Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary program focused on understanding the impart of gender and sexuality on the world around us and on the power hierarchies that structure it. In this class we focus mainly on the experiences, historical conditions, and concerns of women as they are shaped by gender and sexuality both in the present and the past. We will read a variety of texts, personal narratives, historical documents, and cultural criticism, to name a few across a range of disciplines. In so we will consider how larger structural systems of both privilege and oppression affect individuals' identities, experiences, and options, and simultaneously we will examine forms of agency and action taken by women in the face of these larger systems.

This course introduces students to critical approaches in feminist scholarship to the cultural, socioeconomic, and political situation(s) of women. Particular attention will be paid to the conceptual challenges and dangers posed by attempts to study women without taking account of relations between race, class, and gender in ideological and social formations. Readings will draw on work in various disciplines and will include literary texts and visual images.

Historical exploration of African-American women from a sociopolitical perspective. Topics include women in Africa, slavery and freedom, sexuality, labor, the family, gender cross-racially. Course begins with the African background and ends in 1900.

This course will explore the lives of a variety of Scientist an engineers – American, international, men, women, and minorities – through readings of biographies, autobiographies and other sources. The goal will be to examine the obstacles overcome, opportunities offered, and choices made; The reasons and rationalization given; and the uses made of idealized biographies in science education, requirement, myth-making, and national prestige.

The family is at the center of contemporary political debates involving social policies, gender roles, citizenship, marriage, and the role of the state. Politicians and commentators frequently invoke a mythical American family, one that is conflict-free, independent, and unchanging. These idealized depictions mask a far more complicated and richer historical reality of the development of family structures in the U.S. This course will examine both the diverse experiences of actual families in the American past, and changing ideologies about the family and its social role. We will examine in particular immigration, reproduction and childrearing, sexuality, work, leisure, and consumption. We will maintain a sustained focus on changing constructions of race, ethnicity, gender and class and the interactions of these social relations with social structures including the labor and housing markets, immigration and naturalization law, and the educational system. Through this exploration, we will see both how social structures including the family shaped individuals' experiences, and how historical actors responded to and changed these structures. We will also gain a better understanding of what's at stake in today's debates about the family, and will conclude by asking how contemporary social policies could better address the needs of all families.

How has theatre helped shape our notion of what it means to be an American in the second half of the 20th century? What role has politics played in recent theatrical experimentation? How has performance been used as a platform for constructing and deconstructing conceptions of identity, community, and nationality? In this course we will examine major trends in American drama from 1960 to the present. Readings for the class focus on theatre that responds directly to or intervenes in moments of social crisis, including: the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian liberation movement, and AIDS.

Is there a feminist literary tradition and if so what might it look like? In this class we will examine a range of texts, primarily but not exclusively fiction, texts that explore questions of female subjectivity and creativity. What issues have been most pressing for feminist writers? What political questions most vexing? We will read primarily British and U.S. writers and will examine what use they make of both canonical and experimental literary forms. To what extent, that is, does the need to tell a new story force or enable a writer to develop a new form in which to write?

How does Antigone speak to a German philosopher and what happens when a feminist thinker listens in? When does a melodrama offer the frame for a rethinking of race and gender? How will a feminist scholar learn ethics from the work of translation? In the last thirty years, literature, philosophy and film have sounded a call and furnished a context for important works of feminist inquiry. In this course we will read feminist texts together with their important literary and philosophical informants. How do Ancient Greek tragedy, Idealist philosophy, poetry, contemporary fiction and film figure in recent feminist thought? In what ways is 'theory' written through attentive and subversive reading?

Prerequisites: one course in Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and permission of a faculty member in Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.

Every day we are barraged with cultural messages telling us to eat better, get more exercise, stop smoking, practice safe sex. These messages make us insecure about our bodies: Am I thin enough, ripped enough, sexy enough? They are also contradictory: fish makes you smarter; mercury in fish makes you sick. Many of these messages use the language of science and medicine: There are obesity epidemics and chocolate addictions. Our bodies are described and treated like machines: transplant surgeons talk about our spare parts; computer programmers describe their brains as wetware. This course examines how bodies are studied, represented, depicted, and constructed in science, technology, and medicine, as well as how cultural and political concerns express themselves on and through bodies.

This course will examine the contentious debate on what makes women have any, few, and many children. it will cover theories of population growth and changing fertility in both historical and contemporary populations. Demographic concepts like ‘the demographic transition’ and ‘natural fertility’ will be discussed. Primary attention will be given to ‘socio-cultural’ and ‘gender-based’ explanations of reproductive behavior. The course will also look at theories about the place of the state in women’s lives.

Why are some technologies such as cars and computers associated with men and masculinity? How did sewing machines and vacuums become gendered female? How do technological artifacts and systems constitute, mediate, and reproduce gender relations and gender identities? How do technologies uphold gender hierarchies and thus social inequalities? This course explores the relationship between gender and technology in comparative cultural, social, and historical perspective. Specific themes addressed include: work, labor, gender, and technology; the gendered dimensions of industrial technologies; consumption and gender; technologies of (gendered) identity; the intersection of race, class, and gender with technology; and gender, sex, and technology. Most of the course material focuses on western Europe and the United States since the mid-eighteenth century, but the issues raised in this class will prepare students to think about gender and technology in other contexts including our own.

Gender Studies for the ancient Greek and Roman world have focused either on a social history of women or on difference. This seminar will combine both approaches with specific emphasis on images (visual and textual) or women and the methods of their interpretation. We will discuss representations of women from all social classes, the public and private lice of women, concepts of the female body as well as female figures (heroines and monsters) in myth.

This course is a one-semester survey of women’s role in science and engineering from antiquity to the 2000’s with special emphasis on the United States in the 20th century. Readings will include biographies and autobiographies of prominent women scientists, educational writings, and other primary sources as well as recent historical and sociological studies. By the end of the semester we should have attained a broad view of the problems that have faced women entering science and engineering in the past and those that still remain. There are no formal prerequisites for the course, although some knowledge of women’s history and the history of science would be helpful. The course welcomes the participation of students from scientific and non-scientific backgrounds alike.

Violence is committed against women worldwide at an alarming rate. This course focuses on the historical and current reasons for and impact of violence against women both domestically and internationally. The impact of legislative, public, social, or religious policies on the incidence of such violence is considered. Violence against women is committed to protect women's virginity, because women are viewed as property, for political reasons, as hate crimes, and in the name of culture, religion, and tradition. The types of violence discussed in this course include: rape, child sexual abuse, homicide, battering, hate crimes, gay bashing, kidnapping, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, forced prostitution, female genital mutilation, honor killings, public beating, lashing, stoning, torture, female infanticide, trafficking of women, forced abortions, acid attacks, and sati (self -immolation). Each student is required to evaluate the impact of one current policy and critique the potential value of one pending policy relating to violence against women.

The seminar examines representations of women in various contexts in Renaissance Italy as well as women artists. These include the nursing Madonna, painted scenes on marriage chests, biblical and historical heroines such as Judith and Lucretia, portraits of patrician women and courtesans, and violence to women in a political context, as well as female artists’ self-portraits and self promotion. It investigates contemporary ideas about motherhood, beauty, sexuality, social presentation, gender roles, and creativity. These are examined through the existing critical frameworks in feminist art history and theory. The concern is in particular with how visual images are encoded with meaning, what kind of relationship can be established with their historical context, and how they convey social constructs and ideology.

This seminar will investigate the narrative uses of history and memory in US fiction, focusing particularly on the impact of gender on these representations. How do US writers use history in their fiction, and to what ends? What are the effects on drawing on received historical narratives? What are the effects of constructing one's own history to fill a void in the received historical narrative? To what extent is history-personal or public-produced by memory and how are personal and public histories connected? Authors under consideration may include: Julia Alvarez, Lan Cao, Michelle Cliff, Cristina Garcia, Jewelle Gomez, Harriet Jacobs, Gayl Jones, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lydia Kwa, Achy Obejas, and Danzy Senna.

The primary emphasis of this discussion seminar is the historical development of gendered identities and the fluid manner in which different Middle Eastern communities responded to shifting ideas of sexuality, reproduction, and the family. Our focus of inquiry will be on themes that involve and relate to women, both directly and indirectly.  We will particularly examine how and why women’s status differs from one Middle Eastern country or region to another. From both theoretical and topical points of view, we will consider some of the most recent literature about women and gender. Since this is a history course, we will also examine how women's roles, as well as gendered systems and institutions, have changed over time.

To graduate with honors, a major must complete a senior thesis under the supervision of a faculty member in Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and defend that thesis orally before an honors committee. To be eligible for honors, students must have at least a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 in all course work and a 3.3 average in all courses applying to their Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies major. Students interested in the Honors program should consult the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the spring semester of their junior year or very early in the fall semester of their senior year.

A feminist lens of analysis disrupts traditional categories that frame the questions we ask with implications for the answers that we find and how we find them. A sample of readings across the disciplines will allow us to explore how feminist scholarship has led to the reframing of big questions while stretching the boundaries of traditional methodological frontiers. This course seeks to familiarize students with primarily qualitative methodological tools to be applied to individual research questions.

The course addresses the period of the lifespan referred to as adolescence, as seen from the perspective of the individual subject and the researcher. A case study approach is the primary vehicle for exploring theories and lived experience. Invited speakers will address the role of the individual subject and case methods in their current research when possible, and we will explore the topic of the course through many means: interviews, self-reflections, films, and books. Issues in adolescence will be addressed through theoretical lenses; thus the extent to which the course will examine topical issues in sexuality, dropping-out, suicide, eating disorders, work issues, etc. will be through theoretical analysis of these topics as they arise naturally in case studies and not as “stand-alone” topics outside of theoretical context. Since adolescent psychology cannot be addressed fully and in-depth in one short semester, topics and areas of emphasis will change each term the course is taught. This year, the emphasis will be on identity development. One question adolescents struggle with is the question of “Who am I,” and this course examines what comprises some aspects of adolescent identity from various theoretical perspectives, classical to present, and explores the “growing edges” of theories of adolescence. Primary source material is used extensively.

A survey of theories of desire and visuality, particularly psychoanalytic, deconstructive, feminist, and queer film theory. The course will focus on films of the past dozen in an effort to explore the significance of classic theoretical texts with regard to contemporary cinematic practice. We will explore recent work by filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Olivier Assayas, Catherine Breillat, Atom Egoyan, Claire Denis, Peter Greenaway, Michael Haneke, Todd Haynes, Abbas Kiarostami, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Gaspar Noé, Gus Van Sant, and Wong Kar-wai, as well as theoretical and critical texts by Jacques Lacan, Christian Metz, Michel Chion, Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Lee Edelman, D. A. Miller, D. N. Rodowick, and Slavoj Zizek, among others. Graduate students only.

Gender Studies for the ancient Greek and Roman world have focused either on a social history of women or on difference. This seminar will combine both approaches with specific emphasis on images (visual and textual) or women and the methods of their interpretation. We will discuss representations of women from all social classes, the public and private lice of women, concepts of the female body as well as female figures (heroines and monsters) in myth.

A study of the relation between historical experience and literary texts. We will examine from the perspectives of both historical and literary analysis the rise of women writers, the novel’s preoccupation with conflicts between men and women, the cultural uses of feminism and antifeminism, and the impact of the new woman. Bringing traditional literary text—novels and poetry—into dialogue with “nonliterary” writings like journalism, political treatise, social reform manifestos, and etiquette books, we will draw on the methods and theories of cultural history and literary criticism to ask how gender relations and the history of women bear on the plots, discourses, and images of literary texts. A tentative reading list would include Susannah Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Lydia Maria Child’s The Mother’s Book, Catherine Beecher’s A Treatise on Domesticity, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Herman Melville’s Pierre, poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

Independent reading course for graduate students only on topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses; permission of instructor required. Students develop a course of readings in consultation with a faculty member in the field of Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies who has agreed to supervise the coursework.