*Womens Studies 97 (formerly *Womens Studies 97hf). Tutorial Sophomore Year
Catalog Number: 7217
Juliet Schor and Staff
Half course (fall term). M., 24; M., 68 p.m. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Introduction to the intellectual history of feminism through classic texts from the early modern period to the late 20th century.
Note: Required of, and limited to, Womens Studies concentrators in the fall of their sophomore year.
*Womens Studies 98r. Tutorial Junior Year
Catalog Number: 8094
Juliet Schor and staff
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Ordinarily taken by concentrators for one term in the second semester of the junior year.
*Womens Studies 99a. Tutorial Senior Year
Catalog Number: 6763
Juliet Schor and staff
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Both Womens Studies 99a and 99b are required of all concentrators in their senior year.
*Womens Studies 99b. Tutorial Senior Year
Catalog Number: 5847
Juliet Schor and staff
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Both Womens Studies 99a and 99b are required of all concentrators in their senior year.
[Womens Studies 102 (formerly Womens Studies 10c). Gender and Inequality]
Catalog Number: 2516
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Half course (fall term). M., W., at 1, and a one-hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
Draws on material from economics and other social sciences to analyze gender relations from an economic and social perspective. Topics include: the gender gap in pay; occupational segregation and the glass ceiling; the second shift of household work; motherhood; conflicts between work and family; the feminization of poverty; teen pregnancy, and the feminist critique of the State.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 200102. Expected to be given in 200203.
Womens Studies 103. Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies
Catalog Number: 4778
Bradley S. Epps
Half course (spring term). M., W., 12:30 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This course provides an intensive overview of the major texts, concepts, and issues on and about homosexuality. Although the field typically privileges the late 20th century and the West, we will
also examine works from various cultures and historical periods. Materials will be drawn from literature, visual arts, film, anthropology, psychoanalysis, religion, politics, philosophy, and contemporary theory, Queer and otherwise.
Womens Studies 104. Gender, Race, and Class in Asian America: An Introduction
Catalog Number: 3529
David L. Eng (Columbia University)
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., 11:301 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13, 14
An introduction to Asian American literature, literary criticism, culture. We will read a selection of novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and essays from a wide range of Asian American authors,
as well as screen work by contemporary Asian American directors and artists. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which gender, sexuality, and class underpin processes of Asian American racial formation. To provide a more engaged political framework for analyzing both the material experiences and the psychic lives of Asian Americans, we will read a number of theoretical essays and legal documents from feminist, gay/lesbian, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and critical race studies.
Womens Studies 110a. Bodies and Boundaries
Catalog Number: 1730
Charis Thompson
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
This class examines a wide range of interdisciplinary readings on bodies and is organized around the
following questions: How have deviant, monstrous, and criminal bodies been imagined in science, national and transnational politics, and popular culture? How have particular bodies come to be taken
to bear naturalized marks of poverty, desire, danger, and disease? What does embodiment mean?
What is the significance of the study of bodies to womens studies? How are bodies normalized andcontrolled, and how do they in turn become instruments of governance? What is the connection between nation and bodies, and between migration and bodies?
Womens Studies 110b (formerly Womens Studies 10b). Current Problems in Feminist Theory
Catalog Number: 5590 Enrollment: Limited to 40.
Charis Thompson
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 12, and a one-hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
This course introduces many different kinds of feminisms, including but not limited to: Liberal, Socialist/Marxist, Radical, Victim, Psychoanalytic, Womanist, Ecofeminism , Lesbian, Postcolonial, Postmodern,Poststructuralist. Readings cover classic texts from first and second wave Angloamerican feminism. Sections on feminist theory and stratification; gender, technologies and bodies;hot topics including backlash and masculinity studies; and third wave feminisms, especially feminist theory informed by transnational concerns. Theoretical and political positions will be connected to thematic content in class discussions. Analysis of the terms sex and gender, as well as essentialism, anti-essentialism, strategic essentialism. Analysis of the relations of queer theory to feminist theory, and gender studies to womens studies.
[Womens Studies 110c. Gender and Work]
Catalog Number: 7763
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Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
At the heart of all societies are work, sex,and gender. The sexual division of labor is a cross-cultural constant but the specific definitions of what aconstitutes work and who is labelled a worker vary. What accounts for some activities being defined as work and why are some considered appropriate for women and others for men? Through cases selected cross-culturally and over time, we consider not only how work is gender-specific but how gendered work (re)produces gender differences and other social distinctions. The course examines reproductive, domestic/family, wage/market, factory, and sex work; the social construction of female and male through different types of work; the interactions of work, gender, and class; gendered work, global economy and modernity.
Note: Expected to be given in 200102.
Womens Studies 131. Women, Violence, and the Law
Catalog Number: 1401 Enrollment: Limited to 30.
Diane L. Rosenfeld
Half course (spring term). M., W., 2:304. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
What makes violence against women different from other types of violence? How do law and society interact in the perpetuation or eradication of violence against women? How do we, as a society, address the gender bias that underlies intimate-partner violence? This course will be devoted primarily to an examination of these questions in the context of contemporary American culture. Students will be introduced to feminist legal theory (although a legal background is not necessary). The readings will include works of Catharine MacKinnon, Kimberly Crenshaw, bell hooks, Duncan Kennedy and Angela Browne.
[Womens Studies 132. Shop Til You Drop: Gender and Class in Consumer Society]
Catalog Number: 8799
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Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Everyday life is increasingly characterized by shopping, buying, and consuming. This course will examine the historical origins of consumer societies; the ways in which advertising, media, and marketing affect culture and society; what motivates consumers; the role of consumption in the forging of identities; the globalization of consumer capitalism; the debate over consumer society and its alternatives. Throughout, particular emphasis will be paid to the ways in which consumption is structured by gender and class. Readings include Bourdieu, Bordo, Veblen, Galbraith, Friedan, Peiss, de Grazia.
Note: Expected to be given in 200203.
[Womens Studies 133. The Queer Novel: Narrative and Sexuality]
Catalog Number: 0630
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Is the novel a queer genre? How has the cultural reception of the novel been influenced by changing ideas about gender and sexuality? This course will look at seemingly queer novels from the late 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries in their historical and cultural contexts. We will also read selections from contemporary literary criticism and theory. Readings from Diderot, Austen, Forester, Woolf, Wilde, James, Conrad, Baldwin, Lorde, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 200203.
[Womens Studies 134. Womens Writing and Film in Latin America and the Caribbean]
Catalog Number: 9230
Bradley S. Epps
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
This course focuses on 20th-century narrative fiction, testimony, theater, and film by women from a variety of linguistic cultures (French, Spanish, Creole, Quiche, English, Portuguese), paying special attention to to the ties and tensions between feminism and post-colonialism. Other topics include gender and genre; sexuality and the state; social engagement and artistic autonomy; nationality, nationalism, and internationalism; class conflict and the global market; kinship, ritual, and religion; lesbianism, heterosexuality, and bisexuality; authoritarianism and democracy. May include works by Diamela Eltit, Clarice Lispector, Jamaica Kincaid, and others. Critical and theoretical texts will also be employed. All writings are available in English translations.
Note: Expected to be given in 200102.
Womens Studies 137. Black Womens Representation: The Post-Civil Rights Generation
Catalog Number: 7892 Enrollment: Limited to 40.
Naomi Pabst
Half course (fall term). Tu., 24, and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Course examines literary and critical writings of black women of the post-civil rights generation. With attention to narrative strategy and modes of representation, we will explore the ways these writers construct and contest the cultural, ideological, and political parameters of black womanhood. We will address textual intersections of race, gender, sexuality, color, ethnicity, nationality, class, and generation. We will also situate texts within a larger rubric of black womens literary legacies, addressing what is incorporated, adapted, and abandoned by contemporary writers. Authors include Edwidge Danticat, Shay Youngblood, Joan Morgan, Asha Bandele, Jayne Ifekwunigwe, Danzy Senna, April Sinclair.
Womens Studies 153 (formerly Womens Studies 122). Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Sexuality
Catalog Number: 7950 Enrollment: Limited to 15. Limited to 15.
Mari Ruti
Half course (spring term). Tu., 24. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Ever since Freuds by now infamous question, What does the woman want?, psychoanalysis has been preoccupied by the riddle of feminine desire. While Freud developed the clinical practice of psychoanalysis around the desirous discourse of the hysterical woman, Lacan went as far as to link feminine pleasure to the divine. Drawing on psychoanalysis, and on recent feminist and queer theory, this course will explore questions of love, desire, pleasure, masculinity/femininity, sexual orientation, and the divine. Authors considered include Freud, Lacan, Klein, Horney, Riviere, Kristeva, Irigaray, Butler, Halberstam, Nabokov, Jeanette Winterson, Kate Bornstein, and St. Theresa.
Womens Studies 154 (formerly Womens Studies 111). I Like Ike, But I Love Lucy: Women, Popular Culture, and the 1950s: Conference Course
Catalog Number: 6855
Alice Jardine
Half course (fall term). M., 24 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
A diagnosis and analysis of this formative decade for the U.S. babyboomer. Taught from a cultural studies perspective, the course will focus on gender politics in print media, film, television, and rock of the early cold war era. Parks, McCarthy, Monroe, Kerouac, and many others.
Womens Studies 155. Women, Girls, and Poverty: Conference Course
Catalog Number: 9165 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Elizabeth Dodson
Half course (spring term). W., 35. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Using a life-stages approach, this course examines conditions and effects of economic hardship in the lives of women and girls. Themes include daughters work in low-income families, adolescent pressures and strengths, early (often) single motherhood, and womens ongoing development, despite multiple barriers. A conceptualization of an economically segregated society, with the accompanying issues of race, ethnicity, and welfare stigma is integrated throughout. Students co-lead weekly class discussions. Readings by Canada, Hill Collins, Fine, Dodson, Edin, Luker, Way and others.
Womens Studies 158. Work and Family
Catalog Number: 9947 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Juliet Schor
Half course (fall term). Th., 24 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Can a woman successfully combine family and career? This highly contested question is at the center of many contemporary American debates. In this seminar we will look at a variety of perspectives on this issue, including analyses of the social construction of motherhood, the persistence of male norms in the workplace, traditional calls for a return to family values, the mommy track, joint parenting, and psychoanalyatic approaches to work-family conflict. Readings will be drawn mainly from the social sciences, but will also include some more literary accounts, and include the work of Hochschild, Williams, Deutsch, Hays, Chodorow.
Womens Studies 159. Sexual Diasporas Asia/America
Catalog Number: 4088 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
David L. Eng (Columbia University)
Half course (fall term). W., 24:30. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8, 9
This interdisciplinary seminar focuses on queerness and diaspora in Asian and Asian American
literature, drama, film, and visual culture. We will study works by writers, directors, and artists
from various ethnic groups and international locations in the Americas, East Asia, and South Asia. In particular, we will consider the various ways in which queerness and diaspora constitute contemporary notions of Asian/American identity, community, and politics. Throughout thesemester we will read widely from Asian/American cultural criticism, queer theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory.