesday, Thursday 3:00-4:20 p.m.
Susan Niditch

Ranging from ancient texts to contemporary documentaries, we explore the portrayals and roles of women in Jewish tradition. Sources include biblical and apocryphal texts; Rabbinic literature; selections from medieval commentaries; letters, diaries, and autobiographies written by Jewish women of various periods and settings; works of fiction; and visual media. An important thread in the course examines contemporary responses to and interpretations of classical sources, as writers and film-makers examine or refashion the tradition in the light of current challenges facing women in Judaism.

SWAG 252/HIST 252 – History of Race, Gender, and Comic Books
Wednesday, Friday 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Christine Paralta

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.

SWAG 296/AMST 296/BLST 296 – Black Women and Reproductive Justice in the African Diaspora
Tuesday/Thursday 1:00-2:20 p.m.
Jallicia Jolly

This course explores the transnational politics of race, gender, sexuality, and health from interdisciplinary perspectives. It engages a range of texts and methodologies that locate the historical and contemporary experiences of Afro-diasporic women and girls in the struggle for embodied freedom, autonomy, and reproductive justice. We will draw on examples from Africa and the African diaspora (U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America) as we engage the main debates in reproductive justice around key issues: sexual and reproductive health and rights; HIV/AIDS; sexual autonomy and choice; sterilization; police brutality; the right to bear children; abortion. The course will also introduce students to theories about health and illness, embodiment and subjectivity, critical race theory, ethnography, black feminist theory, and postcolonial health science studies. Class field trips to reproductive justice organizations will also provide an experiential component that grounds our inquiries.

SWAG 372/AMST 370 – Indigenous Feminisms
Tuesday, Thursday 3:00-4:20 p.m.
Jennifer Hamilton

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of Indigenous feminisms, and explores how questions of sex, gender, and sexuality have been articulated in relation to concerns such as sovereignty, colonization, and imperialism. We will explore how Indigenous feminists engage with or challenge other modes of feminist thought and activism. We will focus on how Indigenous ways of knowing and being can challenge how we conduct research and produce knowledge. While we will concentrate on work produced within the context of Native North America, we will also be attentive to transnational dimensions of Indigenous feminist histories, political movements, and world-building. Specific topics include movements to recognize missing and murdered Indigenous women; Indigenous feminist science and technology studies; and, Indigenous futurisms.

SWAG 381/HIST 381 – Global Transgender Histories
Tuesday 1:30-4:15 p.m.
Jen Manion

This seminar will explore the histories of transgender identities, activism, and communities around the world. Some questions to be engaged include: What concepts have been used to understand gender variant, expansive, and nonconforming people throughout history? How have war, violence, and legacies of colonialism, enslavement, and exploitation shaped the terms and conditions by which people of transgender experience and expression understood themselves and were perceived by others? How have transgender people advocated for self-determination, legal rights, and medical care? How has the transgender rights movement intersected with the civil, disability, women’s, and the LGBTQ rights movements? Students will work with primary sources such as newspaper accounts, legal codes, medical journals, religious texts, memoirs, and manifestos as well as pathbreaking historic studies of transgender people in China, England, Germany, Iran, Thailand, and the United States.

SWAG 400/POSC 407 – Contemporary Debates: Engendering Populism
Wednesday 2:00-4:45 p.m.
Amrita Basu

The topic will vary from year to year. The past decade has witnessed the dramatic rise of populist parties, movements, and leaders. One of their defining attributes, and a key reason for their success, is their affective character. Rather than laying out policy proposals for rational deliberation and critical consent, they touch and excite people in an intimate way through their oratory and bodily comportment. Gender and sexuality play a key role in these visceral appeals. We will explore the ways populists enact hegemonic forms of masculinity and femininity and employ binary constructions of gender to differentiate allies from enemies. Although we sometimes mistakenly assume that populist leaders draw on a common script, populist performances are most effective when they mine national memories, anxieties, and aspirations. We will analyze significant differences in the gendered styles of male and female populist leaders within and across nations. We will also examine how progressive movements among LGBTQ groups, feminists, and racial/religious minorities have employed gender and sexuality to challenge right-wing populists. Our approach will be comparative, cross-national, and interdisciplinary. The seminar will culminate in a final research paper.

Hampshire

CSI 180 - The Politics of Pop Culture
Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m.
Susana Loza
Component

This course examines the fraught intersection of politics and popular culture in the US. In this class, we ask: What is pop culture? How does it differ from other cultural expressions? How does pop culture both challenge and reify white supremacist capitalist patriarchy? What and who get to be political? How does pop culture act as a vehicle for the appropriation or exploitation of other cultures? Is consuming pop culture a form of political action? How do explicit political themes both enrich and detract from consumption? What economic imperatives drive pop culture production? What are the relationships between commerce, politics, and art? Particular attention will be paid to: the racialized construction of masculinity and femininity in popular culture; the appropriation of racial and gender identities; the role of global capitalism and the market in the production of popular culture. This course is reading-, writing-, and theory-intensive. Keywords: Media Studies, Ethnic Studies, Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, American Studies

CSI 278 – Queer Feelings: The Affective Politics of Race, Feminism and Queerness
Monday, Wednesday 2:30-3:50 p.m.
Stephen Dillon

In the last decade, queer scholars have turned away from the study of identity and textuality to consider the role of affect and emotion in the production, circulation, and regulation of sexuality, race, and gender. This course examines a new body of work in queer studies, feminist studies, and sexuality studies that explores emotion and affect as central to the operation of social, political, and economic power. Topics will include mental illness, hormones, happiness, sex, trauma, labor, identity, and social movements, among others. Students will work to consider how emotions and affect are connected to larger systems of power like capitalism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, terrorism and war, the prison, the media, and medicine. Queer, Feminism, Race, Affect,

HACU 299 – Technologies of Otherness: Race, Gender, and the Disability in the Digital Age
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:20 p.m.
Susana Loza

This seminar will explore the interface of technology with gender, race, and disability. It will consider how the concepts of gender, race, and disability are embodied in technologies, and conversely, how technologies shape our notions of gender, race, and disability. It will examine how contemporary products - such as film, TV, video games, science fiction, social networking technologies, and biotech - reflect and mediate long-standing but ever-shifting anxieties about race, gender, and disability. The course will consider the following questions: How do cybertechnologies enter into our personal, social, and work lives? Do these technologies offer new perspectives on cultural difference? How does cyberculture reinscribe or rewrite gender, racial, and sexual dichotomies? Does it open up room for alternative and non-normative identities, cultures, and communities? Does it offer the possibility of transcending the sociocultural limits of the body? Finally, what are the political implications of these digital technologies?

CSI 357 – Feminists of Color Solidarities
Tuesday 1:00-3:50 p.m.
Lili Kim

In the wake of COVID-19 pandemic that laid bare the inequalities of our society and the recent murder of George Floyd and other Black Americans, alliances between communities of color have never been so critically important. This course examines the history of Black and Asian American feminist solidarities and activism in their fight against racism, sexism, capitalism, and imperialism. The course will begin with the history of Anti-Asian violence in the United States that dates back to the 1850s when the Chinese people arrived on the West Coast during the Gold Rush and focus on the height of Asian American and Black feminist activism in the long 1960s. The emergence of the U.S. Third World Feminist Left during the 1960s and 1970s saw ending imperialism and colonialism as a necessary part of their fight and drew inspiration from Third World feminism and decolonization activities. The images of revolutionary Third World women engaged in anti-colonial struggles in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, especially during the Vietnam War era, inspired U.S.-based feminists of color and helped them embrace leftist Third World solidarity politics. Organizations such as the Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) in New York City, which grew out of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), brought together Black, Puerto Rican, and Asian American women in the socialist fight to end imperialism, sexism, capitalism, and racism. Utilizing the rich archival sources found in the Sophia Smith Collection (TWWA records, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie papers, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum papers) as well as the Triple Jeopardy newspapers found in the Marshall I. Bloom papers at the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, students will have an opportunity to work together to produce a substantial research project.

HACU 277 – Planet on Fire: Reimagining the Future of the World
Monday, Wednesday 4:00-5:20 p.m.
Jennifer Bajorek
Component

The desire to save our planet from imminent destruction is shared by growing numbers of people all over the world. Yet debates about climate change, environmental disaster, mass extinction, and possible solutions to them continue to be framed by ideas and discourses that have their roots in capitalist, imperialist, Western, Euro-American or Eurocentric, and patriarchal worldviews. This course examines critical and creative approaches to sustainability and extinction that challenge us to go beyond these frames with a focus on contemporary visual art and visual and spatial practice. Through close looking and analysis of works and portfolios of work (exhibition catalogs and documentation, artist books, photobooks, online archives) by contemporary artists complemented by readings in contemporary literature, philosophy, environmental humanities, and social science, we will look at histories, practices, thought systems, and imagined worlds that teach us to understand the past, present, and future of the planet differently and that offer radical new possibilities for imagining what Anna Tsing calls "the promise of cohabitation," or life on earth. Our looking and reading in the course will center on postcolonial, Indigenous, Black, queer, and feminist perspectives on earth, nature, ecology human-animal relations, and non-humanist or non-human cosmologies. Specific topics might include ecofeminism, queer ecologies, and global indigeneity; climate apartheid and the climate refugee; regenerative agriculture, food justice, and food sovereignty. Keywords: Sustainability, environment, justice, philosophy, postcolonial.

Mt. Holyoke

GNDST 201 – Methods and Practices in Feminist Scholarship
Tuesday/Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Jacquelyne Luce

This is a class about doing research as a feminist. We will explore questions such as: What makes feminist research feminist? What makes it research? What are the proper objects of feminist research? Who can do feminist research? What can feminist research do? Are there feminist ways of doing research? Why and how do the stories we tell in our research matter? Some of the key issues and themes we will address include: accountability, location, citational practices and politics, identifying stakes and stakeholders, intersectionality, inter/disciplinarity, choosing and describing our topics and methods, and research as storytelling. The class will be writing intensive and will culminate in each student producing a research portfolio.

GNDST 204DA –Queer and Trans Histories of Disability
Tuesday, Thursday 1:45-3:00 p.m.
Rachel Corbman

This course investigates the historical imbrication of modern concepts of "disability," "queer," and "trans." First, we trace the circulation of ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and disability within institutional medicine in the late 19th and early 20th century. Following this, we explore the individual experiences and political movements of people hailed under the categories of "disabled," "queer," or "trans" from the 20th century to the present. In resisting a reification of disability, queer, and trans as discrete fields of study, this course asks how we understand these categories in the present, while leaving room to imagine otherwise.

GNDST 204QT/ENGL 219QT – Queer and Trans Writing
Monday, Wednesday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Andrea Lawlor

What do we mean when we say "queer writing" or "trans writing"? Are we talking about writing by queer and/or trans authors? Writing about queer or trans practices, identities, experience? Writing that subverts conventional forms? All of the above? In this course, we will engage these questions not theoretically but through praxis. We will read fiction, poetry, comics, creative nonfiction, and hybrid forms. Expect to encounter work that challenges you in terms of form and content. Some writers we may read include Ryka Aoki, James Baldwin, Tom Cho, Samuel R. Delany, kari edwards, Elisha Lim, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Eileen Myles, and David Wojnarowicz.

GNDST 206US/HIST 276/CST 249US – U.S. Women’s History since 1890
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Mary Renda

This course considers the historical evolution of women's private lives, public presence, and political engagement within and beyond the borders of the United States, from the 1890s to the present. How have U.S. racism, consumer capitalism, immigration, and changing forms of state power shaped women's experiences and possibilities? How have regimes of gender, sexuality, bodily comportment, and reproduction evolved in relation to national and global changes? Emphasis will be placed on the experiences and perspectives of working-class women, women of color, and colonized women.

GNDST 210BD/RELIG 241 – Women and Gender in Buddhism
Monday, Wednesday 3:15-4:30 p.m.
Susanne Mrozik

Can women become Buddhas? Why is the Buddha called a "mother"? Who gets to ordain? Why would anyone choose celibacy? Who engages in religious sexual practices and why? This course examines the centrality of gender to Buddhist texts, practices, and institutions. We pay particular attention to the challenges and opportunities Buddhist traditions have offered women in different historical and cultural contexts. Throughout the course we consider various strategies of empowerment, including feminist, postcolonial, queer, trans*, and womanist.

GNDST 210JD/RELIG 234/JWST 234 – Women and Gender in Judaism
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Mara Benjamin

This course examines gender as a key category in Jewish thought and practice. We will examine different theoretical models of gender, concepts of gender in a range of Jewish sources, and feminist Jewish responses to those sources.

GNDST 333FM/LATST 350FM/CST 349FM –Latina Feminism(s)
Tuesday 1:30-4:20 p.m.
Vanessa Rosa

What is Latina Feminism? How does it differ from and/or intersect with "other" feminisms? In this seminar, we will explore the relationship between Latina feminist theory, knowledge production, and social change in the United States. This interdisciplinary course explores Latina feminism in relation to methodology and epistemology through a historical lens. This will help us to better understand how Latina feminist approaches can inform our research questions, allow us to analyze women's experiences and women's history, and challenge patriarchy and gender inequality. We will explore topics related to knowledge production, philosophies of the "self," 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 333FM/LATST 350FM/CST 349FM –Latina Feminism(s)
Tuesday 1:30-4:20 p.m.
Vanessa Rosa

A seminar on the eighteenth-century Chinese masterpiece The Story of the Stone and selected literary criticism in response to this work. Discussions will focus on love, gender-crossing, and women's supremacy and the paradoxical treatments of these themes in the novel. We will explore multiple aspects of these themes, including the sociopolitical, philosophical, and literary milieus of eighteenth-century China. We will also examine this novel in its relation to Chinese literary tradition in general and the generic conventions of premodern Chinese vernacular fiction in particular.

GNDST 333NE – Women and the Informal Economy in Africa
Monday, Wednesday 1:45-3:00 p.m.
Mary Kinyanjui

This course examines the relationship between women's sexuality and the economy in Africa. Women's production and exchange activities take place on the farm and in African markets. Topics include: the nexus between African women's sexuality and economy; perspectives on African women and the economy; the logic of African women participating in the economy; African women's forms of economic organization; how African women deploy surplus; and the economic models of African women in relation to the global economy.

GNDST 333PA/SPAN 340PA/CST 349PA/FMT 330PA – Natural’s Not in It: Pedro Almodóvar
Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 p.m.
Justin Crumbaugh

This course studies the films of Pedro Almodóvar, European cinema's favorite bad boy turned acclaimed auteur. On the one hand, students learn to situate films within the context of contemporary Spanish history (the transition to democracy, the advent of globalization, etc.) in order to consider the local contours of postmodern aesthetics. On the other hand, the films provide a springboard to reflect on larger theoretical and ethical debates related to gender, sexuality, consumer culture, authenticity, and authorship.

GNDST 333RT/RELIG 352/CST 349RE – Body and Gender in Religious Traditions
Thursday 1:30-4:20 p.m.
Susanne Mrozik

Do bodies matter in religious traditions? Whose bodies matter? How do they matter? By studying religious body ideals and practices, we examine the possibilities and problems different kinds of bodies have posed in religious traditions. Topics include religious diet, exercise, and dress; monasticism, celibacy, and sexuality; healing rituals, and slavery and violence. We pay special attention to contemporary challenges to problematic body ideals and practices coming from feminist, disability, postcolonial, queer, and trans theorists and activists.

GNDST 333SE/AFRCNA 341SE/CST 349SE – Black Sexual Economies
Tuesday 1:30-4:20 p.m.
Sarah Stefana Smith

At once viewed as a dysfunction of normative ideas about sexuality, the family, and the nation, Black sexualities are intimately linked to and regulated by political and socioeconomic discourses. Slavery studies scholars remind us of how it has proven foundational for modern notions of race and sex by making explicit links between labor and exploitation. Thus, this course moves through themes such as slavery historicity, intersections between Black feminisms and Black sexualities, sexual labor/work, pleasure, and the erotic, in order to consider the stakes of our current critical approaches to Black sexual economies and interrogate its silences and possibilities.

GNDST 333SS/ENGL 323 – Gender and Class in the Victorian Novel
Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m.
Amy Martin

This course will investigate how gender and class serve as structuring principles in the development of the Victorian novel in Britain, paying attention to the ways in which the form also develops in relation to emerging ideas about sexuality, race, nation, and religion. Novelists include Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, and Gaskell and we will read examples of domestic fiction, detective fiction, social realist novels, and the Victorian gothic.

Smith

SWG 238 – Women, Money and Transnational Social Movements
Tuesday, Thursday 9:25-10:40 a.m.
Elisabeth Armstrong

Flickers of global finance capital across computer screens cannot compare to the travel preparations of women migrating from rural homes to work at computer chip factories. Yet both movements, of capital and people, constitute vital facets of globalization in our current era. This course centers on the political linkages and economic theories that address the politics of women, gender relations and capitalism. We will research social movements that challenge the raced, classed and gendered inequities, and the costs of maintaining order. We will assess the alternatives proposed by social movements like the landless workers movement (MST) in Brazil, and economic shifts like the workers cooperative movement. Assignments include community-based research on local and global political movements, short papers, class-led discussions & written reflections.

SWG 241 – White Supremacy in the Age of Trump
Tuesday, Thursday 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Loretta Ross

This course will analyze the history, prevalence, and current manifestations of the white supremacist movement by examining ideological components, tactics and strategies, and its relationship to mainstream politics. We will also 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 will 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 270 – Oral History and Lesbian Subjects
Monday, Wednesday 9:25-10:40 AM
Kelly Anderson

Grounding our work in the current scholarship in lesbian history, this course explores lesbian, queer and bisexual communities, cultures and activism. While becoming familiar with the existing narratives about lesbian/queer lives, students are introduced to the method of oral history as a key documentation strategy in the production of lesbian history. How do we need to adapt our research methods, including oral history, in order to talk about lesbian/queer lives? Our texts include secondary literature on 20th-century lesbian cultures and communities, oral history theory and methodology, and primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC). Students conduct, transcribe, edit and interpret their own interviews for their final project. The oral histories from this course are archived with the Documenting Lesbian Lives collection in the SSC.

SWG 271 – Reproductive Justice
Tuesday, Thursday 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Carrie Baker

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
Monday, Wednesday 10:50-12:05 p.m.
Jennifer DeClue

In this course we will consider the manner in which norms of gender and sexuality are reflected, reinforced, and challenged in popular culture. We use theories of knowledge production, representation, and meaning-making to support our analysis of the relationship between discourse and power; our engagement with these theoretical texts helps us 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 our critical engagement with a selection of films, music, television, visual art, and digital media we will discuss mainstream conventions and the feminist, queer, and queer of color interventions that enliven the landscape of popular culture with which we contend in everyday life.

SWG 303 – Queer of Color Critique
Wednesday 1:20-4:00 p.m.
Jennifer DeClue

Students in this course gain a thorough and sustained understanding of queer of color critique by tracking this theoretical framework from its emergence in women of color feminism through the contemporary moment using historical and canonical texts along with the most cutting-edge scholarship being produced in the field. In our exploration of this critical framework, we engage with independent films, novels and short stories, popular music, as well as television and digital media platforms such as Netflix and Amazon. We discuss what is ruptured and what is generated at intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality. Instructor permission required.

SWG 305 – Queer Histories and Cultures
Monday, Wednesday 1:20-2:35 p.m.
Kelly Anderson

This course is an advanced seminar in the growing field of queer American history. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the histories of same-sex desire, practice, and identity, as well as gender transgressions, from the late 19th century to the present. Using a wide range of sources, including archival documents, films, work by historians, and oral histories, we will investigate how and why people with same-sex desire and non-normative gender expressions formed communities, struggled against bigotry, and organized movements for social and political change. This course will pay close attention to the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality and the ways that difference has shaped queer history. Instructor permission required.

SWG 360 – Memoir Writing
Monday 1:20-4:00 p.m.
Cornelia Pearsall

How does one write a life, especially if it’s one’s own? This writing workshop addresses the profound complexities, challenges, and pleasures of the genre of the memoir, through intensive reading, discussion, and both analytical and creative writing. Our readings will be drawn from a range of mostly contemporary memoirists with intersectional identity locations—and dislocations—drawing from a range of voices, experiences, and representations, pursuing what the class comes to identify as our own most urgent aesthetic and ethical questions. Our attention will be to craft, both in the memoirs we read and those we write. Writing sample and instructor permission required.

AMS 201 / LSS / SWG – Introduction to American Studies
Tuesday, Thursday 10:50-12:05 p.m.
Evangeline Heiliger and Kevin Rozario

An introduction to the methods and concerns of American studies. We draw on literature, painting, architecture, landscape design, social and cultural criticism, and popular culture to explore such topics as responses to economic change, ideas of nature and culture, America’s relationship to Europe, the question of race, the roles of women, family structure, social class and urban experience.

ANT 238 – Anthropology of the Body
Tuesday, Thursday 9:25-10:40 a.m.
Pinky Hota

Anthropology vitally understands bodies as socially meaningful, and as sites for the inculcation of ethical and political identities through processes of embodiment, which break down divides between body as natural and body as socially constituted. In this class, we engage these anthropological understandings to read how bodies are invoked, disciplined and reshaped in prisons and classrooms, market economies and multicultural democracies, religious and ethical movements, and the performance of gender and sexuality, disease and disability. Through these accounts of the body as an object of social analysis and as a vehicle for politics, we learn fundamental social theoretical and anthropological tenets about the embodiment of power, contemporary politics as forms of "biopolitics," and the deconstruction of the normative body.

ART 278 – Race and Gender in the History of Photography
Tuesday, Thursday 10:50-12:05 p.m.
Kathleen Pierce

This course introduces the history of photography, emphasizing the ways photographs represent, mediate, construct, and communicate histories of race, gender, sex, sexuality, intimacy, and desire. We will study a variety of photographic images, from the dageurreotype to digital media, from ne arts photography to vernacular images. We will consider objects that have forged connections among loved ones, substantiated memories, or served as evidence, considering critical questions about photography’s relationship to identity, affect, knowledge production, and power. The course focuses on race and gender, and also attends closely to photography’s relationship to identity broadly speaking, including class, ability, and religion.

EAL 244 – Japanese Women’s Writing
Monday, Wednesday 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Kimberly Kono

This course focuses on the writings of Japanese women from the 10th century until the present. We examine the foundations of Japan’s literary tradition represented by such early works as Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji and Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book. We then move to the late 19th century to consider the first modern examples of Japanese women’s writing. How does the existence of a "feminine literary tradition" in pre-modern Japan influence the writing of women during the modern period? How do these texts reflect, resist and reconfigure conventional representations of gender? We explore the possibilities and limits of the articulation of feminine and feminist subjectivities, as well as investigate the production of such categories as "race," class and sexuality in relation to gender and to each other. Taught in English, with no knowledge of Japanese required.

ECO 201 – Gender and Economics
Tuesday, Thursday 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Lucie Schmidt

This course uses economic analysis to explore how gender differences can lead to differences in economic outcomes in households and the labor market. Questions to be covered include: How does the family function as an economic unit? How do individuals allocate time between the labor market and the household? How have changes in family structure affected women's employment, and vice-versa? What are possible explanations for gender differences in labor force participation, occupational choice, and earnings? What is the role of government in addressing gender issues in the home and the workplace? How successful are government policies that primarily affect women?

ENG 241 – The Empire Writes Back: Postcolonial Literature
Monday, Wednesday 1:20-2:35 p.m.
Ambreen Hai

Introduction to Anglophone fiction, poetry, drama and memoir from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia in the aftermath of the British empire. Concerns include the cultural and political work of literature in response to histories of colonial and racial dominance; writers' ambivalence towards English linguistic, literary and cultural legacies; ways literature can (re)construct national identities and histories, and address dominant notions of race, class, gender, and sexuality; women writers' distinctiveness and modes of contesting patriarchal and colonial ideologies; global diasporas, migration, globalization and U.S. imperialism. Readings include Achebe, Adichie, Aidoo, Dangarembga, Walcott, Cliff, Rushdie, Ghosh, Lahiri, Hamid, among others.

GOV 224 – Globalization from an Islamic Perspective
Monday, Wednesday 9:25-10:40 a.m.
Bozena Welbourne

his course explores the complex challenges facing Muslim-majority states when it comes to their political, economic, and social development in the 21st century. In particular, we will be exploring the various Islamically-inspired ideas ("isms") that have emerged with the onset of globalization; from Islanic feminism and Islamic environmentalism to political Islam and Islamic banking.

HST 267 – The United States Since 1877
Wednesday/Friday 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Jennifer Guglielmo

Survey of the major economic, political and social changes of this period, primarily through the lens of race, class and gender, to understand the role of ordinary people in shaping defining events, including industrial capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, mass immigration and migration, urbanization, the rise of mass culture, nationalism, war, feminism, labor radicalism, civil rights and other liberatory movements for social justice.

HST 383 – Research in U.S. Women’s History-Domestic Working Organizing
Tuesday 1:20-4:00 p.m.
Jennifer Guglielmo

This is an advanced research seminar in which students work closely with archival materials from the Sophia Smith Collection and other archives to explore histories of resistance, collective action and grassroots organizing among domestic workers in the United States, from the mid-18th century to the present. Domestic work has historically been done by women of color and been among the lowest paid, most vulnerable and exploited forms of labor. Your research will assist the National Domestic Workers Alliance, as they incorporate history into their political education curriculum and use history as an organizing tool in their current campaigns. Recommended: previous course in U.S. women’s history and/or relevant. Instructor permission required.

JUD 214 – Women in the Hebrew Bible
Tuesday, Thursday 9:25-10:40 a.m.
Sari Fein

This course focuses on the lives of women in ancient Israelite society through close readings of the Hebrew Bible. We look at detailed portraits of female characters as well as the role of many unnamed women in the text to consider the range and logic of biblical attitudes toward women, including reverence, disgust and sympathy. We also consider female deities in the ancient Near East, women in biblical law, sex in prophetic and Wisdom literature, and the female body as a source of metaphor.

POR 381 – Multiple Lenses of Marginality: New Brazilian Filmmaking by Women
Monday, Wednesday 10:50-12:05 p.m.
Marguerite Harrison

This course makes reference to the pioneering legacy of key figures in Brazilian filmmaking, such as Susana Amaral, Helena Solberg and Tizuka Yamasaki. These directors’ early works addressed issues of gender and social class biases by subtly shifting the focus of their films to marginalized or peripheral subjects. We also examine the work of contemporary filmmakers, among them Lúcia Murat, Tata Amaral, Laís Bodanzky and Anna Muylaert, focusing on the ways in which they incorporate sociopolitical topics and/or gender issues. Course conducted in Portuguese. Prerequisite: 200-level course in Portuguese, or the equivalent. Juniors and seniors only.

PSY 265 - Political Psychology
Tuesday, Thursday 1:20-2:35 p.m.
Lauren Duncan
Component

This colloquium is concerned with the psychological processes underlying political phenomena. The course is divided into three sections: Leaders, Followers and Social Movements. In each of these sections, we examine how psychological factors influence political behavior, and how political acts affect individual psychology.

PSY 266- Psychology of Women and Gender
Monday, Wednesday 9:25-10:40 AM
Randi Garcia

An in-depth examination of controversial issues of concern to the study of the psychology of women and gender. Students are introduced to current psychological theory and empirical research relating to the existence, origins and implications of behavioral similarities and differences associated with gender. We examine the development of gender roles and stereotypes, power within the family, workplace and politics, and women’s mental health and sexuality, paying attention to social context, and intersectional identities. Prerequisites: PSY 100 & PSY 202.

PSY 374 – Psychology of Political Activism
Wednesday 1:20-4:00 p.m.
Lauren Duncan
Component

This seminar focuses on people’s motivations to participate in political activism, especially activism around social issues. Readings include theoretical and empirical work from political psychology paired with personal accounts of activists. We consider accounts of some large-scale liberal and conservative social movements in the United States. Students conduct an in-depth analysis of an activists oral history obtained from the Voices of Feminism archive of the Sophia Smith collection. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required.

REL 238 – Mary: Images and Cults
Tuesday, Thursday 1:20-2:35 p.m.
Vera Shevzov

Whether revered as the Mother of God or remembered as a single Jewish mother of an activist, Mary has both inspired and challenged generations of Christian women and men worldwide. This course focuses on key developments in the "history of Mary" since early Christian times to the present. How has her image shaped global Christianities? What does her perceived image in any given age tell us about personal and collective identities? Topics include Mary’s "life"; rise of the Marian cult; Marian apparitions (e.g., Guadalupe and Lourdes) and miracle-working images, especially in Byzantium and Russia; liberation and feminism; politics, activism, mysticism, and prayer. Devotional, polemical and literary texts, art and film.

SOC 224 – Family and Society
Monday, Wednesday 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Vanessa Adel

This course examines social structures and meanings that shape contemporary family life. Students look at the ways that race, class and gender shape the ways that family is organized and experienced. Topics include the social construction of family, family care networks, parenthood, family policy, globalization and work.

SOC 237 – Gender and Globalization
Tuesday, Thursday 1:20-2:35 p.m.
Payal Banerjee

This course engages with the various dimensions of globalization through the lens of gender, race and class relations. We study how gender and race intersect in global manufacturing and supply chains as well as in the transnational politics of representation and access in global media, culture, consumption, fashion, food, water, war and dissenting voices.

SPN 260 – Decolonizing Latin American Literature
Tuesday, Thursday 10:50-12:05 p.m.
Michelle Joffroy
Component

This course offers critical perspectives on colonialism, literatures of conquest and narratives of cultural resistance in the Americas and the Caribbean. Decolonial theories of violence, writing and representation in the colonial context inform the study of literary and cultural production of this period. Readings explore several themes including indigenous knowledge, land and the natural world; orality, literacy and visual cultures; race, rebellion and liberation; slavery, piracy and power, and the coloniality of gender.

THE 319 – Shamans, Shapeshifters and the Magic If
Tuesday 1:20-4:00 p.m.
Wednesday 7:00-10:00 p.m.
Andrea D. Hairston

This course investigates the counterfactual, speculative, subjunctive impulse in overtly speculative drama and film with a particular focus on race and gender. We examine an international range of plays by such authors as Caryl Churchill, Tess Onwueme, Dael Orlandersmith, Derek Walcott, Bertolt Brecht, Lorraine Hansberry, Craig Lucas and Doug Wright, as well as films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Pan’s Labyrinth; Children of Men; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; X-Men; Contact and Brother From Another Planet.

WLT 270 - Health and Illness: Literary Explorations
Tuesday, Thursday 1:20-2:35 p.m.
Sabina Knight
Component

From medieval Chinese tales to memoirs about SARS and COVID-19, this cross-cultural literary inquiry explores how conceptions of selfhood and belonging inform ideas about well-being, disease, intervention and healing. How do languages, social norms and economic contexts shape experiences of health and illness? From depression and plague to aging, disability and death, how do sufferers and their caregivers adapt in the face of infirmity or trauma? Our study will also consider how stories and other genres can help develop resilience, compassion and hope.