*Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 97. Tutorial-Sophomore Year: Dreams of a Common Language: Feminist Conversations Across Differences
Catalog Number: 7217 Enrollment: Limited to concentrators.
Robin M. Bernstein
Half course (spring term). Th., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
An introduction to foundational concepts and analytical tools in the study of gender and sexuality. Focus on the ways in which diverse people have understood gender, sexuality, race, and nationhood as categories of knowledge. Case studies of activists and theorists forging complex alliances across unstable differences. Readings include Gloria Anzaldúa, Adrienne Rich, Simone de Beauvoir, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Inderpal Grewal, Judith Butler, Monique Wittig, Alison Bechdel, and Michel Foucault.
Note: Required of, and limited to, Women, Gender, and Sexuality concentrators in their first year in the concentration.
*Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 98r. Tutorial — Junior Year
Catalog Number: 8094
Director of Studies and staff
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Spring: Tu., 2–4.
Note: Ordinarily taken by concentrators for one term in the second term of the junior year. Concentrators planning to study abroad in the second term should take WGS 98r in the first term of the junior year.
*Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 99a. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 6763
Linda Schlossberg
Half course (fall term). F., 1–3.
Note: Both WGS 99a and 99b are required of all concentrators in their senior year.
*Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 99b. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 5847
Linda Schlossberg
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Both WGS 99a and 99b are required of all concentrators in their senior year.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1122. The Romance: From Jane Austen to Chick Lit
Catalog Number: 8181
Linda Schlossberg
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
A critical investigation of the genre’s enduring popularity, beginning with Austen’s satirical Northanger Abbey and three novels credited with providing narrative templates for contemporary romances (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights). We will then read twentieth-century revisions of these works (Rebecca, The Wide Sargasso Sea, Bridget Jones’s Diary). Topics: the female writer and reader/consumer of literature; moral warnings against romance, “sensation,” and titillation; the commodification of desire; Harlequins; the relationship between high culture and low.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1123. Women and Work in the US, 19th Century to the Present - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9575
Karen P. Flood
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This course examines patterns of American women’s labor from the nineteenth century to today, with a focus on debates over the definition of "work" or "women’s work" over time. Attention paid to divergent experiences of labor (and labor exploitation) according to race, class, ethnicity, and immigrant status. Emphasis placed on the analysis of primary sources (including archival material, literary texts, and photography) to recover women’s experiences of work and representations of female labor.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1125. Gender and Health
Catalog Number: 4563
Mary Ruggie (Kennedy School)
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 1 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
Based on theoretical debates between feminism and science and different understandings of health, illness, and healing, we explore the role of women, the medical profession, and various social institutions in constructing knowledge about gender and health. Among the issues we discuss are health behaviors, reproductive health, STDs, mental health, cancer, and aging. Throughout, we identify differences among women and men of different class, race, and ethnic groups.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1133. Gender and Performance
Catalog Number: 8829
Robin M. Bernstein
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 3 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 17
Introduction to performance studies as it intersects with studies of gender, sexuality, and race. What does it mean to say gender is "performed"? How does performance--both on- and off-stage--construct and deconstruct power? Topics include transgressive and normative performances, athletics, feminist and queer theatre, gender in everyday life, drag, Playboy, and weddings. Texts include Tony Kushner, Judith Butler, Anna Deavere Smith, Cherríe Moraga, Eve Ensler, Bertolt Brecht, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, and Ntozake Shange.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1136. Food, Culture, and Gender - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 1391
Linda Schlossberg
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 12 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
Examines the relationship between gender and hunger from historical, socioeconomic, and literary perspectives. Topics to include eating disorders and body image issues; poverty and malnutrition; domesticity; hunger strikes and fasting; ritual and etiquette; and hunger as metaphor.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1154. I Like Ike, But I Love Lucy: Women, Popular Culture, and the 1950s]
Catalog Number: 6855
Alice Jardine
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
A diagnosis and analysis of this formative decade for the US babyboomer. Taught from a cultural studies perspective, the course focuses on gender politics in print media, film, television, and rock of the early cold war era. Topics include: the bomb and TV, the Rosenberg trial, early civil rights movement, beat generation, Hollywood dreams of true love, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Jack Kerouac, Joe McCarthy, Rosa Parks, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1161. The Psychology of Girls and Women Over the Life Span - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 8325
Paula J. Caplan
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Examination of traditional theories about the development of human females from the beginning to the end of life, and contrasting of these with newer perspectives, primarily feminist relational theories.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1165. Intimacy and Violence - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9248
Deborah J. Cohan
Half course (fall term). M., 2–4 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
This course addresses the problem of violence in intimate relationships from a sociological and feminist perspective. Activist-inspired and community-connected. Close attention paid to the way in which violence against women constitutes a specific form of structured gender inequality. Special emphasis on the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality in the experience and representation of intimate violence. Topics include domestic violence, rape, incest, and pornography. Causes, consequences, and patterns will be examined.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1175. Theorizing Activism, Or How to Change the World - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 4954
Janet R. Jakobsen (Barnard College)
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1 and a one hour section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
What is the state of activism today? What visions of social transformation are available for tomorrow? These questions will be addressed in the context of genealogies of social movement, especially the theoretical perspectives built in and through activist practice and upon which activism draws. In addition to feminist, queer, anti-racist, and anti-colonial organizing, the course will explore the various contemporary movements working on questions of globalization, including those arrayed around the World Social Forum.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1200fh. Our Mothers, Ourselves: A Brief History of Postwar American Feminist Thought - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3042 Enrollment: Limited to 35.
Alice Jardine
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 14
At once assumed as givens and reviled as aberrations, the classics of American postwar, mainstream feminist thought are rarely re-read. In this seminar, we will read critically across four decades of influential feminist texts, keeping constantly in view the philosophical and political, psychological and historical, legal and ethical questions at the heart of women, gender, and sexuality studies today.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1200sh. From Queer to Queer: Histories of Same Sex Love and Eroticism in the United States] - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 7133
Robin M. Bernstein
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
To be announced.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1210ft (formerly Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1001). Feminist Theory]
Catalog Number: 5590 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
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Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Please contact WGS main office for course information.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1210qt (formerly Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1003). Queer Theory - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9232 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Bradley S. Epps
Half course (fall term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Examines the possibilities and pitfalls of a specifically "queer" understanding of gender, sexuality, culture, history, and politics. Special attention will be given to the international sweep and limits of queerness as conceptual category and identity (and anti-identity) formation in relation to questions of race, ethnicity, nationality, and class as well as artistic production and activism. Works by Butler, Sedgwick, Foucault, Rubin, Halperin, Warner, Wittig, Bersani, Cohen, Lorde, Halberstam, Califia, Stryker, Quiroga, Najmabadi, and many others.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1222. Literature, Art, Cinema and Queerness]
Catalog Number: 2628 Enrollment: Limited to 25.
Bradley S. Epps
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines the ties and tensions between so-called non-normative sexual identities and expressions and literature, film, and the visual arts. Draws on works from an array of countries in the modern period and includes select theoretical, critical, and historical readings. Topics include decadence and experimentation; oppression and resistance; desire, duty, and disease; silence and expression; normalization and radicalism, and the intersections of race, class, language, and nationality.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1226. Sex and Power in Modern Latin America and U.S. Latino Culture] - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6527
Bradley S. Epps
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on 20th-century narrative fiction, testimony, and film by women from a variety of linguistic cultures (French, Spanish, Creole, Maya-Quiché, English, Portuguese), paying special attention 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; family formations and kinship; ritual and religion; lesbianism, heterosexuality, and bisexuality; authoritarianism and democracy.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1230. Cinema and Alternative Sexualities] - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 4945
Bradley S. Epps
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1232. Postcolonial Women’s Writing - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 8406 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Katherine Stanton
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Rejecting what Anne McClintock calls "bogus universals" like "the postcolonial woman," this course will examine how postcolonial women’s writing represents and resists local and imperial power, developing a more complex understanding of agency. But our readings of literary and critical texts will also ask us to scrutinize the very suitability of the term "postcolonial." Our authors will include Michelle Cliff, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jessica Hagedorn, and Arundhati Roy, among others.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1240. Intersections of Identity in African American Communities: Theory and Practice - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3484 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Laurie A. Nsiah-Jefferson
Half course (fall term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Familiarizes students with theories addressing the intersections of race, gender, and class, and focuses specifically on the application of these theories for social policy and research on African American communities. Critical race feminism, womanism, and the Sojourner Syndrome, among other theories, are highlighted, and particular attention is paid to the implications of these models for studying issues such as racial discrimination, health disparities, reproductive health, and welfare reform.
*Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1255. Myths of Motherhood: Seminar Course - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9174
Paula J. Caplan
Half course (fall term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Investigation of the social construction of motherhood in the US; cross-cultural and subcultural variations in expectations of and attitudes toward mothers, especially mothers who often are marginalized (lesbian, teenage, poor, homeless, adoptive, Black, Native American, Hispanic, noncustodial); and research on mother-blame and other aspects of motherhood, including emotional adjustment of children of various kinds and categories of mothers. This is multidisciplinary, because it includes material from psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, and literature.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1300 (formerly Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1002). Approaches to Research and Writing in WGS
Catalog Number: 4429 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
An analysis of the production of knowledge and research methodologies across a variety of interdisciplinary topics in WGS. Specific research and writing requirements in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences are addressed as interdisciplinary questions are explored. The course is designed to deepen students’ thinking about their research questions, their roles and responsibilities as researchers, feminist epistemologies and the challenges of representation in the writing process.
Note: Required of all full and primary concentrators. Strongly recommended for joint concentrators with WGS as the allied field.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1402. Body Sculpting in Modern America]
Catalog Number: 4685 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Karen P. Flood
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
The last century has witnessed a proliferation of procedures and products to alter or "sculpt" one’s body. This course analyzes this phenomenon by focusing on fitness movements and body-building, dieting and eating disorders, surgical interventions, and surface alterations such as tattooing in late nineteenth and twentieth-century America. We will explore the ideas of self-making contained in these practices, and we will examine the race and gender politics of these bodily modifications in different eras.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1403 (formerly Women’s Studies 163). Nations, Genders, and Sexualities in Comparative Perspective]
Catalog Number: 4054 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
This seminar begins by considering several classical texts on modern nation- and state-formations, and their intersection with issues of gender and sexuality, including works by Anderson, Moss, and Foucault. We then study feminist, queer, and post-colonial critiques of these ideas using specific historical and anthropological works on the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. Focuses on the formation of modern subjectivities in the context of reconfigurations of sex, gender, and nationality.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
[Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1407. Harlots, Dandies, Bluestockings: Sexuality, Gender, and Feminism in the 18th and 19th Centuries]
Catalog Number: 0730 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Linda Schlossberg
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
How did social forces in the 18th and 19th centuries shape (and contest) new theories of womanhood, sexuality, and political equality? Readings from a variety of literary and political sources, including "Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," "Moll Flanders," "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "A Vindication of the Rights of Women." Areas of inquiry: prostitution, the suffrage movement, motherhood, property rights, psychology, manliness, sexology, Victorian pornography.
Note: Expected to be given in 2008–09.
*Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1409. Transsexuality, Transgenderism, and the Rest - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3822
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Half course (spring term). Th., 4–7 p.m. EXAM GROUP: 18
This course will cover narrative, anthropological, historical, and theoretical texts (including films) about transsexuality and transgenderism. We begin with transsexuality before and beyond identity politics and its transformation in the light/shadow of identity politics and theories of gender. While the course will remain located in the Americas and Europe, we will consider how trans-subjectivities produced in other socio-cultural formations inform histories and politics of transsexuality and transgenderism in so-called Western contexts.
Note: Please see syllabus for prerequisite reading. Permission of instructor required.
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1456. Ethics and Social Policy - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3499 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Janet R. Jakobsen (Barnard College)
Half course (spring term). Tu., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
Why are gender and sexuality in all of their manifestations such contentious issues for public policy? And yet, why are gender and sex so rarely treated as relevant to the "real" issues of the day, including war, economics, or immigration? This advanced seminar considers the contributions of feminist and queer ethics to a range of contemporary social issues. Students will do intensive work developing ethical positions and researching an issue of their choosing